Linux 3D inferior to Windows XP?

[Themer]

Before I end up starting a flame war over this, let me just explain that I am a die hard Linux fan, and would not say windows is better at something, ever, unless I had valid reasoning! So, I am not saying that this is true, nor false. It is just a comment I would like to explore, because as far as I can tell, it's true, for me at least. Follows is my reasoning:

Has anyone ever played Battlefield 2? The graphics are incredible! It runs on my computer at everything full, and 1280 x 1024 resolution. So far, it's graphics surpass nearly every other game for windows, and certainly every game for Linux. It is also not very efficient, so games of higher graphics quality could run just as god or better if designed more efficiently.

My point is that no games in Linux can measure up to it's graphics as far as I know, yet, they all run slower. Re-worded, Linux, or at least all Linux games are extremely inefficient; they run with rather:

• Lower graphics quality and same speed, or
• Same graphics quality, and lower speed (Yet to find equivalent graphics though)

From this we can conclude one, or both, of 2 things:

• Linux is inferior at running 3D applications (in the field of speed at least)
• All the games for Linux are extremely inefficient, and thus cannot have as good graphics because they would be painfully slow.

If this all sounds ridiculous, than could someone inform me of what should be true? I am using the nVidia drivers from the Restricted Drivers Manager in Gutsy 7.10. In theory, the closed-source drivers are just as good as the windows ones, so this is not to blame, no?

[bigtomrodney]

Battlefield 2 is a Windows game and is not available for Linux. You must be using Wine, Cedega or possibly even Crossover to run it. Have you considered that might be the problem? Emulating and translating system calls...in fact isn't Battlefield a DirectX game?

A real test is to compare a native Linux game with its Windows equivalent. A good test would be almoost anything ID Software has produced. I am running Enemy Territory:Quake Wars and I can tell you it runs very fast.

...From this we can conclude one, or both, of 2 things:

• Linux is inferior at running 3D applications (in the field of speed at least)
• All the games for Linux are extremely inefficient, and thus cannot have as good graphics because they would be painfully slow.

What games have you compared so far? You have made a lot of assertions without any details.

[Themer]

I am not running Battlefield on Linux, I run it on windows, but I'm saying that games with less graphics quality are running slower on Linux. Windows seems to be able to run better graphics, and much faster. I am very aware that 3D suffers in a VM, or through wine ad of the like.

[wowbag1]

Any thoughts on:
How then could this be changed so Linux is "better" than Windows.
Because there is no reason essentially from an OS point of view why Windows should be superior.
Is it the games or is it the structure of Linux using X. or What?

[bigtomrodney]

My question is why consider it inferior at all. Many users report higher frame rates in Linux than Windows. I'm not saying that Linux is better or Windows is better - but I do think to make an assertion like this requires some argument to back it up.

So far we've essentially got different games programmed by different teams on different platforms perform differently...what gives?.

[markharding557]

i run quake games natively on linux and can't tell any difference
opengl seems to work well on wine too

[Manchunian]

I'm not really into games, but I have seen Vegastrike on both Linux and Windows and it seems to work better on Linux. How could bloated Windows possibly compare with a CPU effecient system like Linux or BSD? And if Linux was so poor, we surely wouldn't expect Sony to choose it as the OS to run Playstation.

[questio verum]

I don't think for a minute that Linux is inferior to WinXP in terms of its ability to render graphics. But in terms of it's choice as a gaming platform, it does come up short. It just doesn't enjoy the gaming industry support that XP does. And it follows that it wouldn't receive the driver and other ancillary support that XP does. I've found myself pondering this one too at times, and I think it comes down to a two key factors: Market share, and the nature of open vs. closed development. And both of those factors really come down to one: money.

As much as I love and advocate for Linux, I know that it doesn't have a huge market share. Hence, it's not an attractive target for game developers. And game development houses are the ones that determine (for the most part) what platforms get attention, and which ones don't. They are a very cut-throat, profit-driven industry. They almost exclusively choose one or more flavors of windows, a small selection of gaming consoles, and once in a while they'll throw the Mac community a bone. Quake and Unreal Tournament are two of the rare exceptions.

The standard model for game development is very much driven by deadlines and budgets. Everyone want's their game to be delivered on time and they don't want to bruise the money teat too badly in the process. So open-source OS'es get short shrift from commercial developers. Open-source game developers, well I don't know. Obviously, there aren't that many dedicated full-time coders developing games for Linux. If there were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think there are a number of reasons for that.

Most games aren't a persistant-use program. Especially those with whiz-bang 3D graphics. They are generally discarded after a relatively short period of time. The demand for games is limited to a smaller sub-set of the Linux community, so unlike a killer multimedia or productivity app, the interest (i.e. support) for gaming will be limited correspondingly. And you can look down the pipeline and see that open-source support for gaming hardware would be just as limited.

I don't even bother with this line of questioning anymore. Game consoles have reached a level of sophistication that generally equals, and in some cases exceeds that of a pc. Some titles are even released to console long before they ever hit the windows market. The PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 can both run linux, and there is a port in development for the Wii, as well. Try that with XP.

So, for me at least, the argument over linux vs. windows game development has become irrelevant in more ways than one. And when the day comes that OpenOffice.org can seamlessly handle ms office documents without producing unwanted artifacts or misinterpretations, I will have eliminated my last reason to look to the closed-source world for anything. Oh... except for XBox'es and MS keyboards.

qv

[Themer]

The examples I'm talking about are things like Alien Arena; the graphics aren't bad, but they're not anywhere near Battlefield 2 quality. Now, I understand that for a real test I should try the same program on windows and Linux, but the thing is that Alien Arena on "full" graphics is choppy, but Battlefield 2, which is easily 10x more GPU/CPU intensive runs properly on windows.

A good example of something I've run on both would be Penumbra Overture ...
The speed was very similar, almost the same, but windows seemed faster in a couple areas.

[techieMoe]

The examples I'm talking about are things like Alien Arena; the graphics aren't bad, but they're not anywhere near Battlefield 2 quality.

You're comparing a community-made project with one done by a professional, multi-million-dollar game company. Try comparing apples to apples. Does Quake 4 or Doom 3 look any different on MS Windows versus Linux? They didn't the last time I played them.