Quoting: silmeth

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.

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Well said. I agree Windows as the host OS will most likely be the majority use case for this, but I'm wondering if we might see it in some sort of CI stack where Linux hosts are building an application on several different Linux guests where testing might include some GPU perfomance tests. Either way, interesting things going on in the Mesa-related world.

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The 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.

While I've used VGA passthrough in the past to run games inside a Windows VM, the requirement of having two GPUs, one of which is always unusable on the host OS under normal booting circumstances, could be a bit steep or at the least a bit annoying. Considering that I was never really using the GPU on the host OS for anything more than rendering the desktop, I could see this sort of resource sharing as being viable at least. 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.

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I just realized that donating to GOL was one of the items on my long list of things to do that got pushed out of the way for too long. Hope the extra bit can help!

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Normally I'm more than content to hide in the shadows of forums and comment sections, but I believe this news is exciting enough for me to come out of the woodwork for.

Exciting to me is actually not the newfound possibilities immediately opened up by this work, but rather what it implies for the long-term going forward. As others have mentioned, this is a very clear indication of Valve's Linux support (for those who needed such confirmation) and seems to spell out more to come.

What really excites me is that this implies Valve is likely continuing things already in motion and attempting to ensure that, were MS to push forward a lockdown strategy, a backup plan involving Linux will be available. I believe these "things in motion" will be the efforts such as the FreeSync changes in the kernel (which I personally would be very happy for), bug fixes and possibly performance improvements to Mesa (though I don't know how interested Valve are in Mesa anyway), and so on.

As has already been beaten to a pulp by other posters, I have some slight hesitation in regards to future native Linux ports, but I think it's a very great thing that there are now games which are accessible on Linux that certainly were never going to get a port (expecting, of course, that performance improvements and necessary bug fixes may still be something that people wait on for various titles). The transparency and availability of information such as market share should not be underestimated and we've already seen how Valve have been tweaking things to help developers on this end.

I'll definitely be watching changelogs at LKML to see relevant kernel changes that might be coming.

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I wouldn't mind playing in one of these, but have the Rocket League devs fixed the issue where Xbox controllers (and potentially others) get recognized as player two under Linux? I abandoned Rocket League on Linux a while ago because I simply wasn't able to play with any of my controllers.

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