PixelFormat errors

[nepenthes]

Hi,
It seems Wine (from 1.4 to the latest 1.5.x versions) is broken with many games on Optimus (with Bumblebee and Optirun) laptops.
I'm getting errors with Rage, Team Fortress 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2... These games crash complaining about "Pixel Format". These games run fine on my other computers. Some other games (Half Life 2, Portal, Supreme commander 2, Dead Space... run fine even with Bumblebee)

Last time I talked with Wine devs (about Rage), they told me it was an Bumblebee issue, and, as I understand it, even refused to really investigate (I'm able to use debug builds, post bug reports, and anything they would need from me).

What can I do to get someone interested in the issue, at least interested enough to be sure it is really a Bumblebee issue and not a Wine bug that could be fixed by Wine devs ?

[lahmbi5678]

Hi,

there aren't many wine devs hanging around here, you could ask on wine-devel mailing list, but if you already talked to wine devs, you shouldn't expect too much.

One thing you could try if the games in question are using launchers starting others executables would be something like the guy in http://zipizap.wordpress.com/2012/03/12 ... bumblebee/ did. He wrote a script which makes sure, that a game (HL2) launched by a launcher.exe keeps using the "right" device, even if the launcher starts another .exe. In one comment on that page somebody mentions, that he simply started a bash with optirun, which should keep every .exe started inside that bash on the same device. To be honest, I have no idea, if that applies to your case, and if this approach would work.

[André H.]

These games crash complaining about "Pixel Format".

Is that a message from the game or a console output from Wine (like a fixme or something)?

[nepenthes]

Both : Rage has its own debug console if the exe fails, and wine console too can be of interest. KOTOR II and Team Fortress only give wine console output. (setPixelFormat error , it isn't always the same error message, but the PixelFormat thing is always there)

The issue with Rage has been documented here http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28730 .
I first thought this was only a Rage bug, and i only recently installed TF 2 and Kotor 2. It bothers me as long as these 3 games are supposed to be platinium.

There have been some changes in the latest version of VirtualGL about Pixel Formats and openGL extensions, perhaps this will help with Wine. If not, it would be nice to have some support from Wine devs, as something important concerning openGL and Optimus cmputers is happening here and nobody seems to know exactly what's wrong.

The issue with launchers and graphics card switch is mainly with native apps. Once Wine has been launched with optirun, it's good (except for Crysis iirc). In most cases this has been fixed with Bumblebee 3.0.

[lahmbi5678]

One interesting question might be, would the issue happen with 32bit linux, too? I didn't read the whole bug report, so excuse me if that question is answered there.

[nepenthes]

I really don't know. My optimus laptop has only a 64 bit Ubuntu installed, so I can't tell.
My 32 bit openGL setup seems right for native games, but I'm not sure exactly how Wine detects 32 bit OpenGL or interacts with Bumblebee.