Linux version holding Windows back, computer says...

I saw someone type in the livestream chat that the linux version was going to hold the windows version back when the dev's were discussing OpenGL, I direct those to valves linux blog > http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/

Computer says No.

Might be an idea for the Uber Dev's to work with the Valve linux team (once it's officially going to be on steam) and make it the second steam title for linux. That would boost post release sales a notch.

>Edited for clarity.

yeah since this game will be activatable on Steam, I see no reason not to have the Linux version on Steam.

But Steam for Linux will be out long before PA is :lol:

Im not sure when they'll release the linux binaries for Steam, but they'll certainly try to get more games over first.

PA is supposed to be mid next year release isn't it? I have no idea how they'll get it done that fast but I don't imagine steam would be much sooner if they can.

I'm pretty sure that guy meant holding back in terms of features, tessellation, per-object blurring, bokeh DoF, etc

I'm not aware of what OpenGL is capable of though.

Nobody said that in any way shape or form.

I did say that we won't be doing a DX11 version because there is no point since the game has to work on other platforms that are GL. Not using DX11 doesn't mean that windows is being held back at all.

If the graphics drivers on Linux don't generally support a feature present or way more optimized on Windows, you might want to keep the lowest common denominator of features, i.e. disable that feature in all the versions of the game, or at least disable the effect only on Linux.

That said, I think it would be safer to follow exactly what Valve is doing in Source Engine for Linux; they will set the baseline of features with optimal performance in all the major platforms, and any multiplatform engine will only need those.

It was said by someone in chat, I didn't mean that someone from Uber said it in any way shape or form

I should have said "saw" instead of "heard", my bad.

While I have nothing vs openGL (and I support the idea of multi-platform), I do have a question that just came to mind. What would the games performance be with OpenGL vs DirectX? Which would run the game more efficiently and require less GPU power?

The quality of the implentation will have the greater bearing on the ultimate performance than the underlying API used.

True. Drivers also play a part here as well. I expect GL drivers to get better over time especially with Valve pushing linux.

Well, as Valve will tell you, OpenGL's advantage is being open source, which means, rather than an API like DirectX that is just a magic box, you can actually dwell into the OpenGL system and discover exactly what it's doing. This is why Valve is able to crank more frames per second out with OpenGL on Linux than DirectX on Windows.

Furthermore, as Neutrino correctly notes; drivers are a big part of the equation. But the kernel is also a factor. Valve discovered that the open source kernel of Linux was much easier to work with than the closed sourced kernel of Windows, as it again becomes a magic box, where you are supposed to fully trust the API documentation.

Valve further discovered that you can suggest optimisations to both the Linux kernel and OpenGL quite easily. As for drivers, Valve worked with Intel, because they are the only ones releasing their graphics drivers as open source for Linux (they don't even have a closed sourced version). Unfortunately, Intel graphics cards are not very powerful.

The unfortunate reality is that ATI and NVIDIA are terrible at writing drivers, not just for Linux, but for Windows as well. They only focus on high benchmarks, rather than actually making the graphics cards work great during normal usage (and high performance usage as well).

I am going to make a point here, that is sure to get people angry, but Apple writes better versions of the ATI and NVIDIA drivers for OS X, because Apple focuses on the user experience, rather than ridiculous scores in benchmarks.

Apple develops the drivers for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs?

For those concerned about OpenGL's feature set in comparison with DirectX, for the most part, they are both able to support the same features. The main issue comes from how those features are implemented, and in the old days OpenGL required newer features to be added on as extensions in a way that wasn't as easy for developers to make it hardware independent. However, in the post OpenGL 2.1 world, the OpenGL spec has been updating much more frequently, and new features have been included in the overall spec in a manner that makes it much easier for developers to use.

The only other major hurdle is that the API methodology for OpenGL is different than that of DirectX, which is what many developers are used to, so they have a hard time adjusting at first. However, in the end most developers just write a wrapper around the graphics in their engine so that it doesn't matter which API is used.

So for those running Windows, not much is going to be sacrificed in terms of quality. For those running Mac might have a harder time, as the Mac OpenGL drivers have historically not performed as well. (Though this may have changed in the recent years, as I don't follow the Mac side of things that closely.)

For the Linux users, the main hurdle is the quality of the drivers. There are two types of drivers, the proprietary drivers and the open source drivers. The proprietary drivers tend to run quicker, but due to Linux's method of handling drivers, need to be reinstalled with each new driver version, kernel version, etc. Most importantly, once the manufacturer decides to stop supporting a card, it's essentially useless, as older drivers won't work with newer kernels.
The open source drivers tend to be a lot more friendly to the Linux system, but the graphics companies are usually reluctant to release their driver code for competitive reasons and to withhold proprietary code. However, they lack the issue of longevity, and due to their open nature, result in new Linux versions supporting very old cards.
NVidia only provides a proprietary driver, and it runs fairly well, but has all of the burdens of a proprietary driver. There's an open source driver being reverse engineered, but it has a ways to go. AMD's proprietary driver isn't as smooth as NVidia's, and the experience varies with the graphics card. However, their open source drivers have a lot more potential, as they release the driver API for open source developers on a regular basis. There's also rumor that their 8000 series of video cards will be entirely open from day 1, but information on this is not entirely certain.
As for Intel, all their drivers are open source, and while they can't do much in the way of graphics, they still run wonderfully smooth on any Linux system.

I probably went into way too much detail there, but for the most part, there should be no concern about Uber developing multi-platform graphics using OpenGL. The Windows experience is unlikely to be affected.

Well said sylvesterink, it reflects my experience with linux graphics drivers as well.

What I originally wanted to reflect with the link to the blog is that in developing the linux version they can actually use it to improve the Windows experience as well, as the Valve team did there.

With so most of it being open source on linux, developers can more easily track down bugs and slowdowns especially if they stem from an issue not within their own code.

Yes, for OS X. Apple is given the drivers by ATI and NVIDIA, and then develops them for OS X. They do the same with the Java client, for instance. The downside is that Apple drivers are not always up to date as the ATI and NVIDIA drivers may be, but they are 'reconfigured' to focus on the user experience.

It's a graphics card, isn't the whole point for them to operate at the best possible level?

Mike

Just FYI, OpenGL is not open source, it's an open standard. As such, it couldn't even be "open source", because OpenGL per se is just a specification.

Now, on the client level, some, but not all, implementations of OpenGL and drivers that are using them are open source.

OpenGL pretty tightly reglemented by the architecture review board, and while open means you can add any feature you want, it also means that to get your extension to be put into the next OpenGL standard, you need to crank a lot of gears. Conversely, you only need to rustle Microsoft's jimmies to get something into DirectX, which is still hard, but not as hard to get stuff into OpenGL. Somehow this has led people to believe that OpenGL is somehow "behind DirectX", technologically speaking. This is an oversimplification and might even be outright wrong.

Simply put, OpenGL is every bit as useful as DirectX 11, and even more versatile because you reach more platforms and systems. Most features, and then some, are present in OpenGL and its many extensions just as they are in DirectX.

Also, since we're not talking Battlefield 7 or Crysis 4 here, Planetary Annihilation will be far from hitting the limits of the OpenGL standard in terms of capabilities. Your shitty desktop graphics accelerator's performance is going to be the limiting factor, not the fact that OpenGL only supports revision 12 of some obscure deferred inverse radiosity parallax occlusion tessellation shader extension, whereas DirectX is already at rev 14.

They do and they are nowhere near being better than the vendor drivers. Usually graphics performance is higher on Windows via boot camp than in OSX. I can't remember precisely what it was but the X3100 has hardware support for certain features that are software only on OSX.

The only case in which I would think it true that Linux is holding Windows back, would be if Windows were the lead development platform due to the dev's being comfortable with it, and unfamiliarity with linux slowing down the process of making sure Windows code runs on Linux.

But then any dev house worth their salt would have a build server that runs nightly as well as after every commit, for every platform, meaning they can quickly see which commit broke the build for which platform, and fix it. Of course, making sure it actually works as well as just compiles is a different story!

Ahahaha, you'd think so, but apparently it's not the case. For manufactures, it is about scoring high in benchmarks, rather than - you know - make something that works on all levels. It seems to me, that once ATI or NVIDIA have reached high benchmarks, they neglect the rest of the drivers.

Yes, but you are missing the point, it is not about performance, it is about the regular user interface (not games) being responsive and quick rather than games being so. That's the focus of Apple's alterations, which means they underperform in benchmarks, but give users an overall better user experience. At least, that is their goal.