Valve's L4D2 Is Faster On Linux Than Windows

[kwahoo]

Source 2 engine references have been found in Source Filmmaker.

[Scali]

My point was about answering the statement that just because there were now MAC game ports, MAC sells didn't sky rocketed....my point is that even if the ports were of good quality it really doesn't matter because Apple high prices for a limited hardware puts off lot's of users----and the perception that is a very closed "ecosystem" with Apple using a very tight grip on it.

The whole 'closedness' issue seems to be something that linux users would care about, not Windows users.
Cost... perhaps somewhat, although I know plenty of people who bought a Mac when they could have bought a cheaper Windows/whatever machine to do the same. They just like the Mac better and are willing to pay a bit extra for it.
Where a possible threshold for Mac might be price, I think usability is a threshold for linux. People aren't familiar with using a linux system, and many of their favourite applications may not be available. Macs are slightly closer to Windows, with things like Office, Photoshop, Premiere etc being available for both OSes.

Now...who's to blame ? is really alone of who made the ports ? ....or is also because Apple continues to have a tight grip about their systems like the graphic about how the structure is implemented ? VC OEMs are responsible by a part....the other part is programmed by Apple....i doubt that things are really optimized as much as they could be...

I would fully put the blame on the game developers yes.
I have ported my OpenGL code to OS X and iOS, and in both cases I had absolutely no issues with performance or compatibility (the common layer that Apple implements is only very minor anyway, and mainly used to set up the screen, the grunt rendering work is all done by the GLD).

When you have bad quality game ports, high prices for the hardware, with a brand that is the only one making the MACs and with a tight grip of what is sold and/or approved to that platform, it's bound to NEVER be more than a product for an Elite.

Regardless, the Mac market is 2-3 times as large as the linux market.

[AJSB]

What I pointed out however, is that people had been playing Steam games on Mac through Bootcamp, and because of the poor quality of the Mac port, many of them continue to use Bootcamp rather than the native Mac versions.
They already had the Mac hardware to begin with.

My point was about answering the statement that just because there were now MAC game ports, MAC sells didn't sky rocketed....my point is that even if the ports were of good quality it really doesn't matter because Apple high prices for a limited hardware puts off lot's of users----and the perception that is a very closed "ecosystem" with Apple using a very tight grip on it.

Continuing to answer that statement and at same time answering your point, my answer is based in your....people in MAC don't like the ports because the ports are of bad quality.

Now...who's to blame ? is really alone of who made the ports ? ....or is also because Apple continues to have a tight grip about their systems like the graphic about how the structure is implemented ? VC OEMs are responsible by a part....the other part is programmed by Apple....i doubt that things are really optimized as much as they could be...


When you have bad quality game ports, high prices for the hardware, with a brand that is the only one making the MACs and with a tight grip of what is sold and/or approved to that platform, it's bound to NEVER be more than a product for an Elite.

[Scali]

There was and there will not be any major migration to MAC for the simple reason that Apple (at least here in my country) was looked at as an Elite Hardware vendor with very high prices for what you get.

What I pointed out however, is that people had been playing Steam games on Mac through Bootcamp, and because of the poor quality of the Mac port, many of them continue to use Bootcamp rather than the native Mac versions.
They already had the Mac hardware to begin with.

[AJSB]

There was and there will not be any major migration to MAC for the simple reason that Apple (at least here in my country) was looked at as an Elite Hardware vendor with very high prices for what you get.

[Scali]

Is there anyone with interest in replacing OpenGL(Linux or not)?? In case there is such a big demand for D3D on Linux they can write a State tracker and be done with it. Can't they??

I believe they already did a D3D tracker as a proof-of-concept, using Gallium to build a Windows driver.
That should easily be portable to linux.
But the biggest problem is that most linux drivers don't make use of Gallium. Certainly not the only two drivers that really matter: AMD's and nVidia's binary drivers.

[89c51]

It would still be so much nicer if someone would just publish a replacement API for OpenGL that worked more like any other API designed in the last 15 years. And did so without tethering it to the clusterfuck that is Khronos. And spent time integrating Mesa's software renderer into a steppable shader debugger. Linux with Gallium is the perfect place for this since you can write a new API and get direct hardware acceleration without needing to wait for any hardware vendors to get on board. Just sayin'. Nudge nudge.

Is there anyone with interest in replacing OpenGL(Linux or not)?? In case there is such a big demand for D3D on Linux they can write a State tracker and be done with it. Can't they??

[Scali]

Because OGL implementation is shared between all manufacturers. Check fig. 1-5 https://developer.apple.com/library/...1987-CH208-SW1

I guess you missed the part where they explain the driver layer:

The driver layer contains the optional GLD plug-in interface and one or more GLD plug-in drivers, which may have different software and hardware support capabilities. The GLD plug-in interface supports third-party plug-in drivers, allowing third-party hardware vendors to provide drivers optimized to take best advantage of their graphics hardware.

That's where the actual hardware-accelerated vendor driver plugs in. Which is what you'd normally be using under OS X. Apple does provide a software implementation as a fallback, but it is not suitable for playing games like L4D.
They even drew you a picture:

[kwahoo]

Common sense, isn't it?
So back to my question: why would linux be any different from OS X, given that they both use the same OpenGL codebase?

Because OGL implementation is shared between all manufacturers. Check fig. 1-5 https://developer.apple.com/library/...1987-CH208-SW1

The common OpenGL framework layer is the software interface to the graphics hardware. This layer contains Apple's implementation of the OpenGL specification.

[Scali]

Well, I know that windows and linux have the same codebase but I never heard anything about osx

Well, it's right there in nVidia's own docs. In the exact same sentence that also explains that Windows and linux share the same codebase... So how could you (or anyone else) possibly have missed that? Selective reading much?

and going on it's own opengl version and not following that the driver support don't help in that matter. It's common sense that the driver is made by nvidia and maybe apple puts some layer or something like that.

The difference is mainly that afaik only Apple distributes the drivers, instead of just downloading the latest ones directly from nVidia.
Aside from that, Apple has some custom extensions (then again, so do X and Windows in the form of GLX and WGL), and Apple wants to keep the OpenGL version the same across all vendors, to avoid compatibility issues. So their OpenGL versioning is lowest-common-denominator pretty much. Even though nVidia and AMD have OpenGL 4.2 support in their codebase, they only expose version 3.2 on OS X (but they do expose their extensions).
But again, that's still plenty for a 10-year old DX9 game.