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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Xaero_Vincent]

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|
..................................................-----...................--------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Remdul]

IMO the developer may be better off not supporting Linux at all under these circumstances. Not every customer knows their machine hardware (nor should one these days). Sure it may have an Intel sticker on it, but doesn't it also have an Intel or AMD or NV GPU? And if it has one, does it even work, or fall back to Intel build-in?
Some systems have both Intel GPU AND a second high powered GPU. On my dual GPU laptop some Windows/Linux (Wine + Bumblebee) games/applications only detect the Intel GPU, then crash due to GPU mixup, or downgrade graphics to conform Intel standards, even though stuff is being rendered on the NV GPU. Others run fine at great perf. But what a mess!

If you are a developer and can't make your OpenGL graphics cross-vendor, let alone cross-platform, you're doing something wrong. I know about GL extension hell (aaargh!), but graceful fall back is just part of the job. Don't support Linux/GL if you're not fully committed. Like this, even if 'NV-only' may break when NV screw up a driver update.

GL is cross-platform and cross-vendor, and while some implementations may suck or lag behind, it is a very good design principle to make it work on all the same. It helps you narrow down application performance bottlenecks, pinpoint bugs etc. etc.

[ningo]

How about Russ Looney files a bug report against the driver instead of blogging?

[iv841]

Unfortunately they are not anecdotes.

They still are because of the small numbers (=lack of statistical significance), and because no comparable effort was spent on finding similar links for AMD related problems (=bias).

[iv841]

My guess is that you are not a software developer. Am I right?

My guess is that it is none of your business who I am, nor is it relevant to the discussion.

Mesa actually supports OpenGL 4+ to a large degree, with a few extensions missing for full compliance.

Given that the "few extensions" that are missing include some major ones, it is enough to limit the usefulness of the support. Commercial developers also tend to prefer not depending on partial implementations. For comparison, Wine claims to have implemented about 80% of Direct3D 10, it just happens that the missing 20% prevents most games from working.

This still doesn't invalidate my statement, that it is the most compliant of the bunch.

Regardless of whether your statement is valid (it could only be objectively verified by intentionally writing many test cases of non-compliant code, and counting which driver correctly rejects the highest percentage of the tests), the fact remains that the OpenGL implementation provided by Mesa is incomplete and not up to date. Therefore it cannot be proclaimed as some kind of "official" reference driver, like many are trying to. It is already not 100% compliant with what it does support either, which does invalidate the approach of "write for Mesa only, forget the rest".