CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Hey guys!

First off, great product! The IE support means I can test my web sites in IE under Linux.

I have CrossOver Games (trial - want to buy). I installed Steam and HL2 via DVD and while it works, the framerate is poor compared to running it natively under Windows, and the available screen resolutions in-game do not include all the resolutions supported by my video card and monitor. My system is a Pentium D 3.0Ghz, geForce 8800GT (512MB), and 2.5GB RAM.

Is there a simple solution to this, or can I just not expect the kind of performance I can get under Windows for these games?

Thanks for your help!

Hi,
can you give some more details? Which framerates do you get on Windows, which on CrossOver?

The screen resolutions are X11's job. If they are missing in CrossOver, they're missing in your X11 configuration.

One thing that has a negative impact on framerates in CrossOver is HDR rendering. Having it enabled causes a drastic framerate drop. We're working on that. There are a few more effects in the game(most importantly the shields on top of the walls) that are inefficient in CrossOver; Fixing that is also on our list.

Ok, I just checked it out. In Windows, the framerate is between 190 and 260 FPS in confined areas, and 80-140 FPS in large areas.

Under crossover, it's 50-70 in confined areas and as low as 15 FPS in large areas. HDR is disabled.

For the screen resolutions, how would X11 not be configured for 1440x900 if that is the resolution I'm using on my desktop?

jfeaz wrote:

Ok, I just checked it out. In Windows, the framerate is between 190
and 260 FPS in confined areas, and 80-140 FPS in large areas.

Under crossover, it's 50-70 in confined areas and as low as 15 FPS
in large areas. HDR is disabled.

This does not sound right for sure. Did you check if there's any other process eating CPU time?

jfeaz wrote:

For the screen resolutions, how would X11 not be configured for
1440x900 if that is the resolution I'm using on my desktop?

Did you set the resolution type to widescreen in Half Life 2? That's the dropdown box below the resolution box, on the same window.

CPU usage is normal, and I did change the aspect ratio setting in HL2 to widescreen. Still couldn't get 1440x900.

I have a question though...maybe I shouldn't have installed the 64-bit version of OpenSUSE 11.0 on my Pentium D system? Hardware acceleration seems choppy all around, not just under CrossOver. Could this be a factor? Should I switch to 32-bit?

Another question: I have an Amazon.com gift card I'd like to use to purchase CrossOver, but all I could find on Amazon was CrossOver Mac. Is there any way to use the card?

Maybe you don't have some 32 bit compatibility libraries installed, so every 32 bit application is falling back to indirect rendering?

I've asked Jeremy to comment on the Amazon gift card issue.

jfeaz wrote:

Another question: I have an Amazon.com gift card I'd like to use to
purchase CrossOver, but all I could find on Amazon was CrossOver
Mac. Is there any way to use the card?

Sorry, but I'm afraid not.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Well, I installed the 32-bit version of OpenSUSE 11.0 and I bought a copy of Crossover Pro Linux, but the framerate is still unplayable, even with all the detail settings on low and HDR disabled. Do you have any ideas?

There's one thing you can try: Start up our registry editor using ~/cxgames/bin/wine --bottle=<bottle> regedit . Then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D. In there, create a new string value named "OffscreenRenderingMode" and set it to "fbo" (all without the quotes). This can help to improve certain screen readbacks on your card, which can slow down HL2 considerably.

The drawback is that this causes instability on non-nvidia cards, and on MacOS, and it tends to crash on Laptops with Nvidia cards. But it seems to me that you have none of that, so it should work for you.

There is no Direct3D key under "Wine"

Just to verify, I went to the "run windows command" shortcut and typed "~/cxgames/bin/wine --bottle=<winxp> regedit"

The editor opened but I could not locate the Direct3D key. There is a "Wine" folder (HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine) which contains a number of other folders.

Actually, use --bottle=winxp rather than --bottle=<winxp>

If they key doesn't exist, just create it.

I guess I'm starting to become a PITA, but adding that string value did not seem to improve performance. I just installed a Core 2 Duo as well, and it really speeeds things up in Windows, but does not seem to help in CrossOver.

I'd recommend you to see if HL2 gets enough CPU time. In a process monitor like 'top' the CPU time used by HL2.exe should be close to 100%.

Note that dxlevel 90 support is not as efficient as it is on Windows yet, and especially with higher resolutions CrossOver can be noticeably slower than Windows. It should not be as extreme as in your case, but for testing purposes it is worth testing the performance in dxlevel 81 for comparison.

How would I go about using top to determine hl2 cpu time while i'm in the game? I quickly switched to the KDE system monitor from HL2, and it showed 37% for that process and quickly went down to 2%. So I can only assume I was getting a reading that didn't really represent what the process gets while i'm actually playing.

also, the drop-down in the game menu for the directx level is grayed out so that only 9 is available. how would i change this?

You'd have to run the game in a window. HL2 throttles itself when it loses focus, so you cannot use fullscreen mode to debug this, unless you ssh into your computer via network.

You cannot change the dxlevel in-game. You have to edit the startup options(right click on the game in steam -> properties -> command line options) and add "-dxlevel 81" for example. (without the quotes)

1) Adding the dxlevel 81 parameter improved performance significantly. However, it's still noticeably slower than in Windows.

2) CPU usage for HL2.exe ranges from 37% to 45%