scribdo
Published
No issues once the controller binding is fixed
By default you can't click on things in the menu with the index controllers. To fix that just launch the game and then choose the custom controller binding by seba for linux, while the game is running. Otherwise you can't see the correct bindings for the game.
Once you are actually in-game, it is definitely enjoyable. The fixes aren't to drastic and you can play the game from start to finish.
gamemoderun %command%
With resolution scaling on quality or above I got very annoying yellow artifacts that popped up randomly accross the scene. Setting it to balanced got rid of it. The tutorial videos were also flickering a little bit, but they are not vital for the gameplay and relatively small.
The game starts with small black bars at the top and bottom. Going into the settings and setting the game to windowed mode and back to fullscreen got rid of the borders. I had to repeat this every time I restarted the game.
Mouse input can sometimes be a little bit jittery, especially with fast movements. In regular gamepay it is not an issue.
Performance was alright, managed to get above 60 fps at 4k with balanced resolution scaling. Some demanding scenes still had unpredictable frametimes and dips below 30 fps.
The game only launches with Proton Experimental or a relatively new version of Proton-GE. Using regular Proton-7, it simply crashes before the splash screen.
Runs perfectly ootb, just needed to enable Legacy Reprojection. Could play the game from start to finish.
Works ootb
Works even better than the first game. The Index controllers worked correctly without tweaking or using third-party bindings.
VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr %command%
By default the mouse could not move far enough to the right, so I could not change settings or anything. Using Proton-GE fixed it. The mouse cursor also changed after using Proton-GE.
Performance with Raytracing is pretty rough in 4k, only playable on Low with FSR Quality.
Works like on Windows, no performance issues. Make sure to run natively, don't use Proton.
Launched in weird windowed/fullscreen mode by default, but for me unlike mentioned by others here I could set it to fullscreen in the settings and it remembered that setting.
Keyboard layout seems to be US only, so y and z are swapped in my case. Needed to change my config based on that, but once that is done it's no big deal. The game also seems to overwrite my config on startup, so I had to set it to read-only to fix that.
Played 2 games of regular matchmaking with friends, no issues at all. Obviously Faceit or other third party AC won't work.
Bonus info: I did not need the steam native runtime even though I am on Arch and others had issues with that. The game worked fine with the regular steam package, but YMMV.
Performance is really bad, to the point where it becomes unplayable, even on high end hardware.
I need to use fullscreen windowed for the window to stay fullscreen on the next launch.
Performance degrades really fast after a few minutes. FPS are hovering at around 90 - 130 at 4k medium settings with huge frametime spikes of about 30 ms and higher. The beta ran way better using dxvk, which isn't available in the official release on Linux.
Multiplayer works just fine, which obviously is the main part of the game.
Atleast on AMD 6000 GPUs the performance is unaccaptable for competitve play. Constant stuttering and frame time inconsistencies make the game not playable for me in the current state. Maybe with further mesa updates and improved vulkan support the game will get better in the future, but for now it is not a good experience on Linux.
Once you are actually in-game it's great. Performance is good, didn't have any issues apart from the error when launching the game.
-novid
As already mentioned by others, by default the game does not load and throws an error saying that SteamVR needs to be restarted. I found several solutions online and it isn't isolated to running on Linux. What fixed it for me was adding -novid to the launch options. Now it starts and loads into the main menu every time (atleast for now) and skips the valve head loading section.
Bonus: Custom levels work out of the box, I tried the locomotive map from the workshop and adding + playing it was as seamless as on windows.
The demo launcher starts, but after hitting launch, the game opens with a black screen and closes after a few seconds.
Played through the whole story without any meaningful issues. No crashes, no freezes, everything was smooth. Highly recommended!
In fights the sounds your character makes sometimes sound like they are coming from behind you which is a bit distracting. Very rarely the dialogue sounded a bit weird and distorted.
No performance issues at 4k very high settings, even in cpu intensive areas it felt smooth. Always had over 60 fps when I was monitoring the framerate.
Needed to install vcrun2022 via protontricks to launch the game
The game is pretty demanding in 4k on my hardware. From what I've seen this probably isn't related to Linux and the game has performance issues on Windows as well. Even with FSR it didn't feel super fluid, but it was at least playable.
Game doesn't launch without setting custom launch option. After that it runs perfectly fine when disabling dynamic shadows.
OPENSSL_ia32cap=~0x20000000 %command%
With Dynamic Shadows enabled I got some stuttering in certain areas. Disabling Dynamic Shadows fixed it for me.
The game closes itself immediately and wouldn't start unless the aforementioned launch option is set. This can be a problem on windows as well afaik.
-dx11
As stated by the other reports, by default the game does not display in your headset. Only the usual VR grid is shown. By launching the game in DX11 mode by adding the -dx11 flag to the launch options, the game is displayed correctly.
I tried running the game with Proton Experimental or GE at first, but with those I only encountered a "Fatal Error". So just run with default Proton and you should be good.
I also tried launching the game using Envision / Monado, which worked as well using the -dx11 flag. Without any launch options I got an error saying dx12 is not supported, which is how I came to the workaround of trying out dx11.
There should probably be an obvious way of launching the game in dx11 mode with a selection screen, like some games do.
Probably the best VR video player on Linux, if you use the old version.
The newest version has issues with video playback. If you want to play a video the screen will stay black.
To fix the playback issue, just use the previous version (v1.0.1) in the beta tab. This version has no issues with video playback afaic.
Game starts for a few seconds, but after that results in a black screen
The game starts up just fine the first time you open it, but after you go into the second tutorial room or into the main menu and hit start it completly locks up. Tried different proton versions but none worked for me. With Proton 5.0-10 the game does not even open at all, nothing happens. Proton GE didn't help either.
Rarely the heads of some npcs would not load correctly or were completely invisible. Reloading the game fixed that.
On launch day Proton Experimental was required to be able to load into the game, but other than I had a great experience playing this game.
Works as expected, no issues whatsoever!
Tip: Delete the video files for the intro as it gets annoying really fast and for some reason I couldn't skip it otherwise.
Crashes and takes down Steam and SteamVR
When starting the game it briefly displays the Bethesda logo and then hangs and crashes Steam and SteamVR completely. I have tried the usual things like Proton GE, Experimental, Proton 7, latest SteamVR beta etc.. , but no success. I don't know what the issue is as it looks like it should work just fine and I do not have this problem with other VR games.
Most games do work and atleast longbow is one of them :) Robot Repair sadly does not work.
Performance in the selection level is a bit hit or miss, but the mini games itself run fine
Robot Repair and Secret Shop do not work, they just get stuck at the loading screen. After that you can't close the game anymore, because SteamVR thinks no game is running for some reason.
Runs great, lovely game!
Works without any issues now. Tested with SteamVR 2.0.8 and Valve Index.
Native Build is fully playable except minor texture issues.
Some textures are flickering/shifting when you are moving the camera around. It's mostly in one area so no big deal.
Once you set it to DX11 it is really enjoyable, no issues whatsoever. Even modding with TW3MM is supported on Linux.
--launcher-skip
While the performance in DX12 mode was alright, switching to DX11 boosted the overall performance quite a bit.
With the default DX12 version of the game I experienced regular full system lockups after a couple hours of gameplay, which required a hard reset. With regular Proton the DX12 version of the game would crash once you load into the game, so I used Proton Hotfix / Proton Experimental.
Regarding Raytracing on AMD: I could activate it in the settings either by using the amdvlk driver or enabling experimental raytracing for radv in the launch options, but once I loaded into the game it just froze completely.
To skip the annoying launcher and run the game straight with DX11 just follow this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901620579
Modding also works if you use TW3MM from Github: https://github.com/Systemcluster/The-Witcher-3-Mod-manager I played through the 2nd half of the game using the Gervant First Person Mod without any problems.
The game works flawlessly apart from small overlay issue
When I opened the SteamVR Dashboard the game remained blurry even after I closed it. I disabled the Steam Overlay in the settings for the game and after that the issue went away. Now I can open the SteamVR Dashboard and even after I close it the game remains sharp as usual.
Played an hour of 4v4 custom multiplayer, worked without any issues. I used discord to communicate so did not test the ingame voice chat.
Runs without any tinkering, performance is maybe not 100% perfect
Slight performance problems in some areas at 4k high settings, not quite sure if proton related or not as I haven't played the game on windows. Still very playable for a game of this type.
The game works fine as long as you don't open the SteamVR Dashboard. But even then your current run is saved so nothing to lose really.
Crashes with an error message when opening SteamVR Overlay. Can't open the game again until SteamVR is restarted.
The game itself runs perfectly fine, but a video playback issue prevents you from continuing after about an hour of gameplay.
The game uses Electra Media Player (part of UE4) which causes a video to not play when using Proton. I tried Proton GE, mf-install, mf-installcab and installing mf through protontricks.
After about an hour into the game you need to play a vhs tape that should display on a TV in-game. Unfortunately this triggers a scene to progress further. Therefore you can't continue in the game, and all the fixes I could think of did not work to solve that. The video files are .mp4 but I think it's a problem with UE4 and Proton/Wine that prevents the video from playing.
The video playback issue aside, the game runs great. Default settings were at Ultra with FSR enabled. It looks amazing and I did not experience any frame drops or issues up until that point. But until this is fixed I wouldn't recommend the game sadly. Maybe a future Proton version will do it, when the whole WMF thing is finally fixed.
