Q:Graphic Manipulation within WINE?

[Simon of Aragon]

There are a lot of 3rd party tools that manipulate and control DirectX for windows. Some of these will spoof a GPU, in other words, it will tell the application you have the GPU it wants even if you don't. Others will allow you to run 3D applications in wire frame mode.

Since WINE doesn't use DirectX (in most cases) I assume it would be quicker to eliminate any 3rd party tool and just ask WINE to these things for you. Is there a GPU tweak to use? Am I looking at obtaining a special version of WINE to perform 3D tweaks? Maybe yet, I should be looking for a Linux 3rd party tool to tweak the graphics between WINE and my Linux OS?

No hurry on answers, just wanted to experiment and thought I would ask here first.

[Bob Wya]

There are a lot of 3rd party tools that manipulate and control DirectX for windows. Some of these will spoof a GPU, in other words, it will tell the application you have the GPU it wants even if you don't. Others will allow you to run 3D applications in wire frame mode.

Since WINE doesn't use DirectX (in most cases) I assume it would be quicker to eliminate any 3rd party tool and just ask WINE to these things for you. Is there a GPU tweak to use? Am I looking at obtaining a special version of WINE to perform 3D tweaks? Maybe yet, I should be looking for a Linux 3rd party tool to tweak the graphics between WINE and my Linux OS?

No hurry on answers, just wanted to experiment and thought I would ask here first.

Far I'm not aware of any patched version of Wine (including CrossOver) that support more graphical setting manipulation than the standard registry keys that Wine exposes:
WineHQ FAQ: Useful Registry Keys
The main, actively developed patch-sets, are like Gallium Nine (providing a non-translated DirectX API) or CSMT (multi-threaded command streams), designed purely to support greater performance, etc.

Anything else and you'd probably be looking at patching Wine a bit... That wouldn't be too hard - if you have experience of OpenGL and/or DirectX calls. The code is pure C and reasonably clearly laid out.

Bob

[Simon of Aragon]

Thanks Bob, I am afraid my profession of choice was doctor and not a programmer. I wanted to be sure there wasn't something already built or in the works before asking about rebuilding a whole new WINE or reinventing the wheel. I am aware of the registry settings and thank you for pointing those out as others reading this thread may not be aware.

To clarify, back in the old days of Windows, I used a program called uMod. This allows the user to access the 3D graphics within any game running under DirectX. uMod is built in such a fashion to exchange textures without messing with the actual game itself. This is a brief video on how the tool works.

The original was called Textmod specifically for Tomb Raider. However no code was released and the program depreciated over time. The open source version is able to use higher versions of DirectX and was recreated by scratch, thus the new name uMod for "Universal Modding". It has also been used with online games, since it is not editing the game but the DirectX.

This is one of the few tools I miss out having to customize my gaming experience. I am curious, if WINE could be shaped in such a way, to "dumb down" the needed graphics for any current high end game for older outdated machines. Such a version would just mainly cater to people who prefer performance over eye candy. It could also be used to improve older game graphics on high performance machines as well.

Thanks again.