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The online free to play combat sim War Thunder just had a huge new release, adding in an entirely new nation with China and plenty of upgrades elsewhere.

Some highlights include: Night Vision and Thermal Sight devices; Chinese air and ground forces; a map rotation filter; a new sound engine; three new locations; new ground vehicles, helicopters, naval vessels and aircraft for various nations, plus numerous fixes and updates for existing machines and game mechanics.

You can see their latest update video below:

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One of the biggest changes you might hear is the new sound engine, as they've done a big update to FMOD Studio from the old and unsupported Fmod Ex. This upgrade introduces increased positional accuracy of sound, reduced RAM consumption, a better sound mix so if there's an explosion near you the volume of other sound decrease if proportion to it plus lots of entirely new and improved sound effects made it in. You can read more about that specifically here.

They also added in Easy Anti-Cheat to work alongside their existing solutions. They said it would be turned on "soon after the update goes live". Currently then, it's likely that will block anyone playing it through Steam Play rather than the native Linux build. While the native version works fine for me (and continues to do so when tested today), others have reported it to work better for them with Steam Play. Hopefully CodeWeavers and Valve can get EAC supported in Wine/Steam Play soon but no update on that yet.

Find the highlights here, the full changelog here and you can download it on the official site or Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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dubigrasu Sep 12, 2019
I keep hearing about how bad native version runs, but I don't see it. It works and looks just fine for me, actually more than fine, quite good.
Probably looks better (?) with SteamPlay, but horrid, really?

Quotehorrid
/ˈhɒrɪd/
adjective
1.
causing horror.
"a horrid nightmare"
synonyms: horrifying, horrible, horrific, horrendous, dreadful, frightful, fearful, awful, terrible, shocking, appalling, hideous, grim, grisly, ghastly, harrowing, gruesome, heinous, vile, nightmarish, macabre, unspeakable, hair-raising, spine-chilling; loathsome, monstrous, abhorrent, detestable, hateful, execrable, abominable, atrocious, sickening, nauseating
"horrid apparitions"
TheRiddick Sep 12, 2019
OGL3.3 engine vs modern DX11 engine is horrid, yes. :)
Purple Library Guy Sep 12, 2019
Quoting: dubigrasuI keep hearing about how bad native version runs, but I don't see it. It works and looks just fine for me, actually more than fine, quite good.
Probably looks better (?) with SteamPlay, but horrid, really?
How bad the view from a not-perfectly-clean window is depends partly on whether you're looking through the window or at the window.
Schattenspiegel Sep 12, 2019
The game was released 7 years ago and now find it necessary to implement an anticheat function?....at the cost of playability for basically all Linux users on top?... Well given the sorry state of the Linux client I am not surprised - shame considering the Linux version allowed me to finally make the jump away from dual booting a few years back but they never fixed the clients issues and actually made it worse every update. Would love to play it again, but not in it's current state.


Last edited by Schattenspiegel on 12 September 2019 at 4:48 pm UTC
Termy Sep 12, 2019
Quoting: dubigrasuI keep hearing about how bad native version runs, but I don't see it. It works and looks just fine for me, actually more than fine, quite good.
Probably looks better (?) with SteamPlay, but horrid, really?

yeah, it looks OK for itself - but even then, the performance is laughable. And once you compare the graphical fidelity of native vs proton (on the same settings) and consider that proton runs on 3-4 times the FPS while looking considerably better - then yes, "horrid" is not the worst word to describe it... ;)

Also - it's been a while since i checked, but has the native version finally got cockpits implemented? Or are they still missing?


Last edited by Termy on 12 September 2019 at 4:54 pm UTC
dubigrasu Sep 12, 2019
Last time I checked WT native vs DX (not Proton) there were indeed differences when looking side by side, I remember higher quality vegetation in the DX version for example, and I think AA was lower quality for native.
That being said, the differences were not something striking. That was about the time they removed the DX9 support I believe, when there was an engine rework or something (likely last year).
Not sure if in the meantime the DX version was improved so drastically so that it would justify calling the native version as horrid. Or was the native version downgraded in image quality?
As for diff in performance, not sure how good runs in DX, but like I said, the native version runs already very well even at max settings.
I imagine though that someone needing 4K or higher refresh etc could benefit from running through Proton, if the difference in perf is so huge as stated, but again, the current state of the native version is far from being horrid.

Nevertheless, I'm even more curious now to see an actual comparison, both in quality and performance.
M@GOid Sep 12, 2019
It is my impression, or people complaining about performance on the native version are using Nvidia, while others saying its fine are on AMD?
Termy Sep 12, 2019
Quoting: M@GOidIt is my impression, or people complaining about performance on the native version are using Nvidia, while others saying its fine are on AMD?

nope, AMD here
dubigrasu Sep 13, 2019
Since I was curious to see the differences, I took a short look at WT running both through Proton and native, and found some interesting results.
First of all the performance through Proton is almost doubled. I haven't finished yet, but for example the Tank Battle benchmark running at Maximum settings shows the native client at 75 FPS average, while through Proton jumps to 139 FPS. On the good side, the native client is extremely smooth, while through Proton still jumps now and then.

That being said, and curiously enough, the native client actually looks better at the same settings in several places. For one, looks like the actual shadow settings are running heavier on the native client. So I would have to make sure both clients are running at the exact same settings (despite what the control panel says) before settling to some definitive results.
In terms of features, what is missing from the native client are the highest AA settings, it goes only up to HQ FXAA, while DX goes to HQ TAA (TAA is stealing only about 10 FPS).
I also see with the DX client some extra patches of grass/vegetation (not sure what they are) in some cases, they are visible in the screenshots below.
Other than that, I haven't found so far any differences between the two clients in terms of image quality.
I haven't though entered in a proper battle (due to EAC) and only checked the benchmark and went to some test driving.

Here is a comparison between the two (Native on the left, Proton on the right), where you can see the shadows partially missing from the DX client.
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=b095cc2e-d6a7-11e9-b9b8-0edaf8f81e27

If the above link doesn't work, maybe this one will:
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/D7YPGNNX#tab_1


Last edited by dubigrasu on 14 September 2019 at 12:09 pm UTC
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