Feral Interactive have pushed another patch to Mesa to help fix up the 'radv' Vulkan driver

Quoting: dmantione

Quoting: babai^^ Dude, don't buy their games if you don't like the missing support.

I am completely fine if that is your position. However, if Nvidia users that have no actual experience with this call me an idiot, I think I should be allowed to defend myself.

No one called you an idiot, if you're talking about what I said that was in reply to Eike as quoted and wasn't directed at any particular person.

And for the record, I was exclusively an AMD user up until maybe around 2013 possibly. I don't consider myself an "nvidia user" or anything, just a user. I go with what works and in future as I've repeatedly stated I will be moving back to AMD due to the amazing Mesa support and progress recently.

I think targeting people like you did as "Nvidia users that have no actual experience" is part of the problem. I would say many Nvidia users previously have a lot of experience with AMD, like me, who decided to switch when the support was for lack of a better word - turd. AMD drivers had been turd for many years on Linux, this is common knowledge and the PRO driver hasn't suddenly solved a ton of those issues.

Quoting: dmantioneWell, without feedback on what is wrong, a developer has no information on what needs to improve. Criticism is not always fun, but it is not possible to make the world better, but without either. Long arguments should not go in circles though, they should be constructive. I am making all the efforts to point things out in a constructive way.

When you're repeating the same thing over and over, it's not really feedback. Feral, the ones actually developing the ports AND helping Mesa will be way more "in the know" at how bad AMD drivers have been (or are in the case of the PRO driver).

It's in Feral's best interest to support all the drivers they can to maximise their profits, there's no big conspiracy here. They don't choose not to ya know. Again, it leads back to all the other comments - AMD has and still does need work.

The Mesa driver is the de facto driver for gaming on Linux. I remember when I used to switch between the 2, but it has been a couple of years that I didn't use the closed source driver and I did even look back. Why? simply because the performance was awful, and with bugs everywhere. Now with the opensource driver the user experience is so much better, no problems with multiple monitors, no complications with vsync, compositing in KDE, GPU decoding acceleration works flawlessly, everything is smooth. And sometimes I even spot Liam complaining about some graphical bug with the Nvidia driver that I do not have with the radeonsi driver.

dmantione, you said that RadeonPRO was need for 3 monitors. Your card do not have 3 outputs or you are trying to use DisplayPort daisy-chaining?

Quoteone could then say "They are (sadly for us) nearly the only one porting modern AAA games to Linux".

It is completely acceptable if a game requires a top notch bleeding edge feature and therefore temporarily doesn't run on a driver. What makes the discussion difficult is that we have little concrete information to confirm this (sorry to say again, Feral never elaborate) and then we have to base ourselves on statistics, with other games, and those statistics unfortunately do not confirm that demanding games.

Unreal 3 engine... I would not call this bleeding edge, right?
- Rocket League runs like a dream.
- Life is Strange doesn't run on the PRO driver at all, and on Mesa only once you have upgraded sufficiently far.

Coincidence? Very possible, it cannot be ruled out, but at some point you have to start to doubt the coincidence.

Quoting: dmantioneIt is completely acceptable if a game requires a top notch bleeding edge feature and therefore temporarily doesn't run on a driver. What makes the discussion difficult is that we have little concrete information to confirm this (sorry to say again, Feral never elaborate) and then we have to base ourselves on statistics, with other games, and those statistics unfortunately do not confirm that demanding games.

It's not proof enough that they say that, then Mesa gets higher OpenGL and performance fixes and the games then work? It's not rocket science mate.

Quoting: dmantioneUnreal 3 engine... I would not call this bleeding edge, right?

Unreal Engine 3 is from 2004, so of course games using it are not going to be using the newest graphical features available. Any game using UE3 likely doesn't use any modern OpenGL. Some of them may pull in features from later UE versions, making support messy.

Quoting: dmantione- Life is Strange doesn't run on the PRO driver at all, and on Mesa only once you have upgraded sufficiently far.

Right, but showing my point from earlier again. If it doesn't run on the PRO driver, but will on Mesa...what does that say about the PRO driver?! Crap - that's what. Mesa get stuff fixed and implemented at a much quicker rate than the PRO driver.

Edit: LiS has been supported on Mesa since 11.2, so what the heck are you going on about :D

How you still argue against all this is beyond me :)


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 10 March 2017 at 8:01 pm UTC

Quotedmantione, you said that RadeonPRO was need for 3 monitors. Your card do not have 3 outputs or you are trying to use DisplayPort daisy-chaining?

The AMDGPU driver without DAL simply does not support more than 2 monitors in any configuration, it does not matter how you connect them. If you install the PRO driver, you automatically get DAL, so this is by far the easiest way to solve that. Several people might need DAL for other reasons, such as HDMI audio or Freesync.

Instead of the PRO driver, you can also decide to patch your kernel yourself. I have done this, therefore I am able to use all my monitors with both the Mesa and PRO drivers. Although I switch between both, most of the time I boot with the PRO driver, for the majority of games it still gives the smoothest user experience.


Last edited by dmantione on 10 March 2017 at 7:56 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantioneWhat makes the discussion difficult is that we have little concrete information to confirm this (sorry to say again, Feral never elaborate) and then we have to base ourselves on statistics, with other games, and those statistics unfortunately do not confirm that demanding games.

Well, some developers explicitly list extensions that are required for the game to work. Look in the readme file in Shadow Warrior for example. If Feral would do that, it would simplify things for users, and they can adjust their expectations.

So I agree here. Feral should elaborate what they require, and what they think doesn't work with certain drivers.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 March 2017 at 8:03 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweRight, but showing my point from earlier again. If it doesn't run on the PRO driver, but will on Mesa...what does that say about the PRO driver?! Crap - that's what. Mesa get stuff fixed and implemented at a much quicker rate than the PRO driver.

You know better that it is not that simple. Generally, comparing drivers to games, games usually violate OpenGL standards more than drivers. Usually it doesn't have consequences, but sometimes it has. And it can mean driver incompatibilities. Now with AMD's OpenGL implementation being known to be much more strict on demanding OpenGL compliance than Nvidia...

Second, different OpenGL drivers simply behave different. No driver is holy. This article from Valve's Rich Geldreich is a good read on that:

http://richg42.blogspot.nl/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html

Unfortunately it is not as simple as "develop on card x" and assume it will run on others. Unfortunately actual work is needed by the developer. And while I have no proof at all, my feeling I think this is the area where things are lacking, and not so much driver quality in general.

QuoteEdit: LiS has been supported on Mesa since 11.2, so what the heck are you going on about :D

... except if the particular Mesa driver for your hardware contains bugs that cause X to crash while running the game. Mesa 13.0.1 kindly provided by OpenSuSE as optional upgrade option wasn't enough. 13.0.3 is needed to get it stable. Been there done that, and succesfully completed this game in the end.

Quoting: dmantioneYou need to set the right environment variables to run games. I.e. Bioshock Infinite.

That surprised me as I've played through this game on Mesa without setting any environment variable. Searching the web I think this is about ARB_copy_image, which was added to Mesa in 2015 specifically for Bioshock but required an environment variable as it was incomplete and probably wouldn't work for anything else. Looks like that was completed in 2016 and so is now enabled without having to set that variable.

Quoting: liamdaweI would say many Nvidia users previously have a lot of experience with AMD, like me, who decided to switch.

I've seen a few arguments where someone insists that based on their experience from years earlier a particular game can't be played at all on Radeon even though someone else with current experience says it runs fine. I don't see that in this thread but perhaps dmantione is getting something similar elsewhere at the moment.

To make Bioshock Infinite launch on Mesa 13.0.3 I need these Steam launch options:

MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=410 MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 %command%

Perhaps on different hardware this isn't needed, Mesa returns different version numbers on different hardware. Anyway, many users with various hardware need environment variables, it is part of life with Mesa. It is not that bad, but you do need to read forums etc. to get games working and contributes to the overall user experience.


Last edited by dmantione on 10 March 2017 at 8:48 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantione

Quoting: liamdaweRight, but showing my point from earlier again. If it doesn't run on the PRO driver, but will on Mesa...what does that say about the PRO driver?! Crap - that's what. Mesa get stuff fixed and implemented at a much quicker rate than the PRO driver.

You know better that it is not that simple. Generally, comparing drivers to games, games usually violate OpenGL standards more than drivers. Usually it doesn't have consequences, but sometimes it has. And it can mean driver incompatibilities. Now with AMD's OpenGL implementation being known to be much more strict on demanding OpenGL compliance than Nvidia...

Yet those same games likely work well on Mesa, so again, is it Mesa not being compliant (which it is, since it goes through conformance testing) or is it AMD PRO being crap? The answer should be obvious. Just because the PRO driver may be strict with OpenGL, does not mean it is not buggy as hell.

Quoting: dmantioneSecond, different OpenGL drivers simply behave different. No driver is holy. This article from Valve's Rich Geldreich is a good read on that:

http://richg42.blogspot.nl/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html

You do realize the blog post you linked to that basically annihilates a vendor as "A complete hodgepodge, inconsistent performance, very buggy, inconsistent regression testing, dysfunctional driver threading that is completely outside of the dev's official control." is talking about AMD right? It's not backing up your argument at all, it's helping me show you how you're not thinking straight on this topic.

I think you seriously need to rethink you position on all this.

Again, I consider myself completely neutral in driver/vendor arguments considering I was with AMD for many years, have been with NVIDIA for a few, have used laptops for a long time with Intel only and I will also be moving back to AMD with my next card. So, I hope you don't think of me as someone who's talking against AMD because of some kind of NVIDIA fanboy behaviour, I dislike NVIDIA quite a lot in fact and love a lot of what AMD do.

I also happen to speak to driver developers myself, plenty of game developers (not just Feral) and plenty of AMD owners who actually understand the situation a little better than you apparently seem to.

Quoting: dmantioneTo make Bioshock Infinite launch on Mesa 13.0.3 I need these Steam launch options:

MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=410 MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 %command%

Perhaps on different hardware this isn't needed, Mesa returns different version numbers on different hardware.

What do you expect, that version of Mesa wasn't fully ready for OpenGL 4.5 on AMD (radeonsi). All your complaints seem to ignore, that Mesa is actively developed. I'm not sure what problem you have with that. Looks like you are in a rush, and expect Mesa to move faster than it does. I think it already moves pretty fast.

Regardless, current stable version of Mesa is 17.0.1, so you should be using at least that for gaming.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 March 2017 at 8:57 pm UTC

QuoteWhat do you expect, that version of Mesa wasn't fully ready for OpenGL 4.5 on AMD (radeonsi). All you complaints seem to ignore, that Mesa is actively developed. I'm not sure what problem you have with that. Looks like you are in a rush, and expect Mesa to move faster than it does.

Absolutely not. It might perhaps surprise you, but I am a big supporter of Mesa and open source support for AMD is an important reason for buying it. What I am stating though, is that life is not all that smooth at Mesa (not specifically AMD, I also have experiences on Intel) and there are darn good reasons to run the proprietary driver, for the simple case that you experience much more inconveniences with Mesa, than with the PRO driver. It is a simple reality that is difficult to deny.

All this upgrading work to bleeding edge versions with Mesa, that in itself considering the development model and current state of Mesa is completely understandable, is mostly needed because of one single vendor.

... which is still to be praised for contributing to Mesa, as this news post mentions again, let that be clear. But they are not there yet and can still do a lot better.


Last edited by dmantione on 10 March 2017 at 9:02 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantione

Quotedmantione, you said that RadeonPRO was need for 3 monitors. Your card do not have 3 outputs or you are trying to use DisplayPort daisy-chaining?

The AMDGPU driver without DAL simply does not support more than 2 monitors in any configuration, it does not matter how you connect them.

Well, this just isn't correct. I've got 4 screens, running just fine, here on the stock kernel.

You do need DAL for some features such as FreeSync / HDMI/DP audio but multi-monitor support isn't one of them.

I wouldn't limit using newest Mesa to single vendor. Wine for example uses OpenGL 4.5 for DX11 support, and it simply won't work without it. So you have clear advantage in using newer Mesa for it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 March 2017 at 9:04 pm UTC

Quoting: libgradevWell, this just isn't correct. I've got 4 screens, running just fine, here on the stock kernel.

That's interresting, is that on Polaris hardware? I would be interested to know how you did that, since running stock kernels would remove a lot of complexity.

Back when I had my 390x, most Feral games didn't work well or work at all with MESA. Good to see they are noticing the benefits of having a open-source driver.

I'd be surprised if DXMD doesn't get Vulkan at some stage, the game REALLY needs it and I think it would solve issues for Windows also. We need more vulkan supported games to get some momentum...

Surprised they even bother having FGLRX.. I thought they moved onto the amdgpu-pro ages ago? Also isn't MESA a better option now minus vulkan that is?


Last edited by TheRiddick on 10 March 2017 at 10:28 pm UTC

Surprised to see people complain about no pro support. AMD have put in very little effort into keeping the pro drivers up to date. I think they wanted to push the mesa for gaming and pro for industry use. Its took time but the mesa driver is almost on par feature wise and performance is better in many cases.

Of course there are many bug still, but the final pieces are falling into place. Shader cache, multithreaded opengl support are arriving and performance continues to improve.

We need AMD to get DAL/DC in a good state for it to be accepted upstream. I have a feeling this is their priority right now and it will make a massive difference for the mesa driver when it's complete.

I think in the next few years the mesa driver will be very stable and fast. I think its already very good, but with Valve and now Feral and other companies including Croteam getting involved, the support is impressive. This is what I love about open source and why its going to be the best going forward.

Mesa has been updated with a lot of cool features lately, but its too bad distros like Ubuntu are always behind.

SteamOS is still running kernel 4.1? that is bad!