John Carmack Pushes Wine For Linux Gaming

[artivision]

What is llvm_shader_compiler? is that expected to improve d3d to gl performance?

D3D is a shader compiler, openGL the same, CG the same. It compiles programs(shaders) to a form that a computer(GPU) can understand. Its useful because there are many different computers and you cant write code just for one. The target and optimized libraries that are required to target a specific hardware are inside a GPU driver (the same is true for OpenGL compilers). The bad thing is that wile with a new CPU they give as those libraries(BDver for example) for GCC, for a GPU they don't give the analogous MESA parts. That is happening because they don't want MESA to grow, because then other companies will come and break their monopoly (software is half the GPU). Those two evil companies (ATI_AMD and NVIDIA) instead of using only OpenGL, they co develop with Microsoft DirectX, the closed all games under Windows and they are privileged by this deal (to be the only ones for long time). Also they did attack open pc closing games under consoles, that's another crime and not for money (the profits are better if you sell more cards and more expensive cards for pc). Now as for Wine the situation is simple: Except from the compilers there is also the rasterizer inside a GPU driver. Even if we can run D3D libraries on Wine we don't have the D3D rasterizer with the Linux GPU drivers, so we need to translate and loss FPS. Some times with an Nvidia card only we can set this translation off (GLSL=disabled), that uses the old and not efficient compiler and gains some FPS. In order to solve those problems Wine started an llvm_hlsl_shader_compiler, that uses the efficient llvm to compile HLSL very close to GLSL efficiently so the translation becomes very fast. When they succeed we will no longer need D3D libraries ether.

[staalmannen]

BTW have there been any Windows vs Wine vs native Linux Phoronix benchmarks performed?

I know that there are some windows-vs-linux benchmarks, but it would be interesting to see what the performance hit actually would be and in what areas (does the Wine tests run significantly worse than the native Linux ones?)

[log0]

Oh, Mr Carmack should stick with the consoles I guess.

Porting a game to linux... Why not write it portable in the first place? There are enough libs out there to deal with the OS bits, duh.

PS: Loved the comment by one of the Unity guys, inviting Carmack to try Unity, lol.

[shmerl]

If "pouring resources" means original developers, than its incredibly wrong path.

Its like producing emergency tires instead of original tires. WINE is always meant as a solution to run things if native version is not available - exactly as an emergency tire. It is winapi clone, it is not a real thing.

It means what it means - fixing bugs and making it better. He's calling on it - let him contribute. Whether you think it's wrong or not wrong, Wine enables using many Windows only games for Linux and improving it always helps. Fixing and improving Wine is not synonymous with using Wine as a primary tool instead of creating Linux ports for a game in development. If he calls for the later - I don't agree. If he calls for the former - that is welcome. And for developers who are too entrenched in Windows only mode, checking that their games at least work well with Wine is also a good thing. It's better then just saying "we don't support Linux so forget it".

Carmack and others at id Software have expressed that it hasn't been too commercially viable bringing their games native to Linux. Now Carmack is promoting Wine for running Windows game binaries on Linux.

Is he playing an idiot or something? Their ports were just nightmare compared to Windows releases. Furthermore, one could just patch Windows game to work on Linux and I bet most of the gamers chose this way. Thanks, but I won't ever buy game that uses wine, so no id for me.

[Micket]

I just don't understand how he can suggest this, even if he's just interested in money. Actually selling something that uses wine, then you have to support that version as well. No trivial task. It's far from as simple as just saying "just buy the windows version, it should work under wine, we tested it".
In fact, I'm sure that a native port would be easier to support and I'm surprised that Carmack thinks differently.

[who_me]

Lets also not forget how some companies, namely Blizzard, have banned players because they misinterrepted their playing through Wine as cheating.

Actually this has yet to be proven. I play Diablo 3 only on my Ubuntu install with Crossover. No ban yet.

[kokoko3k]

U[..]Still Wine's new llvm_shader_compiler will make it up, without the need for any Microsoft D3D libraries.[..]

What is llvm_shader_compiler? is that expected to improve d3d to gl performance?

[brosis]

It will be great if they'd pour resources into it. There are many good games which don't work normally on Wine and have no native Linux ports. Example: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23863
So improving Wine is always welcome. But if they don't plan to contribute resources - there is no point in this "promotional talk".

If "pouring resources" means original developers, than its incredibly wrong path.

Its like producing emergency tires instead of original tires. WINE is always meant as a solution to run things if native version is not available - exactly as an emergency tire. It is winapi clone, it is not a real thing.

[shmerl]

It will be great if they'd pour resources into it. There are many good games which don't work normally on Wine and have no native Linux ports. Example: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23863
So improving Wine is always welcome. But if they don't plan to contribute resources - there is no point in this "promotional talk".