Great, so instead of getting a simple steering wheel mount for your radio, you have something else to hold. You may think you do just fine whether or not you're on the phone, but so do drunk drivers. You are not some special or more talented person, you just think you are, and thats why you're going to endup hurting someone else.
You are being an asshole every weekday, to the other drivers on the road, for not giving the proper attention.
Guess what; everyone (including you) survived just fine before cell phones became popular. You CAN live without it.
Why would I be forced to use an nVIDIA card? The ATi drivers are not there; definately by far. The nVIDIA drivers are great, but having one half of the whole still doesn't make the game industry switch their efforts.
Well, talk to Nvidia about that. IIRC, ATI also had driver problems with Doom3 on Windows. Given these problems (and I know there have been others in the past), I'd say that ATI isn't worth it.
To me the message is clear; ATI only wants to pay lip service to linux; NVIDIA is serious about it. Do I really want to buy a card from a company that only pays lip service to some of its customers?
I'm hoping to eventually run a game development firm; my games would be cross-platform because I believe in targetting the most people you can. But because I want to go this route, this means that I will have to totally ditch the idea of "cutting corners" with DirectX (which in the long run is good). But that still doesn't change the fact that ATi needs to bring their drivers up to par in order for Linux to be seen as something of a mainstream platform for gaming. Once that happens, I believe we'll start seeing more and more games doing the multi-platform thing.
I wish you luck in this. I do hope more game producers go the multiplatform route, as I do think its wise. That would kind of force ATI to put a little more effort into thier drivers, wouldn't it? (Oh, and I don't think half of serious linux users would buy an ATI card (or buy one again)..given how poorly ATIs linux drivers are.)
Its a fair question, but I look at my largest discretionary spending first.
I'm glad you reconize that it was a fair question; apparently a moderator did not. Its been a while since I've been modded down, and I have other, more unpopular views...
My largest expense is my mortgage, my second largest childcare, I don't have any option in those cases. The largest elements in the US federal budget are payment on the debt and repayment of social security obligations. Those are not optional.
True, you need some place to live, and need help with child care. But can you do with a smaller, less valuable house? Maybe have a grandparent or niece babysit? Please understand i'm not implying you personally...just trying to stick with your examples.
At any rate yes, debt repayment is something that should be done sooner then later. Whether SS actually needs saving is a matter of debate.
The 'war on terror' has two parts, a compulsory one and an optional one. Most reasonable people would agree that the number on priority should be eliminating Osama Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri. I have no complaint about the money spent there. The invasion of Iraq on the other hand has eliminated Saddam (good) and led to the election of an Iranian backed Shiite theocratic regime with no support from the Sunni areas. That is not a result I would consider to justify the $300 bn expense so far or the $600bn likely total cost.
I don't see what good eliminating OBL would do. Someone else will take his place. I think a more reasonble thing would be to secure our borders, and find terrorists already in the states. We can do that much more effectively then sending our military around the globe.
Eliminating Saddam is good, but there are also alot of bads. We destroyed much of the infastructure there, and now have to pay the cost of rebuilding it. Both sides continue to suffer casualties. An according to you, the elections didn't turn out as you wanted. Are things better now that saddam is gone? I can't really answer that, I dont' live in Iraq.
If we want to apply space station logic to the war on terror though we could say that the cost is justified by the 'spinoffs' that the war will create. There is no field that has generated as much spinoff technology as war. The rapid developments in MSI and LSI in the mid 70s were funded by the pentagon as part of their electronic battlefield program developed in direct response to the US catastrophe in Vietnam.
Yes, there can be tech spinoffs from war, if we were in a real war. But we aren't. Our economy hasn't shifted to war time production, I really doubt you can compare it to WW1 or 2.
All things considered, I don't think we should be using war for spinoffs either....I'd like to think human life has more value to us then that. I personally would rather fund exploration to generate spinoffs than war. And who knows...maybe if we did pump as much into NASA as we do into the military, we'd see that exploration can generate even more spinoffs.
NASA costs $15 billion per year to run. Thats rather a lot of money for a government with a $500 billion deficit to be spending on feel good programs.
Please refresh my memory..how much is the war on terror costing us?
Seriously..when i figure out my personal finances, i start looking at the largest expenses first, and seeing if i can't trim those or cut them completely.
Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.
Because along the way, we'd learn alot more. Its much more complicated to keep astronaughts alive on mars then it is a robot. In the end, that means we will have more technology generated to achive that goal. There are unique challenges in that endevor that may bring about new discoveries to benefit people here.
And there are just some things that a human could do better then a robot on mars.
Oh, well that's true, whoever is calling you is SO very important that they can't wait an hour.
My drive right now is 15mins. It used to be an hour and a half each way. Guess what i did? I moved closer to work. Your excuses are just that; excuses.
Do you really think that two APIs that do more or less the same thing are so radically different that it would be a huge investment to learn? Personally it never takes me long to learn something new...whether its C#, XSLT, Java, snobol, or perl.
You think the drivers aren't there on linux... do you even have a linux box with a recent nvidia card in it? I get between 30-60 fps w/doom 3... i don't think you can say the drivers just aren't there..when that is better then i get in windows.
No, that's nto what i'm saying at all. In this case, in my experience, linux does perform better then windows. And also in my experience, other games that i've gotten working have performed better as well.
As someone who spent most of the weekend setting up printing, im more then willing to admin where linux's flaws are.
You're right, I don't know. I DO know that i get more FPS in linux. I suggested a reason that a SINGLE defect might be overwhelmed by other positives. I think the logic makes sense, given the higher FPS in linux then windows. The feature lacked does seem to be more then made up for by other features of the kernel.
I've never had a game gray anything out in its control panel. In fact, most games don't even use the newest version of DX thats avaible.
These 'gamers' that you're talking that won't buy a card unless it has the most recent DX support..their kids living at home and have mommy and daddy buying it. They do that to brag at school..and they don't realize that none of the games support the latest DX that their card might.
Quick calls mean they probably aren't important..and can wait unti you're home at 7. Believe me, i used to have that too...nothing was so important it couldn't wait an hour.
Use your cell at home BEFORE you get in the car to find out where you're going..is it that hard? You're assuming you spend most of yoru time in your car...you do NOT. You probably spend most of your time in the office or mall or wherever you're at, and as soon as you arrive there, you have a use for your phone.
If your car dies, you're not going to start dialing until you actually pull the car off the road are you? Please. I never talk on the phone while driving and i still have much use for the phone.
Oh well. Live somewhere you don't have to drive...or don't live as long. Modern medicine is keeping bodies living longer...but thats not necessarly good.
The CD audio track isn't a major compoent of the game. The ingame sounds (punches, etc) worked just fine. I did turn it off in windows...and it was still slower then linux without cd audio.
This was also in 98..i haven't tird that game recently, but i bet i should...i bet it works perfectly now.
I think it does. It shows that if they game developers move away from DirectX to OpenGL / SDL or whatever, that ports ARE easy. If a developer can't learn OpenGL or SDL easily, i'd say they really don't belong as a programmer. No more then 'programmers' that can ONLY do VB are real programmers.
But again you missed my point..i wasn't talking about EXISTING games. I'm saying that upcoming games that are about begin construction can make it so that its easy to port.
I wan't going to mention anything about whether wine was an emulator or not..but since you brought it up...wine is more of a wrapper then an emulator. They create an API that mirrors DX, and then just call OpenGL or whatever. Thats basically what is doing. And yes, while that is extra overhead, its not enough to make a difference...probably b/c over all linux runs faster then windows. I used Wine way back in 98 to run Mk4..and it defaintly was faster on linux thru wine then directly on whatever windows i had at the time.
Dude. Stop lights, speed limits, double-yellow-lines, yield signs, high-occupancy lanes, limited access roadways, roadworthiness regulations, driver licensing, vehicle licensing, one-way streets, parking regulations, no turn on red, left-turn-only lanes--these all restrict your rights!
Stop lights don't prevent me from traveling, speed limits provide revenue by allowing ticketing of 'offenses' where no one was hurt, etc. Either those things don't limit my rights, or give the state a source of revenue.
Cell phone drivers may be annoying, they may suck, but until they actually cause a problem you shouldn't be allowed to pester them. I have no problem adding addition time to their sentence, b/c obviously the driver wasn't paying enough attention if he caused an accident.
Well, I think it wouldn't have impressed me if i just started using linux. But i've been trying gamnig on linux since 98. Actaully what impressed me then ws that i could play Mortal Kombat 4 (with full HW accelration) faster on linux then windows. The downside was i had to turn off cd music..for some reason seeking to a new audio track took about 2 minutes.
As far as package management...i've been very impressed with urpmi. Haven't had dependecy hell since i learned about it.
Its not that linux IS a gamers platform, its that it CAN be one. Doom 3 proves that you can write high quality games for linux that are exactly on par with their windows counterparts.
That fact that the linux client came out so soon after windows shows that its relatively easy to port. (I'm willing to be more of that time was spent QAing the linux client then programming it.)
I see you haven't used lotus notes. What a total POS that is. I never thought i'd want to use Outlook + Exchange at work...but here I am, wishing my company would switch..
1. While this may be true, Linux may make up for it because it has better scheduling / or IO througput or whatever.
2. My quick search shows that SSE is supported in gcc 3.x. Mandrake ships with 3.3. Posts from 2001 indicate SSE was coming 'soon.' But that was also when 2.x was the current version.
Do you have an ATI card? Those were pretty crappy to run doom3 linux under, b/c ATI put out crappy drivers. My nvidia 5700 works just fine.
5.1 or 7.1 sound. Last I saw of the Audigy drivers, they only supported "mirroring" 2.1 sound along the back channels. I have a fairly high-end 7.1 setup and I would want more than just mirroring.
From the OSS Readme.SBLive:
- OSS 3.99.1 and later supports 4.0/5.1/7.1 analog output (also digital DIN) with SB Live and Audigy cards. For this purpose you need to use the/dev/dsp# device created for this purpose. You can find out the right number by looking at the cat/dev/sndstat printout. The right device is listed there as the "4.0", "5.1" or "7.1" device.
Ok, you don't know what EAX is. EAX provides environmental effects -- for example, it's what makes the sounds clang off the corridors in Doom, or makes an NPC sound positionally different in Wow if they're behind you vs. in front of you when you click on them. Last I checked, EAX wasn't supported at all in Linux. You may *think* the game sounds the same, but it probably doesn't.
I know what EAX is. I haven't noticed ANY differences in sound between Win and Lin playing doom 3 (which is really the first title i have that supports eax i believe..unless halo did).
As far as the sound coming from behind or in front...i was actually quite amazed that even with just 2 speakers it seemed like some sounds WERE behind me.
As far as eating up extra CPU cycles; most people around here seem tot hink that, unlike graphics, its not worth offloading the sound processing because CPUs are already fast and any gain is offset by the slower bus. Not my opinion, but maybe you sould talk to them.
I have other things running (downloads included) in the backgroud when playing doom also. The point is that it doesn't kill my system to have doom running.
I agree, it's mostly marketshare problems. However, that doesn't defeat the problem that there's still no DirectX-style API for other game functions in Linux (input, network and sound). That goes a long distance in making games easier to port.
SDL is coming along, it aims to fill just this niche. Did id use it? Not sure..
Ouch. Not a gamer, huh?:) I find Doom unplayable on anything less than 60 fps. And, again, comparing the two platforms, I've never seen Doom 3 on Linux perform as well as Doom 3 on Windows using the same hardware.
Wow..loser. Unplayable below 60 fps? I suspect you're not a gamer so much as a kid in HS trying to fill a void w/FPS. Having too low an FPS can hurt, but 30 to 60 won't make you a better gamer.
It was sarcasm.
Well as i said, people have made the ridiculous claim that you have to kill your desktop to get good performance from X.
The big difference is that id has a track record of sticking with OpenGL and (attempting to) optimize as well as possible on alternative platforms. The big drawback (I keep repeating this) is that there's no real "game API" on Linux.
there is, and its SDL. I'm curious...why do you need a unifed game API. You have OpenGL for graphics, linux now providers a standard sound API, X offers a standard API to mouse and keyboard..about the only thing left is a joystick. and SDL is working to unify even all of these things.
Plays games ok, but you have to do crazy stuff like choosing your individual sound card sometimes when installing a game
Ahh..I think I've been trolled. You obviosuly never used linux, or haven't used it recently. ALSA (or OSS) load on boot, and any modern app knows to look for them (actually, i believe they also share the same API now). Doom doesn't ask you any questions about your sound card. If you have your sound drivers installed fine, it will use them. But you have to do the same for windows.
Why do I need to specify, for example, that I have 3D support to a game?
again, you don't. Doom 3 never asked, it just started.
Why do I need to recompile TuxRacer just to get a decent framerate?
I've never played tux racer. You might want to ask the developers that.
These are all things that need to be eliminated for Linux gaming to take off
I have 2.1 sound...so I couldn't really tell you. I know that either ALSA or the (for pay) OSS DOES support multispeakers. Doom3 for linux supports this as well (under linux).
How about EAX?
Give me a way to tell, and I'll let you know. I do know that the game sounds the same in both windows and linux.
Does it eat up your CPU cycles (it did the last time I tried the SB Audigy on Linux).
What exactly are you refering to? EAX? The sound in general? The game would eat up CPU in windows too..its a game, and its doing alot of things. I know that my IM client continues to chime away as people sign off and on, and without studdering.
id is a notable exception. They make some damn fine games, and they run damn fine on multiple platforms. Blizzard (to a certain extent) does the same thing.
Which is getting to my point...it not Linux that's holding up games on linux, its the game developers choosing not to support it. But there's no technical reason they couldn't if they wanted to.
I'd be interested in seeing some benchmarks. I haven't seen one comparison of Windows/Linux id software that doesn't have Windows running about 10-20fps on the same hardware.
I get about 30-40 on average, and both linux and windows drop when there's a large # of monsters on screen (well, imps..for some reason it didn't slow when the mancubus came out).
That's impressive.
Not sure if its sarcasm or not..but I pointed it out b/c alot of people claim the only way to get games playable is to kill your desktop / WM. I put that in to show its simply not true.
Or, just possible, the drivers aren't optimized, there's too much cruft in the sound system and there isn't a unified API for network, sound and inputs like DirectX (OpenGL is only for graphics).
Yes, those are certinaly possiblities. But the fact that Doom 3 plays very well on linux leads me to think that those aren't really the causes for any slowdown. If I play another game w/a linux client that doesn't perform well, i'd be included to blame the game developers, not my linux system.
Take the sims for example; thats slow even on good (fast) windows machines...proof that developer can make a game really slow if they don't try hard enough.
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Great, so instead of getting a simple steering wheel mount for your radio, you have something else to hold. You may think you do just fine whether or not you're on the phone, but so do drunk drivers. You are not some special or more talented person, you just think you are, and thats why you're going to endup hurting someone else.
You are being an asshole every weekday, to the other drivers on the road, for not giving the proper attention.
Guess what; everyone (including you) survived just fine before cell phones became popular. You CAN live without it.
Hmm...i've seen a few sites that can open a popup through firefox. Oddly enough though, the popup is actually loaded by IE. Weird.
Why would I be forced to use an nVIDIA card? The ATi drivers are not there; definately by far. The nVIDIA drivers are great, but having one half of the whole still doesn't make the game industry switch their efforts.
Well, talk to Nvidia about that. IIRC, ATI also had driver problems with Doom3 on Windows. Given these problems (and I know there have been others in the past), I'd say that ATI isn't worth it.
To me the message is clear; ATI only wants to pay lip service to linux; NVIDIA is serious about it. Do I really want to buy a card from a company that only pays lip service to some of its customers?
I'm hoping to eventually run a game development firm; my games would be cross-platform because I believe in targetting the most people you can. But because I want to go this route, this means that I will have to totally ditch the idea of "cutting corners" with DirectX (which in the long run is good). But that still doesn't change the fact that ATi needs to bring their drivers up to par in order for Linux to be seen as something of a mainstream platform for gaming. Once that happens, I believe we'll start seeing more and more games doing the multi-platform thing.
I wish you luck in this. I do hope more game producers go the multiplatform route, as I do think its wise. That would kind of force ATI to put a little more effort into thier drivers, wouldn't it? (Oh, and I don't think half of serious linux users would buy an ATI card (or buy one again)..given how poorly ATIs linux drivers are.)
Its a fair question, but I look at my largest discretionary spending first.
I'm glad you reconize that it was a fair question; apparently a moderator did not. Its been a while since I've been modded down, and I have other, more unpopular views...
My largest expense is my mortgage, my second largest childcare, I don't have any option in those cases. The largest elements in the US federal budget are payment on the debt and repayment of social security obligations. Those are not optional.
True, you need some place to live, and need help with child care. But can you do with a smaller, less valuable house? Maybe have a grandparent or niece babysit? Please understand i'm not implying you personally...just trying to stick with your examples.
At any rate yes, debt repayment is something that should be done sooner then later. Whether SS actually needs saving is a matter of debate.
The 'war on terror' has two parts, a compulsory one and an optional one. Most reasonable people would agree that the number on priority should be eliminating Osama Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri. I have no complaint about the money spent there. The invasion of Iraq on the other hand has eliminated Saddam (good) and led to the election of an Iranian backed Shiite theocratic regime with no support from the Sunni areas. That is not a result I would consider to justify the $300 bn expense so far or the $600bn likely total cost.
I don't see what good eliminating OBL would do. Someone else will take his place. I think a more reasonble thing would be to secure our borders, and find terrorists already in the states. We can do that much more effectively then sending our military around the globe.
Eliminating Saddam is good, but there are also alot of bads. We destroyed much of the infastructure there, and now have to pay the cost of rebuilding it. Both sides continue to suffer casualties. An according to you, the elections didn't turn out as you wanted. Are things better now that saddam is gone? I can't really answer that, I dont' live in Iraq.
If we want to apply space station logic to the war on terror though we could say that the cost is justified by the 'spinoffs' that the war will create. There is no field that has generated as much spinoff technology as war. The rapid developments in MSI and LSI in the mid 70s were funded by the pentagon as part of their electronic battlefield program developed in direct response to the US catastrophe in Vietnam.
Yes, there can be tech spinoffs from war, if we were in a real war. But we aren't. Our economy hasn't shifted to war time production, I really doubt you can compare it to WW1 or 2.
All things considered, I don't think we should be using war for spinoffs either....I'd like to think human life has more value to us then that. I personally would rather fund exploration to generate spinoffs than war. And who knows...maybe if we did pump as much into NASA as we do into the military, we'd see that exploration can generate even more spinoffs.
NASA costs $15 billion per year to run. Thats rather a lot of money for a government with a $500 billion deficit to be spending on feel good programs.
Please refresh my memory..how much is the war on terror costing us?
Seriously..when i figure out my personal finances, i start looking at the largest expenses first, and seeing if i can't trim those or cut them completely.
Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.
Because along the way, we'd learn alot more. Its much more complicated to keep astronaughts alive on mars then it is a robot. In the end, that means we will have more technology generated to achive that goal. There are unique challenges in that endevor that may bring about new discoveries to benefit people here.
And there are just some things that a human could do better then a robot on mars.
Oh, well that's true, whoever is calling you is SO very important that they can't wait an hour.
My drive right now is 15mins. It used to be an hour and a half each way. Guess what i did? I moved closer to work. Your excuses are just that; excuses.
Yes...because the graphics get clearer w/a higher FPS...
So when i compared it to windows w/cd audio off, i'd say its a fair comparision, wouldn't you?
Do you really think that two APIs that do more or less the same thing are so radically different that it would be a huge investment to learn? Personally it never takes me long to learn something new...whether its C#, XSLT, Java, snobol, or perl.
You think the drivers aren't there on linux... do you even have a linux box with a recent nvidia card in it? I get between 30-60 fps w/doom 3... i don't think you can say the drivers just aren't there..when that is better then i get in windows.
No, that's nto what i'm saying at all. In this case, in my experience, linux does perform better then windows. And also in my experience, other games that i've gotten working have performed better as well.
As someone who spent most of the weekend setting up printing, im more then willing to admin where linux's flaws are.
You're right, I don't know. I DO know that i get more FPS in linux. I suggested a reason that a SINGLE defect might be overwhelmed by other positives. I think the logic makes sense, given the higher FPS in linux then windows. The feature lacked does seem to be more then made up for by other features of the kernel.
I've never had a game gray anything out in its control panel. In fact, most games don't even use the newest version of DX thats avaible.
These 'gamers' that you're talking that won't buy a card unless it has the most recent DX support..their kids living at home and have mommy and daddy buying it. They do that to brag at school..and they don't realize that none of the games support the latest DX that their card might.
Quick calls mean they probably aren't important..and can wait unti you're home at 7. Believe me, i used to have that too...nothing was so important it couldn't wait an hour.
Use your cell at home BEFORE you get in the car to find out where you're going..is it that hard? You're assuming you spend most of yoru time in your car...you do NOT. You probably spend most of your time in the office or mall or wherever you're at, and as soon as you arrive there, you have a use for your phone.
If your car dies, you're not going to start dialing until you actually pull the car off the road are you? Please. I never talk on the phone while driving and i still have much use for the phone.
Oh well. Live somewhere you don't have to drive...or don't live as long. Modern medicine is keeping bodies living longer...but thats not necessarly good.
The CD audio track isn't a major compoent of the game. The ingame sounds (punches, etc) worked just fine. I did turn it off in windows...and it was still slower then linux without cd audio.
This was also in 98..i haven't tird that game recently, but i bet i should...i bet it works perfectly now.
I think it does. It shows that if they game developers move away from DirectX to OpenGL / SDL or whatever, that ports ARE easy. If a developer can't learn OpenGL or SDL easily, i'd say they really don't belong as a programmer. No more then 'programmers' that can ONLY do VB are real programmers.
But again you missed my point..i wasn't talking about EXISTING games. I'm saying that upcoming games that are about begin construction can make it so that its easy to port.
I wan't going to mention anything about whether wine was an emulator or not..but since you brought it up...wine is more of a wrapper then an emulator. They create an API that mirrors DX, and then just call OpenGL or whatever. Thats basically what is doing. And yes, while that is extra overhead, its not enough to make a difference...probably b/c over all linux runs faster then windows. I used Wine way back in 98 to run Mk4..and it defaintly was faster on linux thru wine then directly on whatever windows i had at the time.
Dude. Stop lights, speed limits, double-yellow-lines, yield signs, high-occupancy lanes, limited access roadways, roadworthiness regulations, driver licensing, vehicle licensing, one-way streets, parking regulations, no turn on red, left-turn-only lanes--these all restrict your rights!
Stop lights don't prevent me from traveling, speed limits provide revenue by allowing ticketing of 'offenses' where no one was hurt, etc. Either those things don't limit my rights, or give the state a source of revenue.
Cell phone drivers may be annoying, they may suck, but until they actually cause a problem you shouldn't be allowed to pester them. I have no problem adding addition time to their sentence, b/c obviously the driver wasn't paying enough attention if he caused an accident.
Well, I think it wouldn't have impressed me if i just started using linux. But i've been trying gamnig on linux since 98. Actaully what impressed me then ws that i could play Mortal Kombat 4 (with full HW accelration) faster on linux then windows. The downside was i had to turn off cd music..for some reason seeking to a new audio track took about 2 minutes.
As far as package management...i've been very impressed with urpmi. Haven't had dependecy hell since i learned about it.
You missed my point completely.
Its not that linux IS a gamers platform, its that it CAN be one. Doom 3 proves that you can write high quality games for linux that are exactly on par with their windows counterparts.
That fact that the linux client came out so soon after windows shows that its relatively easy to port. (I'm willing to be more of that time was spent QAing the linux client then programming it.)
I see you haven't used lotus notes. What a total POS that is. I never thought i'd want to use Outlook + Exchange at work...but here I am, wishing my company would switch..
Only problem w/your theory is that i can DL the newest directx...i haven't had a game complain that my CARD didnt support it.
Honestly, how many people here buy a card based on its directx support or not? Does anyone?
Hmm..i suspect your full of it.
1. While this may be true, Linux may make up for it because it has better scheduling / or IO througput or whatever.
2. My quick search shows that SSE is supported in gcc 3.x. Mandrake ships with 3.3. Posts from 2001 indicate SSE was coming 'soon.' But that was also when 2.x was the current version.
Do you have an ATI card? Those were pretty crappy to run doom3 linux under, b/c ATI put out crappy drivers. My nvidia 5700 works just fine.
5.1 or 7.1 sound. Last I saw of the Audigy drivers, they only supported "mirroring" 2.1 sound along the back channels. I have a fairly high-end 7.1 setup and I would want more than just mirroring.
/dev/dsp# device created for this purpose. You can find out the right /dev/sndstat printout. The right device
:) I find Doom unplayable on anything less than 60 fps. And, again, comparing the two platforms, I've never seen Doom 3 on Linux perform as well as Doom 3 on Windows using the same hardware.
From the OSS Readme.SBLive:
- OSS 3.99.1 and later supports 4.0/5.1/7.1 analog output (also digital DIN)
with SB Live and Audigy cards. For this purpose you need to use the
number by looking at the cat
is listed there as the "4.0", "5.1" or "7.1" device.
Ok, you don't know what EAX is. EAX provides environmental effects -- for example, it's what makes the sounds clang off the corridors in Doom, or makes an NPC sound positionally different in Wow if they're behind you vs. in front of you when you click on them. Last I checked, EAX wasn't supported at all in Linux. You may *think* the game sounds the same, but it probably doesn't.
I know what EAX is. I haven't noticed ANY differences in sound between Win and Lin playing doom 3 (which is really the first title i have that supports eax i believe..unless halo did).
As far as the sound coming from behind or in front...i was actually quite amazed that even with just 2 speakers it seemed like some sounds WERE behind me.
As far as eating up extra CPU cycles; most people around here seem tot hink that, unlike graphics, its not worth offloading the sound processing because CPUs are already fast and any gain is offset by the slower bus. Not my opinion, but maybe you sould talk to them.
I have other things running (downloads included) in the backgroud when playing doom also. The point is that it doesn't kill my system to have doom running.
I agree, it's mostly marketshare problems. However, that doesn't defeat the problem that there's still no DirectX-style API for other game functions in Linux (input, network and sound). That goes a long distance in making games easier to port.
SDL is coming along, it aims to fill just this niche. Did id use it? Not sure..
Ouch. Not a gamer, huh?
Wow..loser. Unplayable below 60 fps? I suspect you're not a gamer so much as a kid in HS trying to fill a void w/FPS. Having too low an FPS can hurt, but 30 to 60 won't make you a better gamer.
It was sarcasm.
Well as i said, people have made the ridiculous claim that you have to kill your desktop to get good performance from X.
The big difference is that id has a track record of sticking with OpenGL and (attempting to) optimize as well as possible on alternative platforms. The big drawback (I keep repeating this) is that there's no real "game API" on Linux.
there is, and its SDL. I'm curious...why do you need a unifed game API. You have OpenGL for graphics, linux now providers a standard sound API, X offers a standard API to mouse and keyboard..about the only thing left is a joystick. and SDL is working to unify even all of these things.
Plays games ok, but you have to do crazy stuff like choosing your individual sound card sometimes when installing a game
Ahh..I think I've been trolled. You obviosuly never used linux, or haven't used it recently. ALSA (or OSS) load on boot, and any modern app knows to look for them (actually, i believe they also share the same API now). Doom doesn't ask you any questions about your sound card. If you have your sound drivers installed fine, it will use them. But you have to do the same for windows.
Why do I need to specify, for example, that I have 3D support to a game?
again, you don't. Doom 3 never asked, it just started.
Why do I need to recompile TuxRacer just to get a decent framerate?
I've never played tux racer. You might want to ask the developers that.
These are all things that need to be eliminated for Linux gaming to take off
Good, b/c they already have been.
Does multispeaker support work fine?
I have 2.1 sound...so I couldn't really tell you. I know that either ALSA or the (for pay) OSS DOES support multispeakers. Doom3 for linux supports this as well (under linux).
How about EAX?
Give me a way to tell, and I'll let you know. I do know that the game sounds the same in both windows and linux.
Does it eat up your CPU cycles (it did the last time I tried the SB Audigy on Linux).
What exactly are you refering to? EAX? The sound in general? The game would eat up CPU in windows too..its a game, and its doing alot of things. I know that my IM client continues to chime away as people sign off and on, and without studdering.
id is a notable exception. They make some damn fine games, and they run damn fine on multiple platforms. Blizzard (to a certain extent) does the same thing.
Which is getting to my point...it not Linux that's holding up games on linux, its the game developers choosing not to support it. But there's no technical reason they couldn't if they wanted to.
I'd be interested in seeing some benchmarks. I haven't seen one comparison of Windows/Linux id software that doesn't have Windows running about 10-20fps on the same hardware.
I get about 30-40 on average, and both linux and windows drop when there's a large # of monsters on screen (well, imps..for some reason it didn't slow when the mancubus came out).
That's impressive.
Not sure if its sarcasm or not..but I pointed it out b/c alot of people claim the only way to get games playable is to kill your desktop / WM. I put that in to show its simply not true.
Or, just possible, the drivers aren't optimized, there's too much cruft in the sound system and there isn't a unified API for network, sound and inputs like DirectX (OpenGL is only for graphics).
Yes, those are certinaly possiblities. But the fact that Doom 3 plays very well on linux leads me to think that those aren't really the causes for any slowdown. If I play another game w/a linux client that doesn't perform well, i'd be included to blame the game developers, not my linux system.
Take the sims for example; thats slow even on good (fast) windows machines...proof that developer can make a game really slow if they don't try hard enough.