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mJayk
July 4th, 2013, 10:01 AM
Hi all,

Just thought i'd see what other people think about the idea of cloud gaming. For me gaming is the main reason I can't / don't use ubuntu 24/7 however with the recent news about Nvidia's cloud gaming service do people think that this could provide a realistic way to play games on ubuntu.

I know wine etc works but it is not as stable as windows and doesn't provide "good" performance (I believe mainly down to drivers).

Sorry if this doesn't make much sence rushed post :), but would be nice to hear peoples views.

Matt

RonanZer0
July 4th, 2013, 05:04 PM
I agree, I would love to use Linux but I can't because gaming performance does not even CLOSE to match Windows 7 and that's basically all I do except for some coding and videos...(WIN7 Garry's Mod: 200+ FPS Linux Garry's Mod: Less than 5 FPS)

dbass81
July 4th, 2013, 06:56 PM
I really don't know much about "Cloud Gaming". Is it anything like OnLive? OnLive is a service that you can play games over the internet from anywhere, on any device. Linux is starting to get better commercial gaming support. Steam on Linux is a huge step. Steam already has native Linux ports of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead 2

MG&TL
July 4th, 2013, 07:46 PM
Garry's Mod: 200+ FPS Linux Garry's Mod: Less than 5 FPS

Are you sure you have your graphics driver installed properly? I'd expect something more like the ~50-300 FPS range depending on your card.

mJayk
July 4th, 2013, 10:23 PM
I really don't know much about "Cloud Gaming". Is it anything like OnLive? OnLive is a service that you can play games over the internet from anywhere, on any device. Linux is starting to get better commercial gaming support. Steam on Linux is a huge step. Steam already has native Linux ports of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead 2


That's all good and I do think Steam is good for linux, the main problem however is not getting the games running (all IMO) but getting the performance. Older cards (not cards that I would class old) are not supported meaning a kernal downgrade is required and the drivers that do exist are alot worse than the ones made for windows, all in my opinion o.c.

Hopefully Steam and linux having a bigger gaming community will bring better drivers but i doubt it and I'm just wondering if cloud gaming could be the way to go.

mastablasta
July 5th, 2013, 07:29 AM
Older cards (not cards that I would class old) are not supported meaning a kernal downgrade is required and the drivers that do exist are alot worse than the ones made for windows, all in my opinion o.c.
.


yup they (FOSS drivers) definatelly have many features missing. main one is that they usally use CPU to do their work instead of GPU.

however i've read that AMD made a major patch in opensource drivers for kernel 3.9. though they are sitll missing some features they added a lot of them into the opensource driver.

ssam
July 5th, 2013, 05:56 PM
yup they (FOSS drivers) definatelly have many features missing. main one is that they usally use CPU to do their work instead of GPU.

however i've read that AMD made a major patch in opensource drivers for kernel 3.9. though they are sitll missing some features they added a lot of them into the opensource driver.

the opensource drivers do use the GPU.

in general the opensource drivers for older AMD are not too far behind the closed source ones.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_linux_april2013&num=1
if you have the latest gen cards you might want to stick with closed source drivers for now
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_radeonsi_catalyst&num=1

mJayk
July 5th, 2013, 08:20 PM
the opensource drivers do use the GPU.

in general the opensource drivers for older AMD are not too far behind the closed source ones.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_linux_april2013&num=1
if you have the latest gen cards you might want to stick with closed source drivers for now
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_radeonsi_catalyst&num=1

In my opinion they are quite bad for performance I'll try them again soon (not tried them in a while) and hopefully you will be right :)

Gnawnsense
July 6th, 2013, 01:23 AM
Since I'm relatively new to Ubuntu, I can't speak on the FOSS drivers much. I'm one that decided to jump over to Ubuntu in light of the Valve love.

However, I'm running a low-end Radeon 6800 HD using the proprietary drivers that Ubuntu prompted me to use (the updates version). The FPS on the native Steam games was choppy, then I realized I had to enable hardware acceleration manually with the proprietary AMD drivers and now I'm getting 10-15 FPS higher than I was in Windows. Absolutely beautiful and smooth gameplay on all the native titles so far.

My issue with cloud gaming, from my experience with OnLive, has always been latency, and the reduced resolution. I forget what the maximum OnLive resolution is, and I know they increased it since I last played, but if you're sporting a high resolution the gameplay was just unenjoyable due to running in such a low resolution. At 75mbps down and 20mbps up, the amount of mouse lag I dealt with was absolutely unbearable when playing any FPS.

Some games worked better than others. Games that primarily use mouse controls in a twitchy fashion are miserable due to the input lag.

We're definitely on track to better Cloud gaming, and I know there's a few other services out there that might be a bit more enjoyable than OnLive, but there's a reason OnLive tanked so hard. The technology is nearly there, but far enough to really hinder progress for hardcore gamers.

Maybe the Google Fiber will be a game changer in this regard.

zer010
July 7th, 2013, 02:39 PM
I had thought about using Amazon's cloud service to run games, but again it comes down to latency. Perhaps Google Fiber will improve this, but I doubt it will ever match locally installed games. Until Linux is treated as a properly supported gaming OS or Google Fiber proves itself for cloud gaming, I'll still be dual-booting. I don't mind it, it's not like I'm going to be multitasking while playing a game...

mJayk
July 7th, 2013, 07:17 PM
Nice points, I was thinking more along the lines of the nvidia style cloud gaming. I've heard that this improves the lag issue alot, would love it if I could finally play my games on linux.