Where are the Good Open Source Games?

[H_TeXMeX_H]

They're better than NVIDIA, IMO.

I seriously doubt that ... based on my experiences with ATI ... no they weren't good. Out of 3 ATI cards I've had in the past, all 3 of them had major problems. The first ATI card, an All-in-Wonder had major campatibility issues with just about every game I played. The last 2 were both mobility radeons ... the first one burned for no particular reason after bouts of "failure to draw" errors that caused the monitor to blank out. The second mobility radeon has the same types of errors, but it didn't burn ... yet. (and no it isn't my fault ... I even bought a laptop cooler just in case it wasn't properly ventilating) On the other hand, I've never had a single problem with any nvidia card ... of course I've heard people tell me a story exactly opposite of the one I'm telling ... so I dunno. Anyone know of a better video card company ?

[piratePenguin]

I seriously doubt that ... based on my experiences with ATI ... no they weren't good. Out of 3 ATI cards I've had in the past, all 3 of them had major problems. The first ATI card, an All-in-Wonder had major campatibility issues with just about every game I played. The last 2 were both mobility radeons ... the first one burned for no particular reason after bouts of "failure to draw" errors that caused the monitor to blank out. The second mobility radeon has the same types of errors, but it didn't burn ... yet. (and no it isn't my fault ... I even bought a laptop cooler just in case it wasn't properly ventilating) On the other hand, I've never had a single problem with any nvidia card ...

Whoa, that's pretty bad. Never heard of anything like it before.

Anyone know of a better video card company ?

Yup

[worker201]

- use a free driver for NVIDIA cards that has hardware acceleration (which I couldn't do because the DRI project aren't making a driver for NVIDIA cards because NVIDIA ain't providing the doc's they need. :fu: NVIDIA!).

What a bunch of asswipes.  That is so limp, not releasing engineering specifications.  They think somebody is going to use their technical documents to start making knock-off cards?  Whatever.  By the time some mystery graphics card manufacturer has retooled their entire shop to copy the card design, it will be outdated.  Wider support for cards = wider demand for cards.  They release the docs, they make more money - it really is that simple.  Like I have said before, release the docs in a licensed checkout way, so you can keep track of who is using the docs.  This would help NVidia keep an eye on copycats, and help (or exchange ideas with) driver developers.   As the market shifts farther away from Windows (as I am sure it will continue to do), they will have to get with the program eventually.  Why not start now?

btw, I have had pretty good luck with my Radeon 9500, which came in my office Dell.  I don't play games, but I do use Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and gimp a lot.  I don't know if that helps you or not.  All hardware has a fanbase and a hatebase and an idontgiveafuckbase.

[piratePenguin]

Like I have said before, release the docs in a licensed checkout way, so you can keep track of who is using the docs.  This would help NVidia keep an eye on copycats, and help (or exchange ideas with) driver developers.

ATi did that with their cards up to the 9200 (no idea what happened after that). The "developer program" was available to the DRI guys on a case-by-case basis, and after agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement (source).

btw, I have had pretty good luck with my Radeon 9500, which came in my office Dell.  I don't play games, but I do use Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and gimp a lot.  I don't know if that helps you or not.

Good good.

[Pathos]

http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php?license=free

not all open source but some good ones.

[piratePenguin]

Well, I'm using my brothers Radeon 9800 Pro ATM and spend ~10 hours in all getting hardware rendering working (compiled Xorg-7.0-RC3 about three damn times. Also Mesa and libdrm (direct rendering manager, for DRI, nothing to do with evil-DRM). Didn't have to apply any patches. And I don't think I could've possibly ran into any more problems.). I know it works because glxgears appears to fuck everything up when I run it

UDPATE: glxgears only fucks up about 5+ seconds into it, and according to it's output before the crash, I get an FPS of 1600+! I get an FPS of 350+ in armagatron-advanced (against one bot). This driver ain't so bad after you get used to hitting reset every two and a half seconds. bzflag won't load atall.
Alot of these hangs could be due to the fact that the radeon 9800 driver is even relitevely unstable. I'm gonna get a 9600, if I can.

[WMD]

1,600 on a 9800?  My FX5700 gets around 3,000....

[solemnwarning]

My MX4000 is getting around 620

[WMD]

Awful.  I remember an MX 440 getting 900. :p

[solemnwarning]

Awful.  I remember an MX 440 getting 900. :p

bah

[mobrien_12]

I'm also not happy about the fact that Nvidia won't release their specs.  ATI does, but only for a limited number of the weaker radeons (I've tried the open source drivers on a Notebook's ATI Radeon... not perfect but OK).  

I'm not sure why they won't release their specs.  It really won't give away a competitative advantage IMHO (then again, I don't engineer GPUs).  I've heard that one of the biggest reasons is the messed up patent system of the US.  GPU manufacturers don't want to release their specs because then some idiot  will look through them and say "oh you are infringing on my patent, give me lots of money that I didn't earn."

[worker201]

Another issue is that those GPUs are in super-secret machines, and knowing about them could give away their secrets.  For example, the original X-box had its hidden system code sitting inside the GPU, which was a modified GeForce.  Who knows what other ridiculous crap hides in there?

[piratePenguin]

Holy sweet mother of fuck, the Open-Graphics project is actually coming along, so in a few months I could be using a card with performance comparable to that of the 9600 (just what I want), while only supporting an actually sane manufacturer (and it should be a nice card (and some nice code) to play about with, too). Check out the FAQ and the feature list if you're interested.

In other news, ATi have stated they will not release any information about their hardware to developers of free drivers in the foreseeable future. But of course, nobody cares (is there any wonder they're doing this?).

[Aloone_Jonez]

http://www.liberatedgames.com/

[Orethrius]

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