GP4 on Linux

Hi,

Will GP4 run smoothly on Ubuntu Linux? I'm thinking about getting Ubuntu, and would like to know if programs that run perfectly on Windows will run on Linux.

Thanks,

msater

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Yes, you can emule Windows in Linux, you can play a lot of games in Ubuntu. I played FIFA08, and GP4 too. One program what i use its Cedega, and other could be Wine.

Cheers

Do you know if there is a program which you can use that will run Windows programs on Ubuntu? I use the animation program Blender, I would like to know if this would work on Linux/Ubuntu. Or will Cedega/Wine do that as well as games?

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Cedega its for games, and Wine its a Windows emulator. So i think you can run programs for Windows in Wine.

lucasmendez8 schreef:
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> Cedega its for games, and Wine its a Windows
> emulator. So i think you can run programs for
> Windows in Wine.


Wine Is Not an Emulator

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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

there's Cedega and cross over games by codeweavers but both are enhanced versions of wine... but I personally never really had the chance to test

PЯuИNИ



[prunn.wordpress.com]

Ok, so I´ve got Linux (Ubuntu). I have installed GP4, but it runs extremely slowly. I´m guessing this is because it´s made for Windows, but I trying to run it on Ubuntu. I am running it on WINE, I haven´t check out Cedega yet. I will report back when I have tried it on Cedega.

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10 year bump.

So, what's the consensus these days? Is anyone out there running GP4 on Linux and if so, what is your experience?

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

I already did this a few years ago, but for testing purposes and it was the standard installation only. if it were to use some linux distribution nowadays, I would use kubuntu 64 bits (which I use in a VM)

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2018 12:22PM by phantaman.

Have been running GP4 on 64-bit (and 32-bit) PCLinuxOS under WINE (on a seven year old PC) for a while; full GFX, loads of mods etc.

It's perfect, with plenty of CPU cycles to spare for compressing audio, downloading or playing mp3s etc.

Just make sure to have MSVCRT.DLL, MFC42.DLL and binkw32.dll available (I put them in the game folder). I think GPxPatch needs them.

I also put dsetup.dll in there too (but I can't remember why).

As an aside, I do need to maintain a VirtualBox XP partition so I can use GP4 Builder, SlimTex & TeamEditor3.5 and CSM - all of which I can't get to work properly in Linux. GP4 will run easily in VirtualBox, but it's too slow to be of much use.

While I'm here, making my first post, THANKS to everyone for all the tremendous improvements that have been made since I gave up gaming just after GP4 came out. Rediscovering the game after getting sick last year has been far more fun than the ten minutes of nostalgia I expected it to be.

I've found the same - I can't get CSM to work, but the game itself runs. Much slower when run through GPxPatch than "native" though, which is a shame.

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

When you say 'native' TomMK, do you mean running GP4.EXE (via WINE) without GPxPatch - or are you comparing it to Windows? I think you mean the former, so you might want to check that you have "All" selected in the Compatibility field under the GPxPatch tab. It makes sure 'all' your CPU cores are available to the game & I recall having to do this at one point.

If that doesn't help, I don't know. I get the same performance with or without GPxPatch.

Yes i mean playing directly through GP4.exe. Not sure why GPxPatch slows it down...

I always use CPU=0 only because using multiple CPU has proven to cause crashes in game.

It seems like Linux users can play the game just fine as long as they have decent hardware, but modding is not really feasible.

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

That will be why then. Interesting.

It's true that my machine is a better spec than yours: i5 2500, 8gb, 1gb Nvidia (720GTX I think).

However, prior to getting hold of that I was using a faulty Dell T7400 with an E4350, 16gb, then 8gb, then 4gb and finally 2gb (can you spot the fault!) with the same GFX card once the OE 512mb Nvidia card burnt out.

With that POS, I mean PC, the game played nearly as well but I could only get about 30-32fps and remain smooth, as opposed to the 45-50fps I get now.

The thing is, the experience got worse as the RAM declined but even with only 2gb I was always able to use all 4 cores and the game was pretty stable. My biggest problem was crashing when I alt-tabbed into another app in Linux (spreadsheet usually) but as a rule, once I was racing things held up well 99.9% of the time.

Looks like 4 or more cores and 4gb or more of Ram might be considered something of a baseline.

But then again, you CAN get GP4 to work well without GPxPatch.... Which means you're using both cores automatically, no? Hmm.... Strange that. I've a feeling we're missing something here. I'll keep thinking about it.

Have you tried a de-tuned f1graphics.cfg Tom? There's one for laptops somewhere which I think I tweaked for use with my T7400 before it died. I know it isn't going to be the answer but I wonder, does it help at all? IIRC it helped quite a bit when I only had 2gb of RAM.

Also, I've ended up running GP4 at 1680x1050 res (in a borderless window) inside my native 1920x1080 Linux desktop. It did this initially because it helped with the alt-tabbing into a spreadsheet issue on the T7400. Not sure it that's relevant to your case or not, but it might be worth a try as I seem to recall it made a big difference for me in terms of overall stability.

I ought to state again though (for the benefit of others who might come across the thread), my current Linux setup as outlined above (i.e. nothing special) runs GP4 with GPxPatch really well and I can use all the mods I want.

Something else just came back to me. Not sure it'll help but it's interesting and it might help someone else.

About 3yrs ago when I first started messing with GP4 I used to use Loki's Lo2k theme to get a nice rev counter and display the PO figure but I discovered over time that it would freak out once in a while and start showing weird readings (like -198497387438 etc), which always resulted in a crash after a few minutes.

I took me a while to figure it out what was going on but it was probably the primary hassle I had back then. Now I use another means to get my dials and I don't monitor the CPU in the game (because I can do it on the Linux desktop if needs be). Sounds odd, but it really made a huge difference to my stability when I stopped using the Lo2k theme with the PO enabled. Just a thought.

I've had some success recently getting ZaZ Tools to run on Linux:



and yes, the modded game runs...



So that's ZaZ Tools (CSM) running and working on GNU/Linux - specifically elementary OS 5.0 Juno. Is that a breakthrough or has that already been done?

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

Nice one. What's the secret Tom? Also, does slimtex work? That would be the most handy for me.

Negative on SlimTex unfortunately - I get the following error at the moment:

tom@Yoga:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/ZaZ GP4 Tools$ wine Slimtex.exe 
0009:err: listview:LISTVIEW_WindowProc unknown msg 1044 wp=00000000 lp=0033f0ac
0009:err: ole:apartment_getclassobject DllGetClassObject returned error 0x80040111 for dll L"C:\\windows\\system32\\dx8vb.dll"
0009:err: ole:create_server class {e7ff1300-96a5-11d3-ac85-00c04fc2c602} not registered
0009:err: ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {e7ff1300-96a5-11d3-ac85-00c04fc2c602} could be created for context 0x5
0009:err: listview:LISTVIEW_WindowProc unknown msg 10a0 wp=00000000 lp=00000000
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x7eea8270 at address 0x7eea8270 (thread 0009), starting debugger...
003a:err:dbghelp:pe_load_dbg_file Couldn't find .DBG file "DLL\\MSVBVM60.dbg" ("\x08\xff3" )

GP4 Builder 2017B works though!

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

Shame about the slimtex, but I guess we can't have it all eh?

I had a go with CSM recently (after overriding a couple of the dx9 files in wine) and I got it to go a step further than I had previously, ie I too could load a mod, but each time I clicked the mod's configurables button it crashed (something to do with an inability to display the graphics) - at which point I gave up again.

Good news about GP4 Builder 2017B though. It's always a bit buggy in my XP VM (especially dialog boxes which have a tendency to go crazy). Unfortunately however I just tried it on my Linux box in case your success was contagious but I still get the frozen black main window inside the app.

Does your Juno use a 4.xx kernel or 5.xx? I've just checked the itsfoss website but it's a bit thin on details. Also, what version of wine are you using? I'm on 4.16.xx kernel with 3.17 (staging) wine. I ask because I've been wanting to try kernel 5 but I'm a bit busy so I don't want to court catastrophe just yet in case wine (ie GP4) gets whacked.

As an aside, did you have a go with that SweetFX enhancement that popped up recently. I got the SweetFX logo working and GP4 running in the background but no further - although on just one attempt I did get GP4 with highly smoothed GFX looking rather like Quake used to on a Voodoo card, if you know what I mean.

TomMK schrieb:
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> Yes i mean playing directly through GP4.exe. Not
> sure why GPxPatch slows it down...
>
> I always use CPU=0 only because using multiple CPU
> has proven to cause crashes in game.
>
> It seems like Linux users can play the game just
> fine as long as they have decent hardware, but
> modding is not really feasible.


A bit off-topic, but: it is better to run on CPU=2,4,6,etc. 0 is typically used by the OS (at least under windows). The odd cores are the HT cores for Intel CPUs which may also suffer from usage of the corresponding "even" physical core. So going for one of the even cores other than 0 will result in the best performance. Source: years of testing by the flightsim community. My experience is that this works well with Gp4 as well.

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used to be GPGSL's Nick Heidfeld