Quoting: raonlinuxHere there is nothing new even you don't need to own a steam machine we the majority tested in our own, We knew the performance was less of course, what do u expect when you use some translation or wrapper from directx to openl more cpu more gpu and less performance of course is different is already native.
The only things that those guy just did a benchmark without understand how everything works. Just make oh check the results but you need to explain how this result were affected, and how it works.
All the games that have been release the majority were designed to been use with directx.

This is exactly what I mean. There's no attempt by these sites to look at things objectively or put the data into its proper context. It just comes across as cheerleading for Microsoft.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: lvlark

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: subEven worse, it feels like they want to prove that Steam Machines with SteamOS are crap. And they're doing a damn fine job at this.

Yes, there does seem to be a pattern in the broader gaming press of protecting Windows from the unsavory horde of competition, from gleeful reports about Steam Survey results to disparaging comments about the lack of games compared to Windows to the recent articles about performance disparity. We can't deny the facts, of course, but so many of these articles seem to be written with a condescending smirk and a wink to the Microsoft faithful, and that really bothers me. It's like they're trying to kill SteamOS before it even has a chance.

Except that I don't really think it's about protecting Windows, or holding a particular grudge against SteamOS, but rather a closedmindedness, and maybe a preconception about Linux being less professional or something?

Now, I need only blink in the direction of scientific communities to debunk that preconception, but most people have a tendency to protect their preconceptions and grope at things that affirm them.

We're essentially saying the same thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: subEven worse, it feels like they want to prove that Steam Machines with SteamOS are crap. And they're doing a damn fine job at this.

Yes, there does seem to be a pattern in the broader gaming press of protecting Windows from the unsavory horde of competition, from gleeful reports about Steam Survey results to disparaging comments about the lack of games compared to Windows to the recent articles about performance disparity. We can't deny the facts, of course, but so many of these articles seem to be written with a condescending smirk and a wink to the Microsoft faithful, and that really bothers me. It's like they're trying to kill SteamOS before it even has a chance.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: NyamiouSeriously WTF? Why do they benchmark with a GTX 660 and a dual core processor at a resolutions of 2560x1600 and 1792x1120? Doesn't that look like they tested all combinations and choose the one that was worst for SteamOS. They have a GTX 980 Ti benchmark PC (<a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/building-the-ultimate-x99-gaming-and-benchmarking-pc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" style="cursor:help;display:inline !important;">http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/building-the-ultimate-x99-gaming-and-benchmarking-pc/</a>) why didn't they use this one?

Also, the processor Intel Pentium G3220 have integrated graphics and SteamOS does not support multiple GPUs, if it's active that would explain the bad performances.

Also there isn't a 4.1.0-0 version of SteamOS, and the NVidia drivers 358.91 are not available right now on SteamOS, so this test could have been made ages ago because we have no information whatsoever on when it was made and on which version of SteamOS.

Also I would add that the guy who wrote this is not clean at all, he have been part of a scandal involving gaming journalists of big gaming sites colluding together on how to shape the opinion by choosing what to cover and how to cover it in a private mailing list : <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" style="cursor:help;display:inline !important;">http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite/</a> I should add that the guy that made the Polygon article is also part of this.

All valid points.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Right now most ports run worse on Linux, a lot of it is down to OpenGL...

This is false. Games that are designed to be cross platform from the beginning run just as well on Linux as they do on Windows. For example, the performance between the Linux, OSX, and Windows version of X-Plane 10 is identical across all platforms. Victor Vran is another great example that has no significant performance difference between platforms. Not to mention all the Source Engine games.

The real problem is that porting from DirectX to OpenGL introduces performance loss because of how each system handles certain things, and there's not a lot porters can do about it without rewriting a game's graphics engine from scratch, which really isn't a viable solution.

The sooner we can get more developers thinking cross platform from day one, the sooner the performance gap between Linux and Windows will shrink.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even with the reduced performance, performance in Linux is still more than acceptable and won't negatively affect anybody's gaming experience. That's the problem with looking at benchmark numbers, because you'll see Windows getting 200FPS and Linux getting 100FPS, and everybody says, "Oh my gosh! Linux has 50% of the performance of Windows!" but does it really matter when everybody locks their refresh rate to 60Hz?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm still working my way through Wasteland 2 (restarted when the Director's Cut came out), and I have Pillars of Eternity to finish, so I really don't have time for another meaty RPG at the moment.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

"...the biggest part is to transition the engine from DX9 to OpenGL, and then changing from WinAPI to Linux/MacAPI..."

When will developers learn to make their software crossplatform from the start? Then they wouldn't have to deal with these kinds of problems.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The only game I've had trouble with is Euro Truck Simulator 2. It doesn't recognize the Steam Controller as a gamepad.

All other games work beautifully. I even came up with a comfortable control scheme for Wasteland 2: The Director's Cut. Even though it now has native gamepad support, I prefer to play it with the Steam Controller substituting for a mouse and keyboard.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ricki42

Instead of the thumb-stick being precise in clicking through items in Steam Big Picture mode it will suddenly act like it’s slipping on ice and skip over items really quickly. It will start doing double button presses on a single press, and just generally act weirdly. It has never happened during actual gameplay, only when interacting with Steam Big Picture mode. Once it starts acting up though, it won’t use the configs set for games, and then it becomes a bigger issue. It’s not a signal issue either, as it happens when wired. It’s like it suddenly forgets all the configs set for it, or something like that.

I've had this happen, mostly starting a week ago or so (at least, I don't remember the double button presses prior to the latest firmware update). I thought I was just being incredibly clumsy with the stick and the button presses, so I'm kind of glad you have the issue too and it's a bug and not me. Have you found a reliable way to reset it to working condition?

When this happens, you need to exit Steam completely and then restart it. To avoid triggering the issue, see my previous post.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

From time to time, the controller will suddenly lose the will to work properly. I always know exactly when too. Instead of the thumb-stick being precise in clicking through items in Steam Big Picture mode it will suddenly act like it’s slipping on ice and skip over items really quickly. It will start doing double button presses on a single press, and just generally act weirdly. It has never happened during actual gameplay, only when interacting with Steam Big Picture mode. Once it starts acting up though, it won’t use the configs set for games, and then it becomes a bigger issue.

This seems to happen when you transition from desktop to Big Picture Mode using the Steam button on the controller. The work around is to click the Big Picture icon in the Steam interface instead.

View this comment - View article - View full comments