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War Thunder, the massive online battle game from Gaijin Entertainment just today released the big 1.89 "Imperial Navy" update. It's quite a big one too!

It brings in 24 new Japanese naval units, along with the USSR and Great Britain each also seeing one new naval unit. There's also a new helicopter, a bunch of new ground forces, two new locations, new clouds for higher graphical settings, a new "World War" historical battle game mode, Romanian language support and tons more.

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I've just recently got back into War Thunder and while I find it a little pushy on the in-game shop and the UI is pretty messy, the actual gameplay they provide free really is damn fun. With this large update, I'm excited to jump back in and play some more. The tank battles especially are exciting and I love the way you see how you got taken out, as it shows the shells hitting your vehicle taking out your crew.

Since it's not something I play too often, I forgot just how good some of the scenery can be:

The Linux version can be a little twitchy though, I've seen a number of distorted textures on the sides of some mountain/hill areas and the initial big update did have a few crashes, although it seems to have had another smaller update since and now it's working great. Performance seems reasonable too, mostly sitting well above 60FPS and it feels nice and smooth on high settings.

You can find it free on Steam or the official site.

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mylka May 29, 2019
too bad they dont care about linux and vulkan
i havent played it in months, because the game freezed my pc and the wt forum isnt very promising
Tuxee May 29, 2019
War Thunder under Vulkan did have some serious issues (e.g. it constantly crashed the whole machine when switching to a flying boat in the hanger). However, with NVidia 430.14 and the most recent updates it ran stable for the last couple of days.
Termy May 29, 2019
I still get a blackscreen with vulkan...it's really a shame how they neglect the linux-client.
At least it runs with proton ootb nowadays, 4x the performance with better graphics than the openGL-Linux-client...

Other than that: everybody that hasn't tried it yet should - one of my most played games ^^
Tuxee May 29, 2019
Interesting. What driver version? As far as performance goes: I have pretty much everything maxed out and reach around 60fps on 2560x1440 both with Vulkan and OpenGL. However, with Vulkan I get TAA, Tesselation, gunner cockpits and less non-critical bugs (OpenGL shows square shadows and smoke looks rather weird). One thing with Vulkan though is a rather sluggish mouse movement in UI. Still on my machine their Vulkan implementation looks quite "late-beta", dunno why they are not switching to this API for all their platforms.

For reference:
The "eastern front" benchmark gives avg 98fps, min 61fps, rating 9755, "tank battle" yields 75/60/4685.
(And my nick in the game is the same as here.)
Thormack May 29, 2019
I am playing with PROTON.

Game runs really nice.
Much better FPS than Linux port.
mylka May 29, 2019
Quoting: ThormackI am playing with PROTON.

Game runs really nice.
Much better FPS than Linux port.

have you tried switching the windows version to vulkan?
at least less CPU usage... maybe better FPS
Termy May 30, 2019
Quoting: mylkahave you tried switching the windows version to vulkan?
at least less CPU usage... maybe better FPS

THANK YOU for that idea - increased my performance even more (i only have a i5 3550 with a rx580)

Quoting: TuxeeInteresting. What driver version? As far as performance goes: I have pretty much everything maxed out and reach around 60fps on 2560x1440 both with Vulkan and OpenGL. However, with Vulkan I get TAA, Tesselation, gunner cockpits and less non-critical bugs (OpenGL shows square shadows and smoke looks rather weird). One thing with Vulkan though is a rather sluggish mouse movement in UI. Still on my machine their Vulkan implementation looks quite "late-beta", dunno why they are not switching to this API for all their platforms.

For reference:
The "eastern front" benchmark gives avg 98fps, min 61fps, rating 9755, "tank battle" yields 75/60/4685.
(And my nick in the game is the same as here.)

AMDGPU - but on KDE. And i don't want to tinker around with compiz to get the game running...

i got around 20fps in naval battles on lowest settings with the linux-client, around 50-60 fps with highest settings via proton+dx11 and now around 80-90fps with highest settings via proton+vulkan (steam launch options "%command% -forcestart -driver:vulkan")...all on 1440p
Cecco_d_Ascoli May 30, 2019
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[quote=Termy][quote=mylka]

Same here. Due to massive lags and freezes with the linux-client after update 1.89 I today first tried out running it through Steam and Proton and then - following your advice - forced the use of Vulkan.
Thus I experienced quite an impressive leap in fps and(!) now possible graphics settings - even on my elderly system.

Much obliged, chaps!


Last edited by Cecco_d_Ascoli on 30 May 2019 at 5:36 pm UTC
mylka May 30, 2019
[quote=Cecco_d_Ascoli]
Quoting: Termy
Quoting: mylkaSame here. Due to massive lags and freezes with the linux-client after update 1.89 I today first tried out running it through Steam and Proton and then - following your advice - forced the use of Vulkan.
Thus I experienced quite an impressive leap in fps and(!) now possible graphics settings - even on my elderly system.

Much obliged, chaps!

Quoting: mylkahave you tried switching the windows version to vulkan?
at least less CPU usage... maybe better FPS

THANK YOU for that idea - increased my performance even more (i only have a i5 3550 with a rx580)

so the windows version works with VULKAN without any promlems?
too bad they dont put any effort in the linux client

i installed it on an NTFS drive, because i dont have any space left on my linux drive, but it wont start. i cant try it til i finished other games
Cecco_d_Ascoli May 30, 2019
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[quote=mylka][quote=Cecco_d_Ascoli][quote=Termy][quote=mylka]

Well, via Proton it does...
(can't say how things look like on under Windows as OS though)
... and I am still darned surprised how well it turned out, the fps and visual improvement is just staggering compared to what I got used to under the Linux-native version.

Would have preferred a Linux-native Vulkan implementation very much myself but being pragmatic and rather playing than waiting I'm gonna stick to the Protonised-Windows-Vulkan-version for now, just look at that sunset and those gorgeous flames!
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