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Wine Staging 2.0 available, also new on the state of Vulkan, DX11 and more

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The Wine Staging team has release their 2.0 release and they have also written up a blog post detailing work on Vulkan, DX11 and more. Seems a number of DX11 games now work!

For those that don't know, Wine Staging is the test-bed for future features that will go directly into normal Wine releases.

First up, here's whats in Wine Staging 2.0:
- Support for various new windowscodecs image formats.
- Improved emulation of deferred rendering contexts.
- Fixes for semi-transparent layered windows.
- Various smaller bug fixes.

In their blog post about Vulkan, DX11 and other stuff, the Wine Staging team noted that the Wine Staging project is not affected by feature freezes when new stable Wine releases are being done, but they did put in some extra effort into their own release candidates this time around.

They also mention that CSMT was not designed for DX11 and it's not a good idea to enable it for games using it.

They list a few games on the newer APIs which should work in Wine Staging:
- DOOM (2016) (Vulkan), should work fine
- Hitman: Absolution (DX11), needed a small patch which is now in Wine Staging 2.0, but it works (some graphical options don't work)
- UNIGINE: Heaven (DX11), also needed some small fixes to work that is in the Wine Staging 2.0 release
- Tomb Raider (2013) (DX11 mode), works like Hitman: Absolution
- Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (DX11), needed deferred contexts which was added during release candidate testing
- Need For Speed Most Wanted (2012), works but has performance problems
- Steam, Uplay, Origin and GOG Galaxy should all now work

That's an impressive list of things that now work or work with some issues. Hopefully it won't take too long for the patches in Wine Staging to get cleaned up, reviewed and entered into Wine itself.

See their news here for the rest. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Wine
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27 comments
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Shmerl Jan 26, 2017
Quoting: nattydread
Quoting: ajgpI would be happy enough if Witcher 3 could be made to work in Wine, I have given up expecting it to be ported now but having played W1 (on windows and again in wine) and W2(Native) I really want to know how the whole thing ends.

Why not just pick up a cheap ps4 and play it on that?
That's what I did, I couldn't wait and quite honestly it is the best game I have ever played.

Many reasons. For instance, boycotting DRM and not paying anything to Sony which proliferates it and as well sabotages adoption of open graphics APIs like Vulkan. Paying them money helps them doing the nasty stuff. Also don't forget things like this.

I'm also waiting for the Witcher 3 to become playable in Wine. But PS4? No, thanks.


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 January 2017 at 4:16 pm UTC
nattydread Jan 26, 2017
I admire your dedication!
But I am a gamer at heart and if it means choosing Sony over microsoft to play the best games then I'm afraid I am guilty!
Cmdr_Iras Jan 26, 2017
Quoting: nattydread
Quoting: ajgpI would be happy enough if Witcher 3 could be made to work in Wine, I have given up expecting it to be ported now but having played W1 (on windows and again in wine) and W2(Native) I really want to know how the whole thing ends.

Why not just pick up a cheap ps4 and play it on that?
That's what I did, I couldn't wait and quite honestly it is the best game I have ever played.

2 reasons really, 1. I cant justify the cost of a console I would barely use just for one game. ans 2. The biggie I already own it on PC; I bought it at release when I still did the odd bit of dual booting but by the time I finished playing whatever it was I was playing before I planned on W3 I had given up on dual booting so W3 sits in my library waiting for a time when it will be playable on linux, even if that is in 2 years time (i hope not).

If it by some miracle comes to Linux natively before wine matures to the point of making it playable I will pick up a second copy just to support Linux of course.
Shmerl Jan 26, 2017
For the reference. I put the timeline of TW3 Linux port misadventures here on the wiki.


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 January 2017 at 4:54 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Jan 26, 2017
I didn't realize even experimental Wine was even very near the point of actually allowing any DX11 or Vulkan games to run. Is it just me or has Wine been moving very fast lately?
Like really, for years it felt like Wine was noodling along making tiny incremental improvements but basically pretty hit or miss, only usable with increasingly outdated stuff, and any new version seemed as likely to break something that worked as to make something work that hadn't. It felt like it had turned into one of those stagnating back-burner projects with just a few people keeping it alive. But for the last, I dunno, few months or a year, it feels like it's been just charging ahead.
I wonder if that's a real thing or if it's just that they've been patiently laying groundwork all this time which we are only now suddenly seeing the fruits of?
Shmerl Jan 26, 2017
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI didn't realize even experimental Wine was even very near the point of actually allowing any DX11 or Vulkan games to run. Is it just me or has Wine been moving very fast lately?

Not any, and I wouldn't call it fast, but it has been moving. They for sure were working on things gradually, and laid a lot of DX11 ground work already, but lot's of DX11 games are still unplayable. I'd say it will be still a while, until it will reach the situation of DX9, when most games already work, unless Wine developers will focus on DX11 specifically as a major feature they want to implement in the fixed period of time. So far they didn't do it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 January 2017 at 5:36 pm UTC
Incandescent Jan 26, 2017
Quoting: STiAT
Quoting: soulsourcewine-gaming-nine should work with all graphics drivers, but in order to enable the Gallium Nine feature, you'll need to run a Gallium3D driver (AMD or nVidia open source drivers).
Also, I'd suggest not to waste time with AMD GPU-Pro drivers, as they in general don't have better performance than the open source drivers (except for a few games, Deus Ex: MD being the only one that comes to my mind) and are (except for *buntu) a pain to install.

So you'd recommend me to go with the radeonsi driver when testing with the RX460? That should be pretty straight forward then ...

The RadeonSi driver is for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 cards (7000 series and certain R9 cards) until the AMDGPU (non-Pro version) driver is made fully compatible with them. Your RX 460 is GCN 1.3, which uses the open-source AMDGPU driver by default, and is fully compatible with Gallium-Nine.

Since you're using Manjaro, you should be automatically receiving the latest versions of AMDGPU and Mesa, so you shouldn't have to do anything. :)
Shmerl Jan 26, 2017
Quoting: IncandescentThe RadeonSi driver is for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 cards (7000 series and certain R9 cards) until the AMDGPU (non-Pro version) driver is made fully compatible with them. Your RX 460 is GCN 1.3, which uses the open-source AMDGPU driver by default, and is fully compatible with Gallium-Nine.

That sounded somewhat confusing. Radeonsi works with all recent AMD cards including RX 460. I.e. you get combination amdgpu + radeonsi. Si while stands for "Southern Islands" isn't limited to the early GCN architecture. They just didn't change the name, because it's the same OpenGL implementation for later GCN too.


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 January 2017 at 5:44 pm UTC
DasCapschen Jan 26, 2017
Ooh, if Uplay works I'll have a go at Rainbow Six Siege :O
Should this work in wine, I'll never have to boot windows again
oldrocker99 Jan 26, 2017
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+ for The Witcher 3. No other game would mean more to me to be able to play; I've been reading the novels (HIGHLY recommended, and you can find fan translations online) and ache to play Geralt (and Siri) in an open world...
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