New DirectX7 emulation tool brings more games to Steam Deck, SteamOS, and other Linux distros through Vulkan, with caveats
Not all DirectX 7 games will work with D7VK emulation.
DirectX emulation is the way Linux gamers are running Windows-only games on Linux OSes, thanks to tools such as DXVK. But up until now, DXVK has only supported DirectX 8 and newer. That is now changing; an independent developer has taken up the work of creating their own DirectX 7-to-Vulkan emulation tool, dubbed D7VK (via Phoronix).
D7VK is a spin-off of DXVK, which uses DXVK's DirectX 9 emulation backend and Wine's DDRAW implementation (for Linux, specifically) to create a "minimal d3d7-on-d3d9" implementation. This makes D7VK a two-stage translation layer that translates DX7 calls to DX9 calls, then translates those DX9 calls to Vulkan.
There's a chance the developer could have created a straight DX7-to-Vulkan translation tool, but that likely would have taken significantly more work and time to develop. Instead, the developer is taking advantage of as much of DXVK's existing codebase to add DX7 compatibility.
However, due to DirectX 7's age (it launched in 1999), the developer warned of limited game support. Not all DX7 games will work with D7VK due to the way DX7 games were developed back then. According to the developer, DX7 titles that mix and match DirectX 7 with older DDraw versions (besides version 7), and/or with GDI are not expected to work ever.
Furthermore, the developer also answered the question of whether or not they would support DirectX 6 or older versions, to which they emphatically answered no.
DirectX 7 is ancient by gaming API standards, originally launching in 1999. The API was responsible for powering many of the early 2000s titles, including the original Counter-Strike, FIFA 2001, Deus Ex, and Unreal Tournament. Version 7 was responsible for introducing hardware-accelerated transformation and lighting, and diverting those tasks to the GPU rather than the CPU.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
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Amdlova Some games even with windows xp 32bits have some kind of issue. I use the dxvoodoo2 to make more compatible.Reply
Some direct-x 6 games only works with voodoo and mambo jambo shanigams... -
ezst036 Its so wonderful to see Microsoft's gaming empire slowly crumble right before its eyes.Reply
Shortly before Valve announced its foray into Linux gaming a little over a decade ago, if people would have said "When Linux comes to make its heavy inroads into the desktop, it will be gaming where Linux does this" nobody would've believed that.
Yet here it is. Gaming is where Linux is slowly, slowly but surely taking down Windows. Just recently Linux marked 3% on the Steam survey and it wasn't all that long ago that Linux first crossed over 2%. The trend line has a distinct direction: up. -
thisisaname Gaming on Linux at least it is not all down to the steam deck.Reply
After the steam deck it took 7 quarter to make 2% and another 7 to make 3% in another 14 quarter it may get to 5%.
As for Microsoft's gaming empire slowly crumbling it is doing so very very slowly -
TerryLaze Reply
Yes! DirectX 7 games, the last greatest bastion of windows gaming.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ezst036 said:Its so wonderful to see Microsoft's gaming empire slowly crumble right before its eyes. -
LordVile Reply
It’s never going to gain significant market share unless they open up the OS to desktops and make it easy to install. Linux as an OS is a pain to use and requires more troubleshooting than actually using the thing until you’re years into using it.ezst036 said:Its so wonderful to see Microsoft's gaming empire slowly crumble right before its eyes.
Shortly before Valve announced its foray into Linux gaming a little over a decade ago, if people would have said "When Linux comes to make its heavy inroads into the desktop, it will be gaming where Linux does this" nobody would've believed that.
Yet here it is. Gaming is where Linux is slowly, slowly but surely taking down Windows. Just recently Linux marked 3% on the Steam survey and it wasn't all that long ago that Linux first crossed over 2%. The trend line has a distinct direction: up. -
richardnpaul Reply
Linux seems to be making big moves elsewhere, as stats elsewhere are showing with 5 or 6% penetration. With 90% odd of games working one way or another now and over 50% just basically working without effort this means that you don't really need to dual boot to game as you should just be able to do so on Linux the majority of the time.ezst036 said:Its so wonderful to see Microsoft's gaming empire slowly crumble right before its eyes.
Shortly before Valve announced its foray into Linux gaming a little over a decade ago, if people would have said "When Linux comes to make its heavy inroads into the desktop, it will be gaming where Linux does this" nobody would've believed that.
Yet here it is. Gaming is where Linux is slowly, slowly but surely taking down Windows. Just recently Linux marked 3% on the Steam survey and it wasn't all that long ago that Linux first crossed over 2%. The trend line has a distinct direction: up.
The more time that users spend in Linux then the more that they will show up in various stats, the more proficient they become and the more that they will promote it to family and friends. If management at MS is not having flashbacks to when Firefox and Chrome just stripped the browser dominance market away from them over the matter of a few years then they either weren't around at the time or they're just so far detatched from reality it's gobsmacking. Given motivation markets can switch relatively rapidly just because of social network effects and 5 - 6% should worry MS a lot because that's a lot of people potentially converting people to Linux because the PC they're being asked about doesn't support an upgrade to W11.
Then the normies start to tell the other normies that they got moved to Linux and depending on individual experiences that can lead to further propagation. This is how IE was losing 10% market share per year over a number of years, but this time it would be from an actual revenue stream . -
LordVile Reply
Literally norichardnpaul said:Linux seems to be making big moves elsewhere, as stats elsewhere are showing with 5 or 6% penetration. With 90% odd of games working one way or another now and over 50% just basically working without effort this means that you don't really need to dual boot to game as you should just be able to do so on Linux the majority of the time.
The more time that users spend in Linux then the more that they will show up in various stats, the more proficient they become and the more that they will promote it to family and friends. If management at MS is not having flashbacks to when Firefox and Chrome just stripped the browser dominance market away from them over the matter of a few years then they either weren't around at the time or they're just so far detatched from reality it's gobsmacking. Given motivation markets can switch relatively rapidly just because of social network effects and 5 - 6% should worry MS a lot because that's a lot of people potentially converting people to Linux because the PC they're being asked about doesn't support an upgrade to W11.
Then the normies start to tell the other normies that they got moved to Linux and depending on individual experiences that can lead to further propagation. This is how IE was losing 10% market share per year over a number of years, but this time it would be from an actual revenue stream . -
richardnpaul Reply
What lengths would you go to to continue to continue use old unsupported hardware with a supported versionof Windows, so W11? Would they too be ridiculous?brandon9271 said:Constantly amazed at the ridiculous lengths that people go to not use Windows.. 😂