Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: ArtenSo... nvidia hopes, that somebody choose their GPU for deck like handheld with steamOS? Ot they planing to make one?

Good upscaling is crucial for handhald device, if you want just conect it to display and play on larger screen...

May be related to this, in some way?

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/07/nvidia-shows-off-rtx-and-dlss-on-arm-using-arch-linux

It maybe related. But this is about integrating it into Proton for windows games mostly on X86-64 architecture. Games are demanding not only for GPU, but also for CPU. So nvidia need CPU like M1 from Apple which has X86-64 like memory-ordering model in silicon as alternative for ARM memory ordering mode. It speeds up Rosseta 2 translation, because Rosseta 2 has one big problem out of the way. Apple don't give them M1, so nvidia need make something similar in-house.

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So... nvidia hopes, that somebody choose their GPU for deck like handheld with steamOS? Ot they planing to make one?

Good upscaling is crucial for handhald device, if you want just conect it to display and play on larger screen...

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Quoting: chelobaka

Quoting: ArtenI don't think that Deck is totaly unrelated. If it can get you better performance, you can limit max framerate and get more battery life on Deck.

How can you get more performance by adding extra translation layer between hardware and userspace application? Well, you won't ;-)

Because translation is not 1:1. For example with this, machine code of shaders is created by ACO in the end.
Similar situation is with Proton/DXVK. In some cases it is better then Windows.

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Quoting: chelobakaThere must be a good practical reason for this project if Valve puts their money in it. Upcoming Steam Deck doesn't need it so it must be something else. Well, Vulkan is supported by Android and there's no OpenGL there, but x86 emulation on ARM should be expensive... or maybe not that expensive?

I don't think that Deck is totaly unrelated. If it can get you better performance, you can limit max framerate and get more battery life on Deck.

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Quoting: Hori

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: CatKillerNot really. DX12 was a thing before he got put in charge of Xbox, and Xbox being a thing to push DirectX ("DirectX box") was a thing long before he was in charge.

...
So he totally was in charge of making the decision whether to collaborate or to push lock-in. And we know what MS did.
...

Being possible and being practical are two completely different things. Do you seriously expect anyone to scrap everything after investing a ton of money with it?
Especially someone new.
In all likelyhood he couldn't have stopped it even if he wanted to. He'd rather have been replaced with someone else.

Also, you have to understand that companies as big as MS plan things many years in advance. DX12 was probably planned and approved as a long term strategy for a long time before that happened.

PS: I'm not trying to defend him (I know next to nothing about his person, and I am certainly not trying to defend M$.
All in all I think M$ would have still done DX12 and not join Vulkan regardless of timing.

I don't expect scrap it. but what he can probably do is allow vulkan support on xbox...

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: HoriAlso, you have to understand that companies as big as MS plan things many years in advance. DX12 was probably planned and approved as a long term strategy for a long time before that happened.

It was a reactionary effort driven by Mantle proposal from AMD. MS literally used Mantle itself for DX12 (I linked the evidence above). So they could simply join Vulkan collaboration instead, but their lock-in mentality still prevailed there.

It worked out better for OpenXR - MS for a change did participate in it.

MS probably knew about Mantle before it has been made public and by then, they could have work on DX12.

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Quoting: Alm888

Quoting: ArtenI don't think that windows game runing under proton can access linux filesystem.

It can (by default root directory is mounted as Z: drive). So a Linux-aware Windows virus can access ones "host" filesystem and, let's say, encrypt all the files it can grab.

WINE developers warn everybody: WINE is NOT a sandbox!

Thanks for info, i missed it.

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Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: CatKillerI expect those videos to end with "Windows on this device kinda sucks."

why ? i mean watching this bit of the steamdeck hands on they state that the new UI is coming to windows shortly after. All things being equal the performance and compatibility should be higher on windows. I don't expect a mountain of people to do this honestly. But maybe when the novelty of using steamOS wears out perhaps.

https://youtu.be/jb6OWxORfY0?t=502 [External Link]

Quoting: CatKillerBut if people install Windows on it and genuinely prefer it, good for them. That's exactly what I'd want for installing Linux on all my computers. If it turns out that Valve haven't made Linux gaming compelling enough for the masses, so their customers are going to go through the hassle of installing fresh Windows on a device that comes with a different OS, then they aren't safe from Microsoft and they need to Linux harder.

Sure. At that point im not sure what more valve could do anyway for those kinds of people. Some people are just never going to compromise on absolute performance and compatibility by running Linux.
I remember a thread on a windows centered forum a year or so back when proton was really taking off, some news articles were dropping and the conversation got onto how far Linux had come, people were impressed for sure but even then the consensus was that if there was even a less than 5% drop in performance no matter how much freer, secure and private Linux was they would not switch. Not to mention the lack of other game stores (although im sure that's something that can be improved if this thing takes off)

I do like the idea that the deck(linux) gets the UI first at least but there has to be some reason to use the deck other than technical inability or laziness over installing windows+steam.

For performance side, can help that Valve know specific hardware? So Everything (kernel, wine,...) can be built for ZEN2? It's not great benefit to performance, but in some games is wine equal and rerly better then Windows even now.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Alm888New API? I wonder, what will it be?
In my impression developers just need to target WIN32 API releasing for Windows and Valve will do the "magic". Well, that and Vulkan is preferable. At least Valve has said as much…

Well to be honest in order to fulfil "that will tell games if they're being run on the Steam Deck" that API could be just /etc/os-release :-)

I don't think that windows game runing under proton can access linux filesystem.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: slembckeOn the other hand, Proton is really running a fine line as Microsoft could really screw them over if they wanted to. They will also be playing catch up indefinitely.

It's not as simple as that. The problem for Microsoft is, they change Windows to make new Windows software (temporarily) incompatible with Proton, I believe they've just abandoned backwards compatibility with Windows software too. They could find themselves in a situation where all the old Windows software runs better on Proton than on latest Windows. And I'm not just talking about games. That would be bad for them.
And then Proton would catch up, and it probably wouldn't even take that long because Windows is a big old beast that isn't simple to make workable changes to so whatever they did couldn't be that big a deal. Then Proton would be working with the new stuff and working with the old stuff, making it definitively a better Windows than Windows.

Windows breaks compatibility between versions sometimes. To their credit, Microsoft put an effort in to minimise such things, but it does happen.
Microsoft can make it very difficult for future games to run through wine. That's enough to bury Valve's efforts, before even considering legal challenges they could make. Don't even have to be particularly valid legal challenges - Microsoft could just drag it on, and that alone would also be enough to bury Valve's efforts.

Windows do try to avoid breaking compatibility, though. They know it's a big problem for them when they do, because one of the biggest things holding people to Windows is all the back catalogue of software that runs on Windows but not elsewhere (well, as far as they know, or easily). As I understand it, the last time they did was because they were desperately trying to get Windows 7 out of the way because nobody wanted to upgrade.
Breaking compatibility exactly because something exists that can run all that old stuff might make people think about taking a look at that something. Could backfire. Imagine Wine ran existing versions of Microsoft Office, but the latest Windows didn't, and everyone knew that was because Microsoft was afraid of Wine.
No doubt they can make it very difficult for future games to run through Wine--but at what cost? What else stops working? How difficult does it make it to write those future games for Windows? I just don't think it's as simple as some people suggest. You can't actually move the target that much, because doing so doesn't just mess with the emulators, it messes with your whole ecosystem.

As to the legal thing . . . they can drag things out in the courts, but that only matters if they can make an injunction stick. Otherwise Valve can just go along doing their thing while fighting it. I don't know, but I would imagine that you have to have at least a sort of workable case to get an injunction to stick if the defendant has good lawyers and is not indigenous or something. Otherwise every company would just sue on some spurious basis every time a competitor started to eat their market share, and shut down for years whatever it was that the competitor was beating them with. Maybe MS could muster something good enough to actually get an injunction that would stop Steam Deck production, but I have doubts. If all they could manage was to be annoying in court for a few years and cost a few million in legal fees, that would be irrelevant.
Now if they could win, that would be pretty disastrous--presumably that would make Wine itself illegal, and arguably the whole concept of reverse engineering, every emulator of everything. But I really doubt we've gone all this time without that kind of thing ever being tested in court, and there are still emulators.

For legal thing, we have favorable precedent:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/supreme-court-sides-with-google-in-api-copyright-battle-with-oracle/ [External Link]

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