Hardware Accelerated Unreal Engine 3 Now Runs On Linux – Within Limits
It has been possible to run Unreal Engine 3 on Linux, but only by using the Wine emulator, which means performance and compatibility weren’t exactly stellar. However, since UE3 has been ported to Flash, it’s now possible to run it with graphics hardware acceleration – within limits.
Adobe has added graphics hardware acceleration support to Flash, with their Stage 3D low-level API. However, since they have since abandoned Flash support for Linux, Stage 3D never made it to Linux. Game over, right? Not quite. Google has stepped up to the plate by adding the missing Stage 3D hardware support in their Chrome browser as part of their commitment to Flash on Linux, giving some support to UE3 with hardware acceleration, offering decent frame rates. The gaming scene on Linux is looking up overall however, since we reported that Valve is interested in Linux gaming and has ported Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux, where it actually ran faster than on Windows – and without any limits or outside help.
The UE3-based Epic Citadel demo runs in Flash with hardware acceleration on any Windows web browser and with Google Chrome only on Linux. It can be tried out, here.
The good news though is that with Google taking over maintaining Flash for Linux within their Chrome web-browser, they have gone ahead and implemented the hardware support for Stage 3D that works on Linux. Stage 3D support is currently disabled by default in Chrome, but it can be easily toggled. After enabling the support within Chrome and ignoring any GPU black-listing, the Unreal Engine 3 demos work on Linux under Flash.
There’s this Phoronix Forums thread where Unreal Engine 3 via Stage 3D is being discussed. It looks like a few bugs remain though with some texture problems and other issues while some aren’t seeing any problems.
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