I've been reading on CHW the article about the success Valve has just had with the Left 4 Dead 2 port on Linux.
The thing is, they recently managed to make a successful port of the game, meaning it officially ran completely on Linux, but at 6 FPS (frames per second), which for a port, at a development level, is perfect because generally they don't even bother to run it on the first try; this one ran at 6 FPS on the first try, great.
Once they had achieved this, they needed to start testing and comparing—you know, the traditional benchmarking. The first run was performed on a PC with an Intel Core i7 3930k, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, and 32 GB of RAM —one of those machines that needs Slitaz to run, lol…
Then they had to take three important steps to improve game performance:
- Improve integration with the kernel
- Work on Integration with the OpenGL API
- Improve Video Card Drivers
They successfully completed the first two steps, but the third depends not on them but on the owners of the drivers, although that was not a problem because immediately after Valve's request to have engineers from AMD, Intel and Nvidia within the work center, the companies responded, in their words, with the best possible disposition and the process of improving and eliminating bugs in the drivers of the three companies was very fast.
All of this paid off. On the aforementioned platform, running Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit, L4D2 ran at 276.6 FPS —zero lag and delay, every gamer's dream. On Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit, without optimization, it ran at 6 FPS… but after optimization: 315 FPS! … BOOM! HEADSHOT!
All of this proves one thing: OpenGL can run games on Linux at very high speeds, and proprietary drivers on Linux do have real potential; they just needed a real incentive…