Quoting: Sir_DiealotSo you are not willing to download 50 GB for a weekend but to download 50 GB for two hours of streaming?

Oh and don't worry guys, I'm sure Google has more plans than just data collection, oh no.
This is going to be an entirely new advertisement platform. Your games will become billboards, just like web pages are today.

I would. Cause that’s 50 GB (well, more like 20 GB for two hours, if 25 Mb/s is true) during playing, without waiting for 50 GB to download up front. That’s just more convenient.

If Steam provided a game streaming service, then I would totally use it for the free-weekend games to try them before buying. Now, even though I have somehow OK-ish transfer (~120 Mb/s down) I mostly ignore them – because of the download wait and needed cleaning afterwards if I decide I don’t like them.

I like very much the idea of streaming-as-a-demo and streaming to allow one to play on less powerful hardware. I did enjoy OnLive because of that when it launched.

(On the other hand I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna use Stadia – I don’t game enough to pay regular subscription, I’m against exclusives which it will supposedly have, and it seems at least initially it won’t be available in Poland – seems I’m not in the most of Europe ;-).)

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Quoting: FredOI'm having a different thought about what Value's working towards.
The real reason for Proton? To get as many of their Steam catalogue working on Linux based servers running in their data centers, to provide a cloud based streaming service for their existing customer base.
The reason for testing steam link over the Internet now, is not just so we can have our home machine running 24/7 while we're on vacation somewhere, but to test their streaming tech over the internet, for use with their future cloud streaming service.

Personally I would love to play my Steam library from anywhere, using Steams data centers directly.

I totally agree they’re trying to go in that direction. But streaming is a market they’ll need to fight for. Right now they are a store and get their money from selling PC games, they won’t ditch it that fast, so I guess they’d provide servers you can stream your games from (for free or for a small fee) and perhaps another subscription-based licensing for streaming-only, but I’d guess, at least initially, they still would require all their games to be PC-compatible, sellable to current non-streaming Steam users.

Creating their own Stadia-compatible unified hardware platform they might convince PC publishers to make Linux games and thus help get their players off Windows. But as I wrote, it’s just a random thought, I don’t really think Valve must have the same idea I do.

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I have another random thought about it.

I wonder if Valve could exploit it somehow to convince more publishers to support (some kind of) Linux desktop.

Stadia supposedly is a single uniform hardware platform (working in a cloud, but still a set hardware and software configuration, like a console). Valve hypothetically could try to basically copy this configuration (similar AMD CPU and a GPU, Debian-based SteamOS with the same drivers) and release it as the new Steam Machine, and advertise it as its new PC-compatible console that is also compatible with Stadia and has just one supported configuration.

Then they could market it that if you already have a Stadia version, you can just release it for the Steam Machine, and not worry about support for other Linuxes and hw configuration.

This might generate compatibility issues for other distros (but still, most games target only Ubuntu, so eg. Arch or Fedora users already have this problem) and Intel+nVidia PCs, but in the age of open APIs and good drivers it shouldn’t be that problematic. And it might convince more companies to release the Linux versions.

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Quoting: x_wingWhen I read this

QuoteThey also had id Software, talk about how it didn't take long to bring the new Doom Eternal to Stadia...

I was expecting that this phrase ended with: "We just had to install wine/proton.".

I believe you mean ‘we just needed to ask them nicely for their internal Linux builds which they were never gonna publish, and which will never see the light outside of our platform’. ;-)

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It took me a while to properly parse and understand the title. The thumbnail image helped. I think my brain just wasn’t ready for the truth.

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Best computer RPG ever.

And nice graphics (it has dynamic shadows!).

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Quoting: CookiedemkpThe idea of Virgil 3D GPU seems kind of neat in that it looks like it's attempting to provide a QEMU-level API + drivers for allowing the guest VM to directly interface with the host GPU.

[…] Once/if Windows guest support gets added, I'd be really interested to see some metrics on the current overhead of running through a virtual GPU.

I think it will be more usable for Windows users wanting to try out Linux on a VM before installing it to a hd, with all 3D decorations working and games running, even if with crappy performance because of the virtual GPU indirection. Especially when Vulkan gets supported by Virgil.

I wouldn’t count on Windows guest support though, as that would require porting the mesa driver to Windows. And even then mesa only implements OpenGL and possibly Vulkan, so D3D would still need to be provided by something like wined3d or DXVK compiled for Windows.

If mesa for Windows ever happens (and I don’t think it will in the foreseeable future), that might allow you to play, in a VM, some Windows games which don’t work in wine because of some DRM, but it still wouldn’t help with with Direct3D graphics problems.

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Quotea free event focused on free open-source software, and a place where free-software developers can meet, share idea and collaborate

And most importantly – drink Belgian beer together. ;-)

As for 0 A.D. – there was also another talk about graphics problems the game was facing – the 0 A.D: Graphics – Graphics problems and opportunities of open-source game talk. But I haven’t seen it yet, so cannot comment how worth watching it is (tbh, I haven’t been to any gaming-related talks in person, but am catching up thanks to the recordings; there are too many things happening at the same time to see all those you’d like to…).

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It supposedly uses the VK_NV_ray_tracing extension, and my GTX 1070 with the 415.27 driver claims to support it:

silmeth@silmeth-desktop:~% vulkaninfo | rg tracing
        VK_NV_ray_tracing                   : extension revision  2

So I’d guess it should run (or at least try to), with probably very shitty performance. The question is how well is the extension implemented in software for older cards without the new hardware to support it.

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They could, if I understand it correctly, hypothetically use the ARB_gl_spirv OpenGL extension when the driver supports it, to provide pre-compiled shaders for OpenGL renderer. That would speed up loading for users with newer drivers, while those without this extension (older GPUs and driver versions) would stay on compiling GLSL shaders during loading.

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