Why is dxvk reporting I have 396.24-0?

Because your -20 is the package revision, not the driver version. There is no such thing as 396.24.20 anyway.

Gotcha, thanks. Do I only have to wait till a newer version of the drivers is released? I thought in dxvk 0.63 that requirement was going to be relaxed.

How did you manage to work around the lack of stream output like features

I didn't, that's kind of the point. And that's also why it might still take several months for this to go live, but it should happen eventually.

Interesting, so it would render what's possible, omitting those minor details like decals and the like that are strictly what's used in stream output? I.e. when Khronos and drivers will come around implementing such feature in Vulkan you would be able to make it look even better?

I read that in a completely different way.
No point for further speculating though in my view, sometimes the gears just turn slowly.

I installed 396.45 and now I get the following output:

000f:err:service:process_send_command receiving command result timed out
000f:fixme:service:scmdatabase_autostart_services Auto-start service L"WineBus" failed to start: 1053
002f:err:winediag:wined3d_dll_init Setting multithreaded command stream to 0x1.
002f:err:winediag:wined3d_dll_init Setting maximum allowed wined3d GL version to 4.5.
info:  Game: witcher3.exe
info:  DXVK: v0.63-8-g0aa7ab8
warn:  OpenVR: Failed to locate module
info:  Enabled instance extensions:
info:    VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
info:    VK_KHR_surface
info:    VK_KHR_win32_surface
002f:err:vulkan:wine_vk_instance_load_physical_devices Failed to enumerate physical devices, res=-3
002f:err:vulkan:wine_vkCreateInstance Failed to load physical devices, res=-3
err:   DxvkInstance::createInstance: Failed to create Vulkan instance
0015:err:service:process_send_command receiving command result timed out
002a:err:plugplay:handle_bus_relations Failed to load driver L"WineHID"
002a:err:plugplay:try_add_device Building report descriptor failed, removing device
002f:fixme:msvcrt:__clean_type_info_names_internal (0x2421878) stub
002f:fixme:msvcrt:__clean_type_info_names_internal (0x2335768) stub

There is also a prompt that reads: "GPU does not meet minimal requirements. Support for Directx is required." but the GTX 970 has it, so not sure how to tackle that one.

Why is dxvk reporting I have 396.24-0?

Because your -20 is the package revision, not the driver version. There is no such thing as 396.24.20 anyway.

Gotcha, thanks. Do I only have to wait till a newer version of the drivers is released? I thought in dxvk 0.63 that requirement was going to be relaxed.

What requirement?

You don't have to use beta drivers anymore for DXVK 0.63 , you can use 396.45

Why is dxvk reporting I have 396.24-0?

Because your -20 is the package revision, not the driver version. There is no such thing as 396.24.20 anyway.

Gotcha, thanks. Do I only have to wait till a newer version of the drivers is released? I thought in dxvk 0.63 that requirement was going to be relaxed.

What requirement?

You don't have to use beta drivers anymore for DXVK 0.63 , you can use 396.45

The requirement to have 396.45 for "VK_EXT_vertex_attribute_divisor" though apparently that's only when building from master. Not sure if the version in AUR includes that. I have managed to get a different log, and the window prompt doesn't happen anymore, but still fails to launch:

000f:err:service:process_send_command receiving command result timed out
000f:fixme:service:scmdatabase_autostart_services Auto-start service L"WineBus" failed to start: 1053
info:  Game: witcher3.exe
info:  DXVK: v0.63
warn:  OpenVR: Failed to locate module
info:  Enabled instance extensions:
info:    VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
info:    VK_KHR_surface
info:    VK_KHR_win32_surface
info:  GeForce GTX 970:
info:    Driver: 396.45.0
info:    Vulkan: 1.1.70
info:    Memory Heap[0]: 
info:      Size: 4096 MiB
info:      Flags: 0x1
info:      Memory Type[7]: Property Flags = 0x1
info:      Memory Type[8]: Property Flags = 0x1
info:    Memory Heap[1]: 
info:      Size: 11960 MiB
info:      Flags: 0x0
info:      Memory Type[0]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[1]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[2]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[3]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[4]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[5]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[6]: Property Flags = 0x0
info:      Memory Type[9]: Property Flags = 0x6
info:      Memory Type[10]: Property Flags = 0xe
info:  D3D11CoreCreateDevice: Probing D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_0
info:  D3D11CoreCreateDevice: Using feature level D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_0
warn:  Vulkan extension VK_EXT_vertex_attribute_divisor not supported
info:  Enabled device extensions:
info:    VK_EXT_shader_viewport_index_layer
info:    VK_KHR_dedicated_allocation
info:    VK_KHR_descriptor_update_template
info:    VK_KHR_get_memory_requirements2
info:    VK_KHR_image_format_list
info:    VK_KHR_maintenance1
info:    VK_KHR_maintenance2
info:    VK_KHR_sampler_mirror_clamp_to_edge
info:    VK_KHR_shader_draw_parameters
info:    VK_KHR_swapchain
0036:fixme:ver:GetCurrentPackageId (0x19fcfdc0 (nil)): stub
002e:fixme:msvcrt:__clean_type_info_names_internal (0x2421878) stub
002e:fixme:msvcrt:__clean_type_info_names_internal (0x2335768) stub

The VK_EXT_vertex_attribute_divisor requirement was removed in 0.63 (although of course DXVK will still print a warning if it isn't available). Not sure what your issue is, but this is not it.

FWIW, Witcher 3 should run out of the box with a fresh wine prefix that just has 64-bit DXVK set up. Maybe try that.

It’s actually a new prefix/installation I did recently because the old one wouldn’t work either.

Fun fact, if I launch the game from the gui it works. But fails to launch from the terminal.

But fails to launch from the terminal.

You likely are launching it incorrectly. When you run the binary with Wine, you have to be in the directory where the binary is located.

But fails to launch from the terminal.

You likely are launching it incorrectly. When you run the binary with Wine, you have to be in the directory where the binary is located.

I was likely doing it wrong indeed haha. Thanks all for your help!

I've been watching the Witcher 3 on DXVK progress with great interest. And sooner or later there will be a sale of the Witcher 3 where I can pick up a copy.

I've experimented briefly with Steam on Wine a couple of years ago. I have a GOG account and a HumbleBundle Account. Which store provides the easiest route to getting Witcher 3 up and running on Ubuntu (presumably 18.04.1 although I'm still on 16.04 LTS)?

GOG releases are easiest to use with Wine, since they provide standalone DRM-free installers (which you can easily use in separate Wine prefixes). You can download them on Linux using lgogdownloader.

If you download using the browser (not recommended), make sure to select "classic installers".

I'm likely hitting the limitations of MESA/radv (18.1.X - Solus) but performance is quite good on my Vega FE with averages in the upper 50s. I still get hit with major stutter every so often which drops the frame rate down to the teens. I'm going to finish the other game in my backlog (darksiders 2) first while I wait for new wine/mesa/dxvk to hopefully improve the situation.

3440x1440
Maxed Settings - (Nvidia specific gimmicks turned off of course)

If you are hoping for the stutter to be fixed: It's straight-up impossible to fix or even improve.

If you are hoping for the stutter to be fixed: It's straight-up impossible to fix or even improve.

Can shader compiler itself get faster?

More like could precompiled shaders be think?

I think the problem with DXVK was that shaders were genereated dynamically, and somehow there was no way to use cache approach there (i.e. you can't know in advance what the generated shader will end up like, so you need to generate it each time)? May be @YoRHa-2B can correct me. Actual SPIR-V compilation to machine code is probably already cached by radv and other drivers.

Though I'm not quite clear why this process is non deterministic. Aren't input shaders (DXBC) a fixed thing? So the output should supposedly be a fixed thing too. If the input / output relation can be cached, the transpiling step can be skipped.

Maybe this could be of interest to some of you, but I created a Witcher3.desktop in usr/share/applications which starts a script to launch DXVK's "The Witcher 3" and added the desktop shortcut into my standard linux Steam client library. I have no benchmarks to back it, but I could swear it's the smoothest performance I get from TW3 (aside from windows native, obviously). On top of that, my Steam controller gets fully supported, without falling off the window range (my experience with sc-controller from Kozec with high precision camera).

Are there tools related to graphics performances in the Steam Linux client? I didn't expect that.

I usually create .sh launcher for each game in Wine, so I can easily plug into logging and modify launching logic.

That's quite what I did. It's just that I launch it via a .desktop file so that it may be added to my steam library as a "non-steam games" for Steam Controller support. Is it possible to add a .sh file to the Steam Library? I must admit that I didn't verify that.

I haven't used Steam, but I suppose you can add any executable there (adding a .desktop launcher for that .sh script should be easy).

No problem with my .desktop file, it's already working. Thanks.

All I wanted to say is, for those that want controller support, adding the DXVK-Witcher3 to the Linux Steam client seems to be a working solution. There are probably other ways, but that's the best one I found, after trying different combinations.

By the way, the Steam version of Witcher 3 doesn't require Steam to run. It's just that you loose the cloud saves feature.