Free to play MMO 'War Thunder' has a big update with a revamped game engine

I guess there's no reason I shouldn't try this. Wow, some of the models look way good. Really nice upgrades here.

I wonder if this improves performance on Linux because I used to play this on Windows way way back and it ran well, but when I moved to Linux i got awful frame-rates even on low settings.

Wow that voice over in the video is annoying. Some weird voice synthesizer stuff I'm guessing.

It actually causes graphical issues on Linux and performance reduction by almost half. It warns you that OpenGL has issues on launch.. so this update has made things significantly worse for Linux users sadly.

On a positive light, there is mention by the developer that they intend to move to Vulkan, supposedly. We will see.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 15 March 2018 at 1:20 am UTC

I guess there's no reason I shouldn't try this. Wow, some of the models look way good. Really nice upgrades here.

I played World of Tanks , Armored Warfare and eventually War Thunder when I moved to Linux.
As a fair warning , the grind can be a pain.

...and they are still showcasing their aircraft action videos while using "mouse aim" ...
Let's hope they do vulkan one day.

I played World of Tanks , Armored Warfare and eventually War Thunder when I moved to Linux.
As a fair warning , the grind can be a pain.

Yea, the grind is obviously designed to trick players into buying as many micro-transactions as possible.

I played the update last night, graphics pretty broken for me and another guy I know that uses Linux. Tried again today after a small patch was released and its now less broken. Cant confirm if large FPS drops exist still for Linux, but I have heard it from others last night and did not test long enough today to find out as the shadows are still fairly broken.


The game also warns when I start it that Linux performance may be reduced ever since the 1.77 update came out.

I was quite obsessed with this game for a while. Never really played any of the air battles but loved the tanks!
Ended up being quite put off by the amount of pro Russian bias in the game though. I'd sunk a bit of time and money into the German tree but at mid tiers the t-34 is all you'll ever face and it completely owns.

It might get better in later tiers but it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game and I didn't get back into it.

It seems like a great update for AMD users, as now I can play with any settings higher than medium. Before this any high setting preset caused big performance drops for me.
As for graphical issues - I noticed flickering smoke in the benchmarks. Hope it'll be resolved soon and I'll finally be able to play WT on Linux with highest settings, like in my Windows days :)

It is nice to not get terrible stuttering FPS in the main menu now. I play several rounds last night and it played ok. I was able to play better at higher settings, but it still had some dips. Happy about the menu/hangar area being better.

Do you do planes or tanks?

On a positive light, there is mention by the developer that they intend to move to Vulkan, supposedly. We will see.

FYI - Vulkan is a great API, but it is not a miracle. There are games where its use will increase performance, but there are also those that will cause performance degradation. The game to Vulkan should be properly designed from scratch. Therefore, using Vulkan today in any game is not the best idea.
So if they trying Vulkan, they just need to make sure it help in current case.

Word of advice to any new users - skip Arcade mode and go straight into the Realistic mode, this is where the game shines and actually differs from miseryware such World of X series. You can also skip the PvE mode which is pretty bad.

For anyone on the proverbial fence, now's the best moment to check the game out as (as usual this time of the year) devs will add an April Fools mode, which so far every single time has been far superior to the actual gameplay in any of those vehicular MMOs.

I wonder if this improves performance on Linux because I used to play this on Windows way way back and it ran well, but when I moved to Linux i got awful frame-rates even on low settings.

It actually causes graphical issues on Linux and performance reduction by almost half. It warns you that OpenGL has issues on launch.. so this update has made things significantly worse for Linux users sadly.

For me, using mesa drivers for a RX480, performance increased about 30-40% with this upgrade! those problem may depend of the hardware/drivers, or is just stating what is known, their port to opengl is heavy (or at least have problems with mesa drivers). Even in intel, i saw a increase in peformance (about 20%-30%)

i can only test in the radeon and in a intel and in both i do not see the game scaling correctly. Using in the previous version, low settings or high settings generated almost the same FPS... now things are better, but still my card is still only using 50% of its GPU and in a low frequency (400Mhz from a max of 1.3Ggz)... i do not have windows, so i have no idea how the same hardware behaves in windows

With this new engine released, the info we have is that they will work in vulkan, as they didn't wanted to to try to add vulkan to the already in progress new engine rewrites
I hope they finish the vulkan port and the performance finally increase to great levels.

As a fair warning , the grind can be a pain.

all this free games are like that, you grind quickly the first levels and then start to get slower and slower the higher you go, mostly to see if people give then money, but also because after reaching the top, people get tired of the game quickly. New machines are always the bait to keep playing and in a quick research tree, they could not produce new tanks and planes fast enough to keep the new machine bait working.

I played the update last night, graphics pretty broken for me and another guy I know that uses Linux. Tried again today after a small patch was released and its now less broken.

What card and drivers are you using? again, in intel and amd rx480, using the git mesa i do not see any problem other than some (very few) quick texture flickers

I was quite obsessed with this game for a while. Never really played any of the air battles but loved the tanks!
Ended up being quite put off by the amount of pro Russian bias in the game though.

Air battles you really do not have bias, each plane works differently and you have to adapt. They are also very good, after you learn how to use each plane and their weak and strong points.

For tanks is almost the same, you have to adapt... the t34 bias is because there are several t34 tanks and all then are very fast, agile, quick turret and have a good gun, so good for people playing it as a firs person shooter (FPS). German usually have lower turret rotation and are harder to play that way. If you let t34 flank you, you are dead... then you reach the tigers and the t34 will have a much harder time to kill you.
Russian and German tanks are clearly the best tanks, the other countries do have some good machines, but they also have lot of bad tanks (or tanks that you need to learn exactly how to play then, they are not flexible as most russian and german tanks).
Some people complain that they do not match the tanks in historic way and that is why it looks unbalanced... but if they put to play 5 tigers vs 20 t34, as in historic battles, people would also complain :)
Basically, in realistic and simulation battles, everything is balanced, in arcade, if your team is not good and you get flanked, you probably will die. t34 is a good flanker and there are several of then... so there is why it looks russian bias... notice that i play all the countries and team play is usually the most important (or lack of). Of course, they are always fine-tune the balance, so maybe you were playing in a time that balanced was not good. try it again and check... or simply play realistic and skip the mostly FPS from arcade, where you may see more t34 FPS guys

As a fair warning , the grind can be a pain.

Well, after all it's F2P and if it wasn't for the grind it would be difficult to create new content, keep existing players interested and attract new players. OTOH: Up to tier 3 the grind is quite bearable (particularly if you spend some real money on some premium vehicles) and IMO the fights there are the most entertaining ones.

Ended up being quite put off by the amount of pro Russian bias in the game though. I'd sunk a bit of time and money into the German tree but at mid tiers the t-34 is all you'll ever face and it completely owns.

If this bias really existed - why don't you play the Russian tanks? For my part I'm at least as successful with the other nations (with the exception of Japanese and French tanks).

Word of advice to any new users - skip Arcade mode and go straight into the Realistic mode, this is where the game shines and actually differs from miseryware such World of X series.

Depends. I like arcade with planes. Fiddling with engine management and observing maximum speeds before your wing rips are kinda "too much for the quick in-between game". With tanks I wholeheartedly recommend realistic. Most of the possible tactics with different types of vehicles are gone, when you are marked on the map and highlighted in the aiming sight.

I stop playing a while ago, mainly because of the matchmaking, is ther GOL Clan for WT, or somethin similar.

I tested WT 1.77 and it is running fine for me.


greetings