Civilization: Beyond Earth Likely To Drop Intel/AMD Linux Support

[vortex]

This sounds like it should be investigated more...
Doesn't Phoronix test suite have the capability to do screen grabs of certain things ?
Just run it through some openGL tests, and see what fails, and what don't.

Though, that assumes it is being ported to openGL, and not using ANGLE, or something like that.
If they are using ANGLE, then, it could be that lib's fault, and not the drivers, since, it would be odd that AMD & intel both have the same issues.

[DMJC]

For 15 years AMD has been screwing up UNIX and for 15 years they could have fixed it. FGLRX is crap, Intel never had the high performance of gaming and the open source drivers just aren't there yet. It's obvious why this is happening, and no, no one is going to support some weird API like D3D9 on gallium, (they would want D3D10/11/12) which is basically only good for old code, or AMD Mantle which is just insanity to run on Linux right now. NVIDIA has had strong crossplatform support for OpenGL for the last 15 years. Yes it used to be a pain in the ass to install, but over time it has reached a certain level and has been consistent. The drivers do require restarting X because you're ripping out most of X's OpenGL stack when you install them. But here's the thing: 99.999% of the time, the NVIDIA drivers work. If you're obsessed with open code Nouveau is now a real option and is becoming more of one quite rapidly. AMD is reaping what it's sown from 15+ years of inaction of OpenGL, and I'm sorry but just coming in in the last 3-5 years and GPLing a bunch of code, and opening some hardware specs, doesn't suddenly fix all the problems caused by your platform neglect for over 15 years. NVIDIA has put the engineers and the time in and are reaping the rewards.The game company is just reacting to the environment it is finding itself in, with AMD drivers that aren't working correctly and Intel drivers which aren't quite there yet. I suspect we will see these games running on Intel before we see them running on AMD. Intel is putting in the man hours and has put real engineering resources into Linux. Most OpenGL extensions are coming from Intel's team first, before they get ported into Nouveau/AMD drivers.

[nanonyme]

It doesn't seem unusual that proprietary game developers will base their code on proprietary OpenGL implementation in the graphics drivers. As far as proprietary drivers go, Nvidia wins hands down on Linux. Fglrx is still a mess but is improving and hopefully will improve alot with with the hybrid FOSS/proprietary 'amdgpu' driver for future AMD GPUs. The FOSS Intel and AMD stacks are pretty good but only upto OpenGL 3.3. I mean, only very recently has the FOSS stack been able to support a OpenGL 3 games like The Witcher 2 reliably, which I just installed yesterday.

Only the proprietary drivers have full OpenGL 4.x support at the moment and this game requires DirectX 11, which only OpenGL 4.x can compare to. Although the DirectX 11 driver may expose Direct3D 10.x functions to the the minimum supported graphics cards of the game.

It may just be a matter that this Civilization game is "too much" for the current state of FOSS Intel and AMD stack and that the Fglrx is too buggy. I imagine we'll see support arrive in Mesa-git and git versions of the AMD and Intel driver relatively soon after release.

I think the proper solutions would be for a dialog box to appear at game launch when Intel or AMD hardware is detected:

.................................................. ............* Warning *
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This game requires an Nvidia graphics adapter with the genuine Nvidia Accelerated Graphics Driver to function.
....Intel and AMD Radeon graphics are currently not supported and game may not function correctly or at all.

.......................................Would you like to launch the game anyway?

.................................................. ___..................______
.................................................| Yes|.................|Cancel|
..................................................-----...................--------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, the correct way is to mention it in the sales page and sold packages and let people run it on what they please.

[bridgman]

For 15 years AMD has been screwing up UNIX and for 15 years they could have fixed it. FGLRX is crap, Intel never had the high performance of gaming and the open source drivers just aren't there yet. It's obvious why this is happening, and no, no one is going to support some weird API like D3D9 on gallium, (they would want D3D10/11/12) which is basically only good for old code, or AMD Mantle which is just insanity to run on Linux right now. NVIDIA has had strong crossplatform support for OpenGL for the last 15 years. Yes it used to be a pain in the ass to install, but over time it has reached a certain level and has been consistent. The drivers do require restarting X because you're ripping out most of X's OpenGL stack when you install them. But here's the thing: 99.999% of the time, the NVIDIA drivers work. If you're obsessed with open code Nouveau is now a real option and is becoming more of one quite rapidly. AMD is reaping what it's sown from 15+ years of inaction of OpenGL, and I'm sorry but just coming in in the last 3-5 years and GPLing a bunch of code, and opening some hardware specs, doesn't suddenly fix all the problems caused by your platform neglect for over 15 years. NVIDIA has put the engineers and the time in and are reaping the rewards.The game company is just reacting to the environment it is finding itself in, with AMD drivers that aren't working correctly and Intel drivers which aren't quite there yet. I suspect we will see these games running on Intel before we see them running on AMD. Intel is putting in the man hours and has put real engineering resources into Linux. Most OpenGL extensions are coming from Intel's team first, before they get ported into Nouveau/AMD drivers.

Um....

15 years ago we shipped only open source drivers. The first proprietary drivers arrived when we purchased FireGL and started using their workstation driver ~12 years ago.

The open source driver effort restarted >7 years ago, so we were proprietary-only for less than 5 years.

[dungeon]

I think the proper solutions would be for a dialog box to appear at game launch when Intel or AMD hardware is detected:

.................................................. ............* Warning *
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This game requires an Nvidia graphics adapter with the genuine Nvidia Accelerated Graphics Driver to function.
....Intel and AMD Radeon graphics are currently not supported and game may not function correctly or at all.

.......................................Would you like to launch the game anyway?

.................................................. ___..................______
.................................................| Yes|.................|Cancel|
..................................................-----...................--------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sane people will say "what a bullshit is that" because even if you click on 'Yes' you see "AMD Gaming Evolved" logo

[nanonyme]

Um....

15 years ago we shipped only open source drivers. The first proprietary drivers arrived when we purchased FireGL and started using their workstation driver ~12 years ago.

The open source driver effort restarted >7 years ago, so we were proprietary-only for less than 5 years.

Fwiw do any history pages for such information exist? In software industry couple of years is a lifetime and no one remembers older things without them being written down

[DMJC]

Um....

15 years ago we shipped only open source drivers. The first proprietary drivers arrived when we purchased FireGL and started using their workstation driver ~12 years ago.

The open source driver effort restarted >7 years ago, so we were proprietary-only for less than 5 years.

The point remains that for 15+ years NVIDIA has put platform support effort into BSD/Linux/Solaris, and ATi/AMD have not (as a single unified codebase with continuous effort, not stop/starting different efforts). NVIDIA's drivers stabilised quite rapidly to the point they've been for most of that time, requiring bug fixes and adding new features but with a pretty predictable level of performance and stability. I don't think that anyone is going to claim that NVIDIA's drivers don't have bugs. Any massive code base will have bugs in it. Hell the Linux kernel has bugs in it. But for performance/ease of use of install (when factoring in compatibility with applications such as wine, and general OpenGL apps). NVIDIA has been well ahead for over a decade.

Now what do I want to see happen? I'd actually like to see AMD/ATi catch up. This platform really needs it to happen. I would hate to see the Linux gaming pivot that's occurred die out because of driver support issues.

[nanonyme]

The point remains that for 15+ years NVIDIA has put platform support effort into BSD/Linux/Solaris, and ATi/AMD have not. NVIDIA's drivers stabilised quite rapidly to the point they've been for most of that time, requiring bug fixes and adding new features but with a pretty predictable level of performance and stability. I don't think that anyone is going to claim that NVIDIA's drivers don't have bugs. Any massive code base will have bugs in it. Hell the Linux kernel has bugs in it. But for performance/ease of use of install (when factoring in compatibility with applications such as wine, and general OpenGL apps). NVIDIA has been well ahead for over a decade.

Now what do I want to see happen? I'd actually like to see AMD/ATi catch up. This platform really needs it to happen. I would hate to see the Linux gaming pivot that's occurred die out because of driver support issues.

Personally waiting for nVidia to propose something to get rid of replacing significant amounts of graphics stack to install their drivers like AMD but I'll probably just grow old and bitter before that happens.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Sane people will say "what a bullshit is that" because even if you click on 'Yes' you see "AMD Gaming Evolved" logo

Heh... Well that isn't really any different then the devs saying that they'll drop support for AMD on the Linux port but have the logo appear anyway. Suppose they might just remove the "AMD Gaming Evolved" intro video from the Linux port for the time being?

[Xaero_Vincent]

No, the correct way is to mention it in the sales page and sold packages and let people run it on what they please.

Do that too. Frankly, though, some gamers will overlook that requirements list page and then complain in the Civilization forums when they find out things don't work. I see nothing wrong with a one time message stating AMD and Intel aren't supported so that gamers will for sure notice what is supported and what is not.

Granted, FOSS AMD & Intel drivers, along with Fglrx (I've seen game fixes in the fglrx release notes before) will catch and eventually handle the game just like what happened with The Witcher 2.