Quoting: voyageurAlso, this reminds again of how much Laminar Research continues improving a release with new features, like adding Vulkan support more than 3 years after initial 11 release

As a huge XP fan, I'm of very mixed mind regarding Laminar Research. While they've spent over a decade refining their product, one that is widely admired for having the best flight engine, and while they're always doing upgrades, XP has some serious issues they've taken their time addressing. It is a decade plus old code base that will suck up every drop of memory and manages it poorly, runs on only one CPU core, and barely utilizes the GPU. More than one flight sim fan has spent a lot upgrading their GPU only to see their XP FPS barely budge. One XP fan on Reddit calls its a "frame rate simulator" :) and I've had some airport approaches where I was much more nervous about watching the FPS counter than the dynamics of the landing...

And OOTB XP really is lacking in some areas. The sim can rock once you've loaded up on 6-10 mods and ortho (with a big performance penalty). The weather, autogen, the scenery draw distance, ATC, AI traffic, etc all need serious upgrades. And Vulcan is only going to get us 10% FPS boost (on NVIDIA) from what we already get, again because it doesn't really use the GPU. So my 25 FPS flying in NYC goes up to... 27? I actually wonder if, with Vulcan, XP might become one of those titles that runs better with Proton than with native. And LR, BTW, as a Mac based developer, HAD to go to Vulcan and Metal, since OpenGL is going away on the Mac as a supported platform.

I'm glad MS is coming out with their new sim as I think it'll give LR a real kick in their complacency.

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Quoting: jarhead_h

Quoting: iiariTried recently to get into HL2 (missed the entire HL series when they came out, as that was a personally and educationally intense period of my life when I had zero time to game). I can't say I've loved it. Narrative development is slow, and I'm tiring of the formula where each "level" is basically a series of escape rooms of puzzles connected by in-game cut scenes. I imagine the first HL plays out very similarly?

You have no idea how blown away we all were by that formula in 1998. It was brand new, never been done before. Every other game before that boiled down to "kill everything, find key, repeat".

No, I totally get the historical significance of the game. I'd welcome, though, a "kill everything, find key, repeat" level to shake things up a bit :). I'm not sure I would have enjoyed this formula even in 1998...

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Tried recently to get into HL2 (missed the entire HL series when they came out, as that was a personally and educationally intense period of my life when I had zero time to game). I can't say I've loved it. Narrative development is slow, and I'm tiring of the formula where each "level" is basically a series of escape rooms of puzzles connected by in-game cut scenes. I imagine the first HL plays out very similarly?

On the upside, the game is very "portable" as it's so light on resources that it can be run smoothly even on integrated Intel GPUs on, say, travel or work laptops, not that I would ever do such things.... It still looks great, though...

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Quoting: CorbenEAC Support for Proton is so badly needed. Or vice versa... EAC support for Linux (and easy for devs to implement) needed.

I'm not a dev, but everything I've read suggests this is not an easy process but will likely come eventually, it'll just be slower than everyone wants

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Quoting: YoRHa-2BI think people are just blowing what I said on Github (admittedly in frustration) WAY out of proportion...

People blowing things out of proportion? On the Internet?? :D

Whatever phase of development you and your creation are in, thank you so much for DXVK, which brought gaming on Linux to a place many of us never imagined as being possible, and always let us know if you open a Patreon or something similar to assist your work .

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Hummmm, will look into this one for sure...

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Has there been a sim game of sim games? Must.Sim.All.The.Things!

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Quoting: 14I must needs a Battlefield conquest type of game on Linux!

This definitely scratches that itch. Also, of course, in Proton, some Battlefield games work quite well with Proton, as does the excellent Angels Fall First (basically, Battlefront II in a sci-fi setting).

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Truly the best and worst of times for Linux gaming to be sure... I have to say, I feel for developers. It's a very uncertain time and very hard to know where to put resources. I heard a Qualcomm rep say that mobile gaming revenue has surpassed all other gaming combined (including PC and console). You have to decide if you're going to do Epic, or Origin, or go in on streaming with Stadia or any of the other streamers waiting in the wings (XBox, Valve, NVIDA, etc). Costs keep going up. Psychiatrists are calling excessive playing a disorder.... There's an increasing glut of games and it's hard to get noticed...

Those are big decisions with a lot of cash on the line. It almost makes the decision of whether to support Linux or Mac seem quaint and homey by comparison. Ah, the good ol' simpler days!

Our future, as someone put it waaay back on page 1, is to back streaming and Proton solutions which allow us to play everything regardless of OS. Linux is a platform to run software, period. If that platform runs games which run elsewhere, I'm not bothered. Linux is too small for dedicated efforts, the Mac is small for dedicated efforts, and hell, it seems like Windows is too small for dedicated efforts, as it feels like everything needs a console and Switch edition these days, if not mobile too (including games like XPlane and Eve Online!).

Speaking of Sandstorm, as someone pointed out, it's been a rough launch on Windows for them as well. This one has had issues...

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Impressed by the continuous improvement of this game. I still fire it up from time to time and always find it challenging and enjoyable. I still feel there's a bit too much map transit in the game, but it's still always a fun one...

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