Steam Dev Days: VR, VR, VR; Valve Looking To Contract Mesa Developers For AMD Work

[karolherbst]

Out of curiosity, do the closed-source Nvidia drivers support OpenVR? I suppose Valve/HTC isn't really in a position to be demanding Nvidia what to do with their own drivers, but I find it a little weird that they seem to be only targeting AMD right now. Not that I have a problem with that - Mesa devs deserve all the cash they get thrown at them.

Nvidia Pascal GPUs even have native support for all that stuff and a bunch of OpenGL Extensions for that.

[Passso]

Out of curiosity, do the closed-source Nvidia drivers support OpenVR? I suppose Valve/HTC isn't really in a position to be demanding Nvidia what to do with their own drivers, but I find it a little weird that they seem to be only targeting AMD right now. Not that I have a problem with that - Mesa devs deserve all the cash they get thrown at them.

Yup, glad to see they work with the whole ecosystem, I hope to see NVidia and AMD on par on Linux like they are on Windows.

juno : and they did a lot of work with NVidia to improve their drivers with good results, since SteamOs project started.

[pal666]

I suppose Valve/HTC isn't really in a position to be demanding Nvidia what to do with their own drivers, but I find it a little weird that they seem to be only targeting AMD right now.

it would be smarter to suppose that valve is not going to sponsor work on nvidia proprietary shit even if that was not complicated by the fact that you can't work on something without sources

[schmidtbag]

it would be smarter to suppose that valve is not going to sponsor work on nvidia proprietary shit even if that was not complicated by the fact that you can't work on something without sources

That would be true if Valve shared your perspective, which is a rash presumption considering nearly all (or maybe all, I'm not sure) software and hardware created by Valve is not open source. Anyway, you absolutely can work on something without sources, though it can complicate things. I don't fully understand how OpenVR works, but I am pretty sure all GPU vendors did not create anything hardware-specific for it. Just like OpenCV, you can get GPU acceleration via OpenCL or CUDA, implying that you can get GPU acceleration without requiring to get through closed-source drivers. Obviously if OpenCV could access the GPU directly and not rely on OpenCL, it may perform better. I figure OpenVR wouldn't be all that demanding, but considering latency is arguably the most important factor for VR, that could be why bypassing OpenCL is a priority.

[bachchain]

They should release Linux themed objects on the CS:GO. That will fund pretty well all the developers working on making Linux gaming possible

Why? Valve is perfectly capable of paying developers without needing to extract even more money from their users.

[juno]

eydee Thanks for the reply. I think you didn't quite get my point, so let me elaborate.

This is not about Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel. Valve is competing with Microsoft, as they want to establish their platform against Windows. Valve depends on collaboration w/ the hardware manufacturers, driver/platform AND game devs and vice versa.

Currently, SteamOS is nowhere near Windows. The amount of games on Steam (not talking about big pulishers that don't even release on Steam@Windows), performance and quality of the games is a joke on SteamOS, tbh. Valve can't be blamed for all of that, obviously, but IMHO they can be blamed for being 'conservative'.

There are demanding games and there are non-demanding games in terms of graphics hardware. The most demanding games don't run on Linux, many others have problems w/ free drivers. Some are Nvidia-exclusive, locking out half of the possible customers. Leaving the non-demanding games. You can't ignore Intel from this, as there are plenty non-demanding games that run well on Intel, or even better than on AMD hardware.

And, btw, yes. radeonsi works out quite nicely over the time. It has not always been like this. And which Mesa and Kernel versions does SteamOS use again?

Also, I don't care about amdgpu-pro vs radeonsi. Well, actually, I care, but that's not the point. The point is the comparison of the experience on Windows vs. those on SteamOS using the same hardware and any easily available or out of the box driver. And as radeonsi seems to be emerging as the preferable solution more and more, 'any' basically boils down to radeonsi. So, compare again and tell me there is no difference.
So, switching from Windows to Linux for gaming with steam is currently a downgrade for the users. Valve could have paid devs to work on the projects like mesa or wayland compositors. It is their platform and they should have the motivation to offer a nice experience. Microsoft does the same with the Xbox and Sony with the PS etc.
Also, having Nvidia-only titles is a no-go. Valve could and should have been doing something about that, imho, but nothing ever happened.

Don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to and appreciate every improvement, even this, from which I'll probably not benefit anytime. But I can't stand companies being praised or celebrated for being or doing what they aren't.

[bridgman]

And yest radeonsi is a dead end for modern cards, we should be using amdgpu, but we can't fully, because of lacking patches. More work seems to be happening in radeonsi than amdgpu - er, the future of amd drivers, yet lacking.

I don't understand this. The amdgpu drivers are kernel and DDX, while radeonsi is a Mesa HW layer (Gallium3D) driver which works with both radeon and amdgpu.

They are different parts of the same stack.

[johnc]

Valve is competing with Microsoft, as they want to establish their platform against Windows.

Valve isn't competing against Windows. That whole thing was a ruse.

Valve doesn't care about Linux or even about producing anything.

[Mike Frett]

Instead of dumping money on a novelty like VR, they should focus on the Steam Store, SteamOS and creating a new line of Half-Life Games. Just my opinion of course, what do I know...

[untore]

Valve isn't competing against Windows. That whole thing was a ruse.

Valve doesn't care about Linux or even about producing anything.

This is the truth,
For valve linux is just a safety net, a backup plan in case Microsoft does something too stupid, they released steam for Linux around the time Microsoft released their store for win8/.1, it didn't gain much traction, so valve didn't push more on linux. All valve cares is selling games, not really push for an open platform.