Shader Compilation on PC: About to become a bigger bottleneck?

[Cappuccino]

Because Joe Gamer who buys a prebuilt PC needs a console like experience of “it just works”. Having to muck around with Linux drivers and logging bugs etc. is not something they are interested in. Heck, I’m a tech enthusiast and it’s not something I’m interested in.

Joe Gamer is obviously not going to be running Linux, ever.

Also I've been using Linux on and off for over a decade now, not once since maybe 2012 have I really had to 'muck about' except when I was doing strange shit like trying to use RHEL for gaming lol. PopOS practically comes with functioning Nvidia blobs, AMD drivers these days are trivial, everything else is in the mainline kernel.

 

[tuna]

Nobody is expecting a 'product' they are paying nothing for.

Yeah, nobody complains about Google, Facebook or Youtube.

 

[tuna]

I haven't, nor has any Linux user I've ever met. They just wait for it to be patched. I don't see how this is related lol. What hardware configurations would even be unsupported on an Arch fork?

Why would Valve fork Arch? Even Ubuntu isn't forked from Debian.

 

[Cappuccino]

Why would Valve fork Arch? Even Ubuntu isn't forked from Debian.

…because SteamOS is currently an Arch fork. The older version that ran on Steam Machines (and was publicly accessible and worked on general PCs) was a Debian fork.

 

[Potato Head]

Joe Gamer is obviously not going to be running Linux, ever.

Also I've been using Linux on and off for over a decade now, not once since maybe 2012 have I really had to 'muck about' except when I was doing strange shit like trying to use RHEL for gaming lol. PopOS practically comes with functioning Nvidia blobs, AMD drivers these days are trivial, everything else is in the mainline kernel.

None of this has anything to do with the question you asked. Stop the goalpost moving please.

 

[Cappuccino]

None of this has anything to do with the question you asked. Stop the goalpost moving please.

“Goalpost moving” lol you guys realize that what I am suggesting exist already has existed for 10 years now right? Valve has published their fork of Debian for years, I’m just asking they make SteamOS Arch available for end users, preferably with some of their niceties built in. Nobody is talking about them releasing an idiot-proof version of Linux, this doesn’t exist (even on windows, which is cumbersome in its own right).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

None of this has anything to do with the question you asked. Stop the goalpost moving please.

Please don't use that phrase. If you feel the argument is drifting, ask for clarification to reset it. The topic has clearly wandered off on a tangent and it needs to be brought back to whatever argument was being made in relation to Shader Compilation anyhow.

What is the relevance of Arch and Linux and Valve and SteamOS and what argument is being made and what's the refutation and how does this affect Shader Compilation in games?

 

[Cappuccino]

Please don't use that phrase. If you feel the argument is drifting, ask for clarification to reset it. The topic has clearly wandered off on a tangent and it needs to be brought back to whatever argument was being made in relation to Shader Compilation anyhow.

What is the relevance of Arch and Linux and Valve and SteamOS and what argument is being made and what's the refutation and how does this affect Shader Compilation in games?

Well, the reason Linux and SteamOS was brought up is Valve basically fixed shader compilation stutter with Fossilize, games running in Proton crowdsource compiled Vulkan shaders.

 

[tuna]

…because SteamOS is currently an Arch fork. The older version that ran on Steam Machines (and was publicly accessible and worked on general PCs) was a Debian fork.

There is a difference in being a "fork" and being "based on". I am going to assume SteamOS is based on Arch, otherwise Valve has a lot of work to do moving forward.

But yeah, this discussion is pretty OT, sorry.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's Fossilize? Is that portable to other flavours of Linux? Could not a Windows version be created?

 

[Remij]

What's Fossilize? Is that portable to other flavours of Linux? Could not a Windows version be created?

Fossilize is what Valve created to collect GPU agnostic Vulkan PSO blobs and basically redistribute them to be pre-compiled on the users PC. It works on any Linux distro AND Windows already.. it's integrated directly into Steam.

Fossilize works on Windows for Vulkan/OGL games, but what we basically need, as far as I understand it, is for Microsoft to add the ability to plug into DirectX in a similar way that Vulkan layers allows for.

Proton translates DX to Vulkan and thus Fossilize works for all games. If there was a DX to Vulkan translation layer people could toggle on for Windows, I believe Fossilize would just work for it as well. However what we really need is for Microsoft to add this ability to "plug-in" to DirectX so that we don't need to use any translation layer.

 

[Cappuccino]

What's Fossilize? Is that portable to other flavours of Linux? Could not a Windows version be created?

Someone else answered most of this but the gist of the debate is if Microsoft should add this functionality natively to DX12.

 

[Kaotik]

Proton translates DX to Vulkan and thus Fossilize works for all games. If there was a DX to Vulkan translation layer people could toggle on for Windows, I believe Fossilize would just work for it as well. However what we really need is for Microsoft to add this ability to "plug-in" to DirectX so that we don't need to use any translation layer.

DXVK is available for Windows

 

[Remij]

DXVK is available for Windows

Yea, but it's not integrated into Windows nor Steam.

 

[Cappuccino]

DXVK is available for Windows

I also think it can cause a ban in games with certain anti cheats so it’s not a universal solution. A great product particularly for old games though.