AMD To Open ATI Specs 426
Several readers tipped us the followup of yesterday's AMD/ATI news, the new development hinted at by Phoronix: AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver. An anonymous reader opines: "AMD appears to be following in Intel's footsteps with upcoming releases. If AMD is successful NVidia will have real competition in the GNU/Linux gaming arena. While past support by ATI was unsatisfactory the new AMD buyout appears to be having some effect."
Red Hat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Linux gaming arena? (Score:5, Informative)
Unreal Tournament 2004? Check
The upcoming UT 3? Check (Even the level editor will run on linux, yay!)
Doom up to Doom 3? Check
the Quakes? Check
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:3, Informative)
Not to come crashing to reality, but... (Score:2, Informative)
More important than open graphic drivers is open disk controller drivers, open USB controller drivers, etc, etc, etc
Still, a great step.
And even though I would be one of the first to say "talk is cheap, show me the specs", someone further behind the curtains told me some companies knew (and possibly working with) it already.
Re:Linux gaming arena? (Score:2, Informative)
Buy some here http://www.tuxgames.com/ [tuxgames.com], or search google for open source ones. You were kidding, right? Shina...
Re:Linux gaming arena? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, there may not be a great need for 3D acceleration to play games on GNU/Linux, but 3D acceleration comes in handy elsewhere. It will be nice to have it next time I am looking at a surface plot of some scientific data. Or perhaps I want to visualize a model in real-time with OpenGL.
Here is a more concrete example, let's say I am an aerospace engineer and I am using FlightGear [flightgear.org] to model an airplane I am designing (my aerospace engineer friends actually do this). If I want to see and control this model in real-time that 3d acceleration is important here. Right now if you want to do this in GNU/Linux without an Intel video card you have to install proprietary software, which many people find unacceptable.
Re:Linux gaming arena? (Score:5, Informative)
Heck, I've played both WoW and EVE in Wine under FreeBSD. Only problem I had with either is that the galaxy map doesn't work properly in some modes in EVE.
Re:Linux gaming arena? (Score:3, Informative)
They would need good Linux drivers for these cards to eat into NV's pro/workstation market share.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42127 [theinquirer.net]
http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?38812 [techpowerup.com]
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:To develop??? (Score:5, Informative)
So in short, no, they probably don't have driver code that they can just give out.
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:3, Informative)
Both the Unreal 3 engine and the Tech 5 engine can/do use OpenGL. In the case of Unreal 3, a lot of games are already based on this engine. In the case of Tech 5, a lot of games will most likely also use this engine, especially as its got a lot of cross platform support.
A lot of games companies have moved away from rewriting the entire game including a use once 3d engine, every time they want to write a new game. So they have their own 3d engines or they use engines like Unreal 3 or Tech 5 etc...
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, PC gaming is practically a niche when it comes to gaming, especially now that Nintendo released the Wii which appeals to many non-gamers as well. Of course, that might be why Linux rarely gets PC game ports due to being a niche of a niche so to say.
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:5, Informative)
I ask what thousands others have asked: Why not use cross-platform technology in the first place? DirectX is limited to XBox and PCs running Windows. Everything else is OpenGL. Things like SDL handle both just fine.
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:1, Informative)
OpenGL, OpenAL & SDL are a perfectly good replacement for DirectX, with the added bonus that your code is portable.
Re:SVGATextMode enhancement (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:4, Informative)
This will put a lot of pressure on Nvidia. They will have to open up too or become the new stepchild of the Linux community.
Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area? (Score:2, Informative)
Have you actually tried? (Score:3, Informative)
That might be why yours is slow -- WoW can, in fact, be configured to run in OpenGL mode, even the Windows version, meaning there's no translation to run.
If it'd been done right, maybe. It's possible they are running into problems supporting X, which is entirely different than the Mac GUI.
What's more, right now, they cooperate very nicely with the Wine people to make sure everything works, but they aren't required to actually support it. If they were to release a native Linux client, that means they actually have to give it the same level of support that they give Windows, which is more than just "churning out" a client.
I wouldn't mind a Linux port, but I don't think it would actually be much better than what we've got now.