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Latest Comments by Ardje
Epic's Tim Sweeney thinks Wine "is the one hope for breaking the cycle", Easy Anti-Cheat continuing Linux support
24 Jun 2019 at 2:19 pm UTC Likes: 11

The reason I am happy to pay a 30% Valve tax and not a 10% Epic tax, is that I know that a large part of that 30% is used for development of the ultimate (linux based) gaming platform. And that includes research into VR, it means developing better kernel infra structure to optimise for gaming in a way that can be used for other things, optimisation of Vulkan drivers , optimising/improving the vulkan standard.
For me it's mostly linux what interests me, but a large part of what Valve does is a generic improvement of the gaming platform independent of the OS.
So I happily pay the 30%.

Valve have given out some more details on the Index VR HMD with a "Deep Dive" about the Field of View
19 Jun 2019 at 4:41 pm UTC

Quoting: Corben
Quoting: kuhpunktThe Rift S at least doesn't have a physical slider
Ah okay. But they have a software solution to adjust the distance?
Usually you can't fix that with software, because you need to adjust the focal point of the lenses. I know the Gear VR and the Oculus variants on that have no adjustable IPD. The Oculus DK2 also has no adjustable IPD. The Dive (a slap a phone in) does have adjustable IPD, because the lenses (the same that google later used for cardboard) were fully adjustable.
You can adjust a few things with software though, like the difference in breaking index for the colors.
So only the Razer and the Dive come to mind, and I think the high end Vive that have true adjustable IPD, instead of trying to fix as much as possible.
I have the luck that my IPD seems to be pretty common.

The E3 2019 Linux gaming round-up
12 Jun 2019 at 9:02 am UTC Likes: 2

You forgot the Smach Z in the list, which was primarily meant as a Linux device.

More shots of Steam's new Library design thanks to a leak (updated)
9 Jun 2019 at 8:15 pm UTC

But what will happen to big picture? Because that needs a real overhaul.... The normal client font is too small for TV's, but the big picture has a very bad overview, especially for video. Which I stopped buying video.

Info on Google Stadia from today’s Stadia Connect, Baldur’s Gate III announced too
7 Jun 2019 at 3:51 pm UTC Likes: 2

I would pay that subscription money if I could just run my own steam games.

DRM has been blown out the airlock, as X4: Foundations for Linux is now on GOG
6 Jun 2019 at 11:52 am UTC

It was fun until my zotac died :-(. I hope it will run on the Smach Z :-).

Remember the SMACH Z handheld? It's apparently going to be at E3 this year
5 Jun 2019 at 11:50 pm UTC Likes: 3

For a PC I think the price is what it is: you buy a PC. The price is on par with the GPD WIN2 (or it was for me), but with a better controller,a better GPU, a better CPU, a better heatsink, and hopefully better batteries than anything from GPD.
The PC is primarily made in Europe. I assume the PCB's and shells are printed/molded in China, and that assembly, and pick and place and soldering is done in Spain.
The cpu speed of the Smach Z is probably comparable to my Galaxy Note 9, except that my Galaxy Note 9 doesn't want to run intel architecture, nor does it have any decent linux environment, even in dextop linux.
The GPU is probably way better than an ARM mali, especially since the drivers are open source.
Being open source also means in software it lasts for the next 10 years.
So yeah, I got a good feeling about my Smach Z. In the mean time I am waiting for months to get replacement batteries for my WIN2, and waiting for the cooling mod upgrade kit, that should not have been necessary in the first place.
Let's hope the Smach Z doesn't need new batteries in less than 6 months and when it does, let's hope we can replace them with soldering some 18650's. And let's also hope the heatsink doesn't need a mod.
And yes, the platform cannot be truly open, because that's never the case with intel architecture.

Quake II RTX to release June 6th, first 3 levels free for everyone and source code will be up too
27 May 2019 at 1:14 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest*Cries in AMD*
You can't RTX in AMD, but RTX is an NVidia proprietary API.
Just do plain pathtracing with AMD, it should perform better.
http://amietia.com/q2pt.html [External Link]
I assume there is probably a generic vulkan version to with a denoiser.

D9VK sees a first actual release for getting Direct3D 9 games running on Vulkan with Wine
9 May 2019 at 4:03 pm UTC

Would be interesting to see how well this fares with wine under qemu on an android or other arm platform supporting vulkan.

Planet Nomads has left Early Access and feels like a big missed opportunity
4 May 2019 at 12:47 am UTC Likes: 2

I think I sunk more hours into planet nomads than into GTA V. It is a build game with strange physics. You get to play with all kinds of low level stuff. You kind of lego vehicles together, like a monorail and things like that.
That's how I left it.
That particular thing is pretty unique.
There is planet explorers that does a little bit of everything and is actually pretty good with story and all, and letting bots do the grind for you.
If you are into large scale automation you will have to look at fortresscraft evolved, my biggest time sink.
If you want to fly to different planets, and do some simple base building then no man's sky is your thing.
But none of those will let you use the lego you got and build something the developers did not expect.
If they all could work together and make one game. No man's sky to have and fly to different planets,
fortrescrafts massive automation setups to rain all those planets from their important resources,
use the Planet Nomads tool to create the planet exploring vehicles and rails and whatever. Have the bot management and a story like planet explorers...
And of course in vulkan and VR
That would be great.