Intel Gets Hogwarts Legacy Running On Linux Driver By Pretending Not To Be Intel Graphics

Those running Intel Arc Graphics on Linux can now enjoy the Hogwarts Legacy game under Valve's Steam Play. Intel engineers were able to get this open-world action RPG game running on their open-source Vulkan driver by hiding the fact that Intel graphics were rendering this game.

Earlier this year Intel's Mesa developers added the ability to conceal the Vulkan vendor to workaround game-specific issues. This was originally added since the Windows game Cyberpunk 2077 had added Intel XeSS upscaling support. When the game was running under Linux via Steam Play and seeing Intel graphics were being utilized, XeSS was being triggered. However, it led to a crash within the XeSS code.

With the Hogwarts Legacy game it's a similar story of XeSS being triggered and causing problems under Linux... So the simple workaround is again to conceal the Vulkan vendor so the game engine doesn't know Intel graphics are being utilized.

"anv: Override vendorID for Hogwarts Legacy

This is another game that makes use of XeSS but works when we fake the vendorID."

This patch adds the Hogwarts Legacy (HogwartsLegacy.exe) detection to DriConf and then sets the force_vk_vendor=-1 behavior to allow this popular game to work on Intel graphics under Linux. It's been tested both with the i915 kernel driver as well as the forthcoming Xe DRM driver.

Hopefully the Intel XeSS support will eventually work out fine under Linux. Sadly though XeSS is not (currently) open-source.