Just a wish and I'm probably totally wrong (I know nothing about the logic behind these codenames), but...

A Steam Deck hardware refresh (storage? Screen? Battery?) including an upgrade to a usb4 port and an egpu docking station to go with it...

One can dream...

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I'm wondering what is the roadblock that Valve hit that stops them from releasing 3.5 (new feature? Kernel bug? Something else?)...

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They skipped the second "E". :grin:

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Just out of curiosity, what prevents Valve from upgrading Gamescope's integrated FSR with FSR2.2 or FSR3?

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There's currently somewhere around 92,000 games on Steam and so it's going to take a long time for Valve to check them all on Steam Deck but...

...how many of them are shovelwares that don't deserve to be reviewed? :grin:

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: ZlopezI never heard about Steam doing exclusives, it's on developer/distributor to decide where they want to sell. In case of Epic they are forcing the developers/distributors to not sell anywhere else.

Exactly. I've never head that Valve payed anyone for exclusive releases – they all seem to be entirely voluntary. Although I wouldn't call if forcing either.

So I don't think there is any reasonable basis to compare Steam and EGS exclusive releases.

Epic's problem is because they want to please to the devs only. They put as little efforts as possible to please the paying customers and try to force them on their crappy service with exclusives. Having worked in a big brand store, there was this moto: "The customer is king".

On the other hand, "Just on the other side of the Street", there is Valve that offers the best customer experience you can get and keeps on innovating and developing new services. As long as Epic won't try to mimic that and even do better, they are doomed to fail, just like EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard (they all came back to Steam, at some point). Thing is, if they ever decide to do someting similar, the 88/12 figure is not going to be sustainable anymore. Oups!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: jeisom

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: jeisomWhy are there comments about vendor lock-in. This should work just fine on an RDNA2 or newer gpus, if be a bit slower. RT is part of the vulkan standard afterall.

The problem is DLSS. I much prefer an open source standard like AMD FSR whenever I can:

"DLSS 3 is exclusive to Nvidia's “Ada Lovelace” RTX 40-series graphics cards"

Thus, vendor lock-in. Keep in mind that much of that new stuff about RTX is tied to DLSS 3.5.

The developers is welcome to implement both FSR and DLSS and DLSS isn’t required for the RT. It just looks better upscaled than with FSR. NVidia claims they don’t limit that. AMD on the other hand... DLSS3 only added frame generation. If NVidia implemented DLSS across platforms it would look alot like XESS. Looks good on 1 platform and so-so on everything else. Then they’d get shit for “degrading” it on competing platforms. Maybe FSR3 will look better than FSR2 and still work everywhere. We will see.

AMD FSR runs everywhere and is open source. No need for an ultra expensive RTX-4000 gpu. That's my point. DLSS 3 is limited to the tensor cores on these Nvidia GPU (vendor lock-in). Not AMD FSR that goes as far back as the RX 500 series and works with Intel and Nvidia too. I use it on my GTX980m laptop, atm. Yes, you may use RTX with AMD FSR 2 or DLSS 2 on other GPUs (including RTX 3000 and older), but performances will tank. All of what this article is about will be moot. Have you tried Portal RTX on such hardware? It sucks! Even on GeForce Now. So yeah, my point stand. Not going to pay for that. I have a founders edition of GeForce Now for 60$/year (I own an Nvidia Shield). I'm going to keep it and when Nvidia will update it's servers to RTX 4060 (actually RTX 3060), I'll benefit from it, on my Steam Deck.

Anyway, for my part, RTX is no game changer. It helps create awesome still frames in optimal conditions, but while driving, running and being shot at, in the likes of CP2077, these optimal conditions are rarely met. I seldom stop a game to wonder about the RTX thing... In fact I'm always wondering if there is that much of a difference. We were good without it. There was other ways of getting awesome lighting effects that didn't drain the GPUs that much. When all considered, not enough added value, imo.

I've always assumed the appeal of RTX was mostly on the developer side. Presumably it's simpler--rather than come up with various tricks to get the lighting to look good, probably even tweak them scene by scene, you just define the light sources and the surfaces (which you would be doing anyway I think) and it happens. Of course so far that's irrelevant because as far as I know there are no ray-tracing only games, and just adding an option can't make anything simpler.

The only 100% raytraced games (not even sure) I know of are Quake RTX and Portal RTX... 25 and 20 years old games on which they patched RTX. Like I said, performances are meeh, at best if you don't own an RTX 4000 gpu. No gpu can handle 100% RTX on any modern AA or AAA games. No wonder why they used old titles as RTX demos... Caviar on Kraft Dinner! Why not Nethack RTX?! :grin:

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I'm not sure it's going to have that much of an impact, anyway. Steam has become unavoidable. Even more with the Steam Deck's success.

On the other hand, devs already got 88%... So 100% is just 12% more of what was before... And you must trade your freedom for that by limiting yourself to the Epic Game Store, which is totally dwarfed by Steam. I'm not sure it would mean more money, not to release on Steam, on day-1. Better to take the 88% and release on both platforms, imo.

Personally, I don't care much. Never used EGS and will never use it. I put my money where my mouth is and with all that EGS crap (exclusivity deals) and because of the character, I despise Tim Sweeney and Epic Games. Not going to get a penny from me.

Edit: Anyway, the experience as proven me, time and again, that waiting for the end of the deal, when it releases on Steam, is an excellent idea. When it happens, the game his patched and is in a much better state... Sometimes with a discount on top of that! :wink:

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I smell desperation

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Quoting: jeisom

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: jeisomWhy are there comments about vendor lock-in. This should work just fine on an RDNA2 or newer gpus, if be a bit slower. RT is part of the vulkan standard afterall.

The problem is DLSS. I much prefer an open source standard like AMD FSR whenever I can:

"DLSS 3 is exclusive to Nvidia's “Ada Lovelace” RTX 40-series graphics cards"

Thus, vendor lock-in. Keep in mind that much of that new stuff about RTX is tied to DLSS 3.5.

The developers is welcome to implement both FSR and DLSS and DLSS isn’t required for the RT. It just looks better upscaled than with FSR. NVidia claims they don’t limit that. AMD on the other hand... DLSS3 only added frame generation. If NVidia implemented DLSS across platforms it would look alot like XESS. Looks good on 1 platform and so-so on everything else. Then they’d get shit for “degrading” it on competing platforms. Maybe FSR3 will look better than FSR2 and still work everywhere. We will see.

AMD FSR runs everywhere and is open source. No need for an ultra expensive RTX-4000 gpu. That's my point. DLSS 3 is limited to the tensor cores on these Nvidia GPU (vendor lock-in). Not AMD FSR that goes as far back as the RX 500 series and works with Intel and Nvidia too. I use it on my GTX980m laptop, atm. Yes, you may use RTX with AMD FSR 2 or DLSS 2 on other GPUs (including RTX 3000 and older), but performances will tank. All of what this article is about will be moot. Have you tried Portal RTX on such hardware? It sucks! Even on GeForce Now. So yeah, my point stand. Not going to pay for that. I have a founders edition of GeForce Now for 60$/year (I own an Nvidia Shield). I'm going to keep it and when Nvidia will update it's servers to RTX 4060 (actually RTX 3060), I'll benefit from it, on my Steam Deck.

Anyway, for my part, RTX is no game changer. It helps create awesome still frames in optimal conditions, but while driving, running and being shot at, in the likes of CP2077, these optimal conditions are rarely met. I seldom stop a game to wonder about the RTX thing... In fact I'm always wondering if there is that much of a difference. We were good without it. There was other ways of getting awesome lighting effects that didn't drain the GPUs that much. When all considered, not enough added value, imo.

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