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A New The Witcher 2 Linux Beta Appears, Improved Performance

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Virtual Programming might just redeem themselves and their Eon technology yet. A new beta (today) for The Witcher 2 has been put onto Steam, and with it some performance fixes.

In my own personal testing the input lag is almost gone now, and in general it doesn't feel so sluggish anymore, but I cannot give an exact FPS comparison with the last beta as GLXOSD seems to make the game instant crash now. If you do manage to benchmark it at all be sure to let us know if the FPS is any better for you.

Looks like the game might be playable by the end of the year.

The new patch contains this:
- Optimised shader compilation to link OpenGL programs in waves, instead of one by one, which makes it possible to speed it up using threaded shader compilation on some cards.
- Drawing of fullscreen quads optimised
- Optimized out some memory barrier commands from OpenGL command queue
- OpenGL rendering never lags more than one frame behind commands given by D3D, which should reduce mouse lag.
- Added better reporting of missing extensions in game log, to make it more visible when the game is slow due to OpenGL not supporting various features.
- Undid the regression of fullscreen monitor selection support - this should now work correctly again
- OpenAL used for sound instead of SDL, so it should improve sound drop-outs

You can see the full info on the unofficial github page they are using to publish the info.

Check out The Witcher 2 on Steam if you dare to dip your toes. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Steam
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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STiAT Aug 11, 2014
I have the same issue as you do with GLXOSD, but I took the time to play through the starting missions and with my underpowered machine it seems to be a lot less lag.

Though, I do have occasional input lag which I can't reproduce, just "seems to happen" (but like once in 30 mins).

The FPS don't seem to have tremendously increased, but I did not experience the huge fps drops I had before which put me below 10 fps (I played to the scene where I got the highest FPS drops in the past - The Cauldron, Vergen), which seemed to be pretty smooth or a lot smoother than before. I'd guess for the inn it's the optimised shader compilation, since we do have a lot of different light sources in a dark environment there.

I'm still trying to get a benchmark out of it though...
Beamboom Aug 11, 2014
So I've finally gotten around to play this game, and I gotta say: For me this game runs just fine on "high spec" settings.
Of course, I don't know how the frame rate is compared to the windows version or other performance issues, all I can say is that it runs and plays just fine, looks good and feels like a working product - only thing is that it always crash when I exit the game. But that doesn't really matter.

I just wanted to mention it, since it so often is hinted at this game being unplayable/broken when this game is mentioned on this site. It may not apply to you.
STiAT Aug 11, 2014
@Beamboom well, it does play pretty acceptable if you do have a good graphics card. The 7xx versions of NVidia seem to be pretty okay, on lower cards you really get low fps.

I did play it through 3 times on Linux with a GTX 555 on low settings, so it was playable for me too. Though, in general it was way worse performance than I did have on Windows. I would not complain, but in Windows i played with 60+ fps on high graphics. In Linux with 10-22 on low, which can be a pain.

I think it's good they do improve the port / their product, and I think they can improve the eON toolkit for porting other games using TW2 as example and our feedback. I actually very much pay them credits for doing this, even though, they "use" us to improve their porting layer, if it will bring us more good playable games in future I will accept TW2 as their learning courve and PoC for their product.
STiAT Aug 11, 2014
PS: Maybe we can ask eON to give us a native FPS display to test it? Shouldn't be too much effort for them. Created issue #41 for it .. as I judge they take feedback serious, so maybe there is a chance.
GoCorinthians Aug 11, 2014
might be playable by the end of the year? lmao...im playing it maxsettings(ubber off) from beggining and now at dragon tower fight(dark mode) no problem at all, only after closing the game I get always a crash...apart that not problem at all.
Liam Dawe Aug 11, 2014
Quoting: GoCorinthiansmight be playable by the end of the year? lmao...im playing it maxsettings(ubber off) from beggining and now at dragon tower fight(dark mode) no problem at all, only after closing the game I get always a crash...apart that not problem at all.

You need to remember what works for you does not always for others. There was massive complaints about it when it came out, and that's the reason they keep doing big performance patches.
Xpander Aug 11, 2014
no framerate problems for me since launch... but it feels a bit better with the new beta indeed. probably the framerate is even higher...i can see that its using 2 cores now..goes up to 3 cores sometimes.. while it was using 1 core only when it was released for linux.
all maxed. bloom sh1t off and uber off 1080p is super smooth.

the one thing that was pain when the game launched for linux was the mouse jerkyness.
which seem to be fixed with the latest beta update. all is great now.. i dont see any crashes when i exit the game either.
GoCorinthians Aug 11, 2014
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GoCorinthiansmight be playable by the end of the year? lmao...im playing it maxsettings(ubber off) from beggining and now at dragon tower fight(dark mode) no problem at all, only after closing the game I get always a crash...apart that not problem at all.
You need to remember what works for you does not always for others. There was massive complaints about it when it came out, and that's the reason they keep doing big performance patches.

liam off-topic.

Mind Path to thalamus is avaiable in linux steam...no article until about it...maybe its out yesterday...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/296070/?l=portuguese

update: ...missing executable yet
Liam Dawe Aug 11, 2014
Quoting: GoCorinthians
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GoCorinthiansmight be playable by the end of the year? lmao...im playing it maxsettings(ubber off) from beggining and now at dragon tower fight(dark mode) no problem at all, only after closing the game I get always a crash...apart that not problem at all.
You need to remember what works for you does not always for others. There was massive complaints about it when it came out, and that's the reason they keep doing big performance patches.
liam off-topic.

Mind Path to thalamus is avaiable in linux steam...no article until about it...maybe its out yesterday...
You mean http://store.steampowered.com/app/296070/ which is windows only? Why would I write about that...?
STiAT Aug 11, 2014
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GoCorinthiansmight be playable by the end of the year? lmao...im playing it maxsettings(ubber off) from beggining and now at dragon tower fight(dark mode) no problem at all, only after closing the game I get always a crash...apart that not problem at all.
You need to remember what works for you does not always for others. There was massive complaints about it when it came out, and that's the reason they keep doing big performance patches.

And the results are good as I see it. They improve their product, and we get a more playable TW2. People sometimes forget that some of the PCs may be a few years old (as mine), which should run TW2 without problems (I bought this PC for TW2), but can't.

I do very well understand that some hardware may do not have real issues, but eON needs to push their performance if they want future ports, and TW2 is a good showcase. So it's a good deal for all of us. If they port later games which need more details and using more complex shaders, even newer hardware may would get overwhelmed soon, so it's good they do improve now rather than on later games.
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