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PayPalHere we go again, ahead of the weekend a fresh version of Proton Experimental has gone live allowing you to test the latest adjustments for playing Windows games on Linux. If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page.
For Proton Experimental as of July 29, 2021 here's what's changed:
- It notes that Microsoft Flight Simulator from Steam is now playable
- Support was added for copy/paste in the Origin launcher
- An update for wine-mono to 6.3.0 which should fix more launchers
Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here's a simple HOWTO (as it's not complicated!). Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:
For an explainer in text form:
- Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
- Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
- Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
- Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
- From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.
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The comments on this article are closed.
7 comments
I wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.
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Quoting: LinasI wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.
True. Could be a license problem.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: LinasI wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.As I understand, part of what they're doing is some sort of re-encoding on Steam servers into a format Proton can work with. Don't quote me on it, but I'm sure I saw one of the people involved mentioning it. That, and they're telling developers to avoid it.
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Quoting: 1xokQuoting: LinasI wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.
True. Could be a license problem.
thats what i heard, yeah. Downloading GEs proton is not a huge obstacle for most of us, but not really the proper answer to what valve set out to offer with the Deck...
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Quoting: Liam DaweIf true, that's very a interesting approach. In theory, they would only need a single Windows server (probably many more in practice) to run the re-encoding jobs without any license violations.Quoting: LinasI wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.As I understand, part of what they're doing is some sort of re-encoding on Steam servers into a format Proton can work with. Don't quote me on it, but I'm sure I saw one of the people involved mentioning it. That, and they're telling developers to avoid it.
Although this would go against Valve's approach of solving the general problem. Identifying where and how videos are used in each game sounds like a lot of work. Just think of all those games that package the data files in some weird formats. It's not like there is any standard here.
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me in 1999 using Mandrake linux being told linux would run AAA games like Microsoft Flight Simulator...
i would have passed out with joy at the idea alone!
i would have passed out with joy at the idea alone!
1 Likes, Who?
rustybroomhandle Jul 31, 2021
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: LinasI wonder if they are ever going to officially support Media Foundation? There are so many games that work just fine, except missing video playback.As I understand, part of what they're doing is some sort of re-encoding on Steam servers into a format Proton can work with. Don't quote me on it, but I'm sure I saw one of the people involved mentioning it. That, and they're telling developers to avoid it.
This is correct. It's a module called media-converter (written in Rust). From the Proton github repo:
QuoteThis module is a gstreamer plugin which provides the ability to replace media
data encoded in certain formats with media encoded in another format. There
are two main components, `videoconv` for converting video data provided to
Quartz and Media Foundation, and `audioconv` for converting audio data
provided to XAudio2.
The broad idea is to hash the incoming data and replace it with data looked up
from a cache. If there is a cache miss, then the data is recorded to disk and
instead replaced by "blank" media. The conversion should be transparent to the
application (Wine, FAudio) so no changes are required to the application.
Last edited by rustybroomhandle on 31 July 2021 at 8:05 am UTC
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