Quoting: GuestHaha, well, I was hoping for a fun racing game but now I know this won’t be it. Probably just another incredibly hard and unfun simulation like Grid Autosport.

It all comes down to taste, of course, but I think DR is one of the funnest racing games I've played in a good long while.

Yeah, there's a learning curve to it, and yeah, you're gonna wreck the hell out of your car and lose some races starting out, but once you get the feel for it, it makes you feel like a tire shredding MO-CHINE!

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Quoting: Guest:(((

Hey, comeon now. Turn that frown upside down!

...like I did in this video.

View video on youtube.com

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SQUEEEAAALLLLLL! :D :D :D

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Quoting: Mountain ManI agree, although I think people make a much bigger deal about benchmarks than is warranted. In the majority of cases, Linux easily gets above the 60FPS threshhold, so most people wouldn't even notice that it theoretically lags behind Windows in terms of performance. What it does, though, is deny Linux gamers the coveted "My OS is better than your OS" bragging rights which a lot of people irrationally value.

This is one area where Linux could easily improve.

I kinda think it's ridiculous myself. I've got a couple of friends who spend, like, beaucoup bucks on THA RIGZ just to play games like World of Warcraft that would run just as well on a machine that costs a quarter as much. Yeah, that 315 FPS ingame looks impressive, but anything above 60 is just there for bragging rights.

But at the same time, they are an important part of the gaming market, which means they do have a lot of sway. As long as Linux doesn't give them the FPS Windows does, they'll never take to it, which means they won't extol its virtues, and bring their hangers-on into the Linux scene.

What you describe is a "Your mileage will vary" scenario.

...But getting back to your problem, that just sounds like you have something misconfigured on your system which can happen in Windows easily enough.

What? Sorry, but Windows has plenty of odd weirdo issues. I've encountered many of them myself, either troubleshooting my own problems or ones my wife has encountered, and I recently gave up on Windows entirely when a Windows Update got stuck in an endless loop that a Google search informed me is a rather common problem without an easy solution. So I blew away my Windows partition and never looked back. Linux is, in fact, much easier to troubleshoot and repair than Windows or OSX because everything is open. You're not stuck trying to navigate a locked down environment with limited access to the underlying system.

...don't get me started on Windows Update. I'm still repressing bad memories here.

Add "take with a grain of salt" to that. I will say that a lot of this probably comes down to the fact that I don't yet understand Linux nearly as well as I do Windows. Hell, I'm still at the point where I'm only sortakinda sure where all my installed programs go in the maze of folders that makes up the Linux directory structure.

With Windows, if I see any problems at all, I know exactly where to gut punch to get it to behave. I've spent so much time smacking it around, that it's like second nature to me. Yeah, this all comes down to comfort and familiarity, which is hardly the fault of Linux, but it is a hard thing to break out of. You have to be willing to learn something new, and to be willing to do it, you have to have a compelling reason to drive you on to do so. A carrot to attract people with, so to speak. Something which, for the moment anyway, Linux doesn't have for the average gamer. A generally more stable, secure, and free OS, while nice, isn't enough by itself.

I think this would be the best way I'd sum Linux in its current state. From a technical perspective, it has a lot of nice things going for it. Gamewise, it's getting better. Once performance starts getting more on par with Windows, it'll have even more going for it. But it doesn't have that quote unquote killer app for it yet. A good number of will wonder why they should learn something new just to play what they can already play now with what's right in front of them?

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Okay, this is my personal opinion on what needs to happen for Linux/SteamOS to take off.

1. Performance. This is the big one. As long as Linux lags behind windows on the performance front, you're never going to see a huge upswing in adoption. The hardcore gaming crowd loves their benchmarks. They want something to show off just how fast and spiffy swift their new $2500 tower 'o super power is, and they'll flock to the OS that gives them the most bang.

Beyond Vulkan, which has TONS of promise, and looks to be able to at least match DX12 on the performance front in an all-things-equal situation, Linux needs better drivers. Valve needs to harass AMD and Nvidia to better optimize what they're offering if they want to eek out a cut of the market.

2. Ease of use and reliability. From my experiences, Linux itself is generally lighter on its feet and more stable than even the already pretty stable and light on its feet Windows 10 (well, besides those random spikes of permanent 100% memory usage, but that's another story for another forum).

The software that runs on the OS is another story entirely, especially the games.

Case in point, I bought Firewatch earlier this week. Awesome game. Ended up playing it in Windows. When I first fired it up, my Steam controller wouldn't work. I went to grab a premade profile that emulated a kb/m setup, because the game WOULD NOT see the controller itself, despite the fact it has support for it built right in. But to do that, I had to launch into Big Picture mode, because Steam on Linux won't bring up the controller overlay when you hit the Steam button when you're on the desktop. Then I got in the game itself, and saw red sparkly lights everywhere a'la XCOM 2. First I updated my drivers. Still there. Then I took a dive into the Nvidia control panel, played around with some settings and toggles, which solved that issue...

...but then had problems with the lighting and shadows ingame. The game was unplayable.

I just gave up, bowed my head in defeat, and booted into Windows. Everything worked perfectly there. Didn't have a single problem.

Yeah, you could lay the blame at the feet of the developers, especially when you consider that there are more complicated games out there, in terms of both graphics and gameplay, that run, to the naked eye, as well in Linux as they do in Windows. Divinity and Alien Isolation come to mind. But at the same time, your average gamer geek won't really care. They'll want it to work, and they'll use the OS where it's most likely to work. Since any newcomers to the Linux scene will likely be dual booting to test the waters, they'll inevitably end up spending more time in Windows at best, give up on Linux entirely at worst.

3. Like the guy in the interview said, games need to launch simultaneously to have a chance to rack up some sales. This is for much the same reason why games need to work well right out of the box. Most people are going to be dual booting, and gamers, being an impatient bunch, will play it wherever it's readily available. A release two months later will still sell to the Linux exclusive crowd, but everyone else will have already played it.

4. Linux is still a little rough around the edges. While things have improved GREATLY over the years, it can still occasionally be a chore to use. You'll see the odd weirdo issue pop up that requires a diving into Google for an hour or two to figure out. Odd weirdo issues that has absolutely no parallel in Windows, mind. While I can't say that the Windows scene is always a silky smooth experience 24/7, it does have one big advantage over Linux.

...I know Windows well. So do a lot of other people. Linux, on the other hand, is still something of a new and different thing to me. As it will be to a lot of other people.

It's early days yet, and things are hardly doom and gloom. There's enough here to get me interested, and I'm sure not the only one who's interest in piqued. But some strides have to be made before it can be considered a true competitor to the MS juggernaut.

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Geez. 2017? I'll be old by then...

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Quoting: ZekThePenguinThere are little to no actual ruins or tombs to explore at Stonehenge, so I'd lean more toward Far Cry Primal than Tomb Raider.

There are little to no actual ruins or tombs to explore in the new Tomb Raider, so it could still be Tomb Raider.

Oh yes. I went there.

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Quoting: tuubiTry Settings -> In-Game. Needs the Steam Overlay to work. It's just a simple FPS display though.

For those rare moments when I feel like eyeball-benchmarking something, that's all I need. Thanks. :D

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Quoting: wojtek88Thanks @tuubi, it seems that's it. I gave it a try and I must say it is a nice way to do a benchmark, but for most cases Steam in-game fps counter does the job (without temperature of course).

I didn't know Steam had a built in FPS counter. Where's it at?

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Quoting: Mountain ManI've heard the "engine tweaks" were of questionable value anyway.

It got rid of 99% of the stuttering for me on Linux.

But to get on topic, once I got the patch, I reverted my .ini file to its original state, jacked every setting up to its absolute max, and jumped into the game. The stuttering is GONE, but missions seem to be capped at 30 FPS. It never goes above it, never goes below, save for the occasional I-Can't-Believe-I'm-Mentioning-This dip to 29.5 or so. While I'd like to see the framerate a little higher, it's perfectly playable.

Though the stuttering still shows up in the Avenger. It's not nearly as bad as it was, but it's there. Framerate floats around 17-20 FPS, as well.

Oh, and the red sparkly tint in the shadows [External Link] is still around.

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