Let me preface this by saying that I believe Microsoft is really ahead in the cloud game, and that if Xbox seemed to be going to die at some point in time, that's certainly not the case at all. The effort Microsoft is putting on making sure Xbox and Bethesda games run on the Steam Deck, or the (albeit very limited) xCloud support on the device, are a very good thing indeed and I believe that spirit will really make Xbox flourish not just as a console platform, but as a videogame and entertainment platform as a whole. Being able to play my Xbox games with full graphic fidelity on my Samsung TV is something I really look forward (I don't have a Series X, but that doesn't mean I cannot he a member of the Xbox community, and that's fantastic).
I am not, though, a Windows user. It's not like I hate Windows, but I like open source a lot (and Microsoft seems to do so too), and I like the flexibility and performance a Linux OS brings to my computer. My laptop is an 8th gen i7 U with an Nvidia MX150, so, although it's not a powerhouse, it can run xCloud with absolutely no issues at all. On Windows (both the app and Edge), the game runs simply phenomenal. On both the quality is just amazing, everything's sharp, everything's rendered perfectly at an excellent resolution. God, if that's how it's supposed to look, it's damn good. On the app the input lag is non-existent but there's some stutter sometimes. On Edge, the lag is minimal (I could play Fornite without problems and be the 2nd) and the looks are freaking amazing. It's perfect, really.
However, when I boot Linux on that computer (I leave Windows just in case in one of the two NVMEs the laptop has) and run xCloud...
Well, the resolution is much worse, even if it's the same browser (Edge). Like if I were playing some 720 game, instead of 1080. There are sometimes stutters when the game is loading some stuff (I noticed this in Gears 5, and I cannot say this doesn't happen in Windows as I haven't tried Gears on Windows that much). But for what is worth and what I am sure of is that the graphic fidelity on Linux is significantly worse. I also had a shitty ChromeOS tablet (Lenovo Chromebook Duet) which is pretty bad, and it was just unusuable on Gears.
I am disappointed. I am a knowledgeable person, so I am aware of the issues with video hardware acceleration on Linux. That shouldn't be a problem in ChromeOS, but my tablet is pretty bad (a 2018 low/mid range mediatek chip for android phones), so I concede that maybe it may have something to do (if anyone else is running xCloud on a Chromebook and want to share their experience, they're absolutely very much welcome). So, I don't know if this is a problem with Edge on Linux, if Microsoft is throttling the quality for non-windows devices, if edge for Windows has some kind of special codec/functionality, or if it's simply that if xCloud detects a software decoder it lowers the quality to ensure performance. In any case, given that Microsoft has the power to control the browser even on Linux, I feel something should be done here.
We may not be a lot now, but Linux is improving a lot in gaming. Having a native Linux app (that'd be dope!) or at least fixing the quality on Edge Linux and supporting it officially (I mean, you guys have instructions for the Deck and don't display any "unsupported" warning when playing on Linux with Edge, so you know it works there...) would be something I believe many Linux gamers would appreciate. And in the end, that's more customers and goodwill for you. It doesn't seem so difficult.
Submitted by jorgesgk | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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