Antialiasing in Linux

[Atomica]

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Edited August 2, 2018 by Atomica

[kano]

Do you use nvidia-settings? It is a program on Linux to configure the nvidia card.

 

In there, you will find options for anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering/rendering quality. You can set them to "application default", off, or force override them with specific values.

[OrbWeaver]

I've never seen in-game antialiasing settings work in Linux, although I have no idea why. I assume it's because there is no standard way to communicate such settings to the driver, since antialiasing settings are not part of the standard OpenGL spec.

 

As kano says, you need to set this option in your driver control panel instead.

[Atomica]

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Edited August 2, 2018 by Atomica

[OrbWeaver]

I've seen AA work for other games in Linux so there must be a method. Also if there's no way to do it as part of the standard OpenGL spec, how does TDM manage it in Windows? How do other OpenGL games manage it? Is it got something to do with OpenGL extensions and there's like something specific to various card vendors?

 

I don't know the exact details because I haven't looked at the code. It was just a guess based largely on the fact that the game was released in 2004, and Linux support wasn't a first-class citizen at the time of release (in fact as I recall ID Software didn't even support AMD drivers at all when the first Linux version appeared — it was nVidia or GTFO).

 

It looks like there are some standard ways to enable AA on Linux/OpenGL, either by setting render context options or by rendering to an FBO.

 

https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Multisampling

 

No doubt someone with sufficient expertise could get these techniques working with TDM but I don't know if there are any actual Mod developers working on Linux at the moment.

[nbohr1more]

2.06 has FBO but we don't properly specify it for MSAA.

You can, however, set the render resolution higher than the FBO

resolution for a DSR \ SSAA effect. 1.5x resolution is somewhere

between 2xMSAA and 4xMSAA.

 

There are plans to add FXAA shaders after 2.06 so that cheap\high performance

AA will be available to all. If Linux has anything like Reshade you could

try FXAA that way too.

[Atomica]

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Edited August 2, 2018 by Atomica

[stgatilov]

... but I don't know if there are any actual Mod developers working on Linux at the moment.

This is the main source of problems with Linux version: there is no programmer who lives on Linux daily.

People who never run native Linux cannot change things like glx-specific antialiasing.

[Atomica]

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Edited August 2, 2018 by Atomica

[OrbWeaver]

Well I can't blame people for not wanting to use Linux as their daily driver, especially if they're gamers. It does seem disappointing that given all the work Valve and the community have done to try to make Linux more enticing an OS for anyone pissed off with Windows/Microsoft shenanigans, it's still statistically insignificant in terms of desktop usage. I was kinda hoping we'd have more diversity in terms of desktop usage by 2018, but that just hasn't happened.

 

I use Linux as my daily desktop, but even I reboot into Windows if I want to play games. It's certainly nice to discover a game supports Linux (TDM even runs on the open-source AMD drivers, which is great, although the engine dates from 2004 so it is hardly likely to tax modern GPUs), but the majority of games are Windows only so I rarely invest time in maintaining my Linux desktop as a gaming environment.

 

The thing is though, desktop on the whole is on its way out. The average non-gaming user is more likely to be using a smart device or tablet these days, not a Windows desktop, and since most tablets are either iOS or Android, the Windows monopoly essentially has ended, just not in the way desktop users would like.

[Oktokolo]

 

I use Linux as my daily desktop, but even I reboot into Windows if I want to play games.

Me too. Only Factorio i play on my Gentoo.

 

I don't think, the gaming community has the option to clinch to Windows much longer though. Windows was the perfect gaming environment but Microsoft seems to be willing to kill it. They do what they can to make it a hostile plattform for gamers. Seems odd because the gaming community loved to use Windows before 8 and 10.

Windows 7 will stop receiving security updates in January 2020. By then we should have switched to something else.

 

React OS does not look like it will be ready for AAA-Gaming by then. So its either OS X or Linux. Installing OS X on mainstream PC hardware still is for experts only - while today everyone and her aunt can install Ubuntu on any PC...