Linux Port – Feedback, Known Issues, and FAQ

This is quite a nice port. Except for some of the small QoL issue (e.g. needed to resize before that game loads), it runs great on my main PC.
It also takes away to huge panelty that there is in the translated version when adding more vehicles

On my steam deck there are two issues tho:

1. This one was already posted by zschmeez, but I still wanted to add it here: The Controller does not work as an input. Neither in a normal controller mapped input, nor as an Keybaord emulation device. When looking at the input information Beam gets, the input is just frozen after the first touch. Before the first usage of any controller elements, all axis are zero. After the first input they all go to center.
2. There are some crashes which seem to be linked to memory management issue (The console outputs "Killed", which I normaly only know from linux killing the application because of too little memory. I could partially work around this by expanding my swapfile to 8GB. It still does happen sometimes. The interesting thing is, that this is not an issue when running beam (windows version) throught wine.

Edit: I noticed that the controller bug seems only to be there when starting the game directly from game mode. If I start a KDE Wayland session from game mode and then start Beam on the desktop it works fine. So there is a workaround for both issues for me

 

https://github.com/kozec/sc-controller/issues/665 is probably your best guess once it's supported. SC controller works without issues for me

 

Thanks for the link. I will look at it when the controller gains support.
For now I found my own little workaoround. Althought it isn't the prettiest one.

 

So, that issue was fixed, but I feel like it's even more unstable now (crashing only after max. 2minutes after starting)
And it now uses even more VRAM

And it doesn't save that I already acknowledged that I'm not running Ubuntu or SteamOS
(might have something to do with this:

Code:

253.75750|E|libbeamng.| Couldn't find setting PerformanceWarningsunsupportedlinuxdist in settings defaults file: "settings/defaults.json"
253.75752|E|libbeamng.| Skipping invalid setting name "PerformanceWarningsunsupportedlinuxdist" with value: true

)

The Proton Version (only tested with 6.3-8 yet because of FFB *) is very stable, but it still suffers from bad performance with traffic/multiple vehicles (~20-30fps with 6 traffic vehicles and simplified traffic enabled, cpu usage isn't high at all)
and the PBR textures not being generated properly.

*just tested with Proton-experimental, immediately crashes after clicking the Play button in BeamNG's launcher (happened before, too)

 

Looking good now! 200fps on gridmap with traffic on ultra graphics (Ryzen 9 5950X + Radeon PRO W6800).

Issues that I've noticed:

1. Controllers seem to all share a namespace for their button assignments. For example I have a T300RS and a TH8A each connected as separate USB devices. When I bind "BUTTON1" to "Shift Up" on the T300RS (the right paddle shifter). And then try to bind "BUTTON1" to "1st gear" on the TH8A, they show a conflict and there is unusual behavior when shifting. If I don't bind any conflicting buttons everything works but I can't have my H-pattern shifter and the paddles bound at the same time like I can in the proton/windows version.

2. Graphics settings do not persist across game restarts.

3. Acknowledging the unsupported linux distribution message does not persist.

4. When binding control keys each change makes the list scroll all the way to the bottom so you have to go find where you were again each time. Makes binding things like gear 1 through 7 kindof annoying but not that big a deal.

5. Exiting the game (clicking quit game) results in a crash. I've reported this using the included crash report feature but still mentioning here anyway. I've noticed that this same crash also happens when using the vulcan renderer on proton. I suspect this is a vulcan/amd issue and might not happen for everyone. Does anyone else experience a crash when exiting the game? It's every single time for me.

 

that crash happens for me, too
--- Post updated ---

In Addition to this:
I just tested it with standard wine, and it runs much better! (better performance, especially with traffic/multiple vehicles) and very stable! (I'll have to test FFB though)
wine: lutris-GE-Proton7-27-x86_64
DXVK: v1.10.3

THIS SECTION CONTAINS POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!
btw, I think I've noticed that the UI is a bit faster, but still a lot slower/laggier than the Browser UI. For example the animations in the Profile Selection in Career mode are only smooth in the Browser UI

 

I added this:

Code:

"PerformanceWarningsunsupportedlinuxdist"  : [ "local" ],

to the file:

Code:

$HOME/.steam/root/steamapps/common/BeamNG.drive/settings/defaults.json

in the section where all the other warnings are located which resolved the distro warning. It now stays acknowledged.

 

Overall a nice improvement with 0.26. No need to move the window to get it to load & I can switch to full screen much more reliably.

Having an issue where sometimes everything drops to ~10 FPS after loading in, GPU usage shows 100% so I'm not sure what's going on.

And I believe I'm still running into memory usage issues when using traffic. (16GB RAM)

Graphics settings still don't save between launches, quite frustrating with how often it's crashing!

Thanks for the hard work devs

 

I have captured some performance information during the low FPS scenario.

I've noticed I can be spawned in alone in Italy with a basic car like the 200BX and sit at 75fps. If I switch to the Scintilla the FPS drops to ~45FPS and the frame time plot becomes very erratic. I think this could be linked to the low FPS with traffic.

If I have "start freeroam with traffic" enabled, I get really poor FPS, but if I spawn them in afterwards it's mostly ok. Once they are spawned if I reload LUA the performance tanks again.

 

Anyone else's carrer WIP not loading? It seems to load everything, but right before dropping the player into the map, the game just gets stuck at E|operator()| Failed to load 'AO' map '/levels/west_coast_usa/art/shapes/trees/trees_palm/t_palm_trunk_ao.data.png' for stage 0 of material 'm_palm_trunk'

This exact line appeared a lot of times previously in the logs while loading, always followed by E|createTexture| Missing source texture /levels/west_coast_usa/art/shapes/trees/trees_palm/t_palm_trunk_ao.data.png

Do you have any ideas? I would love to try the new career mode.

EDIT: It got further and actually sais:
D|GELua.gamestate| Checking material finished loading
D|GELua.core_gamestate.gamestate| exiting : worldReadyState
D|GELua.core_gamestate.gamestate| show main menu (false)
D|GELua.core_gamestate.gamestate| exiting loading screen to menu
W|compileHlslGlsl| /shaders/common/groundCoverPlacement.hlsl: hlsl.hlsl:107:81: warning: implicit truncation of vector type [-Wconversion]
const float3 normal = getNormalFromHeightmap(defaultSampler, heightMap, uv, texelSize, terrainMaxHeight / terrainSize);
^ [Arrow points at texelSize]

1143.77118|D|_mapMaterial| [Material::mapMaterial] - Cannot map unnamed Material -

 

When it's first loading, it seems to have some sort of graphics issue, crazy colors, etc... but after that it works fantastically. It does crash if I close it with the "x". On this port, where do you put mods?

 

Mods go in this dir:

Code:

$HOME/.local/share/BeamNG.drive/0.26/mods

Things get a bit weird with file names though if you're not on a case insensitive filesystem. You need to downcase the mod filename for it to work if you install it manually. You can do the same for mods in the repo directory as well to get them to work, or create symlinks like this:

Code:

[ repo ] > ls -ln
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        12 Sep 19 19:47 altitude.zip -> Altitude.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 434407749 Sep 19 19:40 Altitude.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        16 Sep 19 19:47 ancientegypt.zip -> AncientEgypt.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 105437980 Sep 19 19:40 AncientEgypt.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 525622865 Sep 19 19:40 barkstead.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 314312361 Sep 19 19:40 barrenlands.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 229336655 Sep 19 19:40 crandon.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        15 Sep 19 19:47 crashhard20.zip -> CrashHard20.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 942937059 Sep 19 19:40 CrashHard20.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  33112788 Sep 19 19:40 cuneoveloce.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 161851764 Sep 19 19:40 dirty_4x4.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        27 Sep 19 19:47 downhilldestructionv112.zip -> DownhillDestructionV112.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 421908922 Sep 19 19:40 DownhillDestructionV112.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 199292214 Sep 19 19:40 ebisue.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  61279708 Sep 19 19:40 ebisuwest.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 244616806 Sep 19 19:40 ef_jr_rally.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 343838949 Sep 19 19:40 el_ferrito_ecu_dirt.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 477112382 Sep 19 19:40 floodhirochimod.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 220200086 Sep 19 19:40 gravel_rally.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        15 Sep 19 19:47 insanerally.zip -> InsaneRally.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 867380983 Sep 19 19:40 InsaneRally.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 185357818 Sep 19 19:40 lucasoilsw.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        10 Sep 19 19:47 moonsb.zip -> moonSB.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 331706347 Sep 19 19:40 moonSB.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 420795474 Sep 19 19:40 motorsports_playground.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 337545040 Sep 19 19:40 pikespeak.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        19 Sep 19 19:47 rally_forest_15.zip -> Rally_forest_15.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 182318828 Sep 19 19:40 Rally_forest_15.zip
-rw------- 1 1000 1000  23711590 Sep 19 19:42 trackfabunlimitedbuggy.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  23711590 Sep 19 19:40 trackfabUnlimitedBuggy.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        14 Sep 19 19:47 usuipassv1.zip -> UsuiPassV1.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 150430366 Sep 19 19:40 UsuiPassV1.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1000 1000        14 Sep 19 19:47 whomstbote.zip -> WhomstBote.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  23795716 Sep 19 19:40 WhomstBote.zip

The symlinks are surprisingly effective and clear up all the loading issue's I've encountered so far. This appears to be because mod names are converted in the game to be all lowercase when referred to by the various lua scripts but that's not always what they are on the filesystem. All the mods in the list above that don't have uppercase letters work fine without a symlink which is why only some of them have it.

 

Whenever I try to take a screenshot using the in game photo mode it appears in my screenshots folder with graphical glitches. This seems to be tied to the game's anti-aliasing as if I set it to FXAA or turn it off altogether the graphical glitches do not appear, but it appears when I turn SMAA on. I'm running the game with a 6700XT and am using Arch Linux with the latest mesa drivers.

 

Graphics settings don't seem to get saved. If I try to adjust them mid game, it freezes. I can adjust at the first loading screen though, just after starting, before going into any scenarios, etc. But when I restart the sim, those settings are no longer assigned.

 

Howdy.

So I was attempting to run the Linux port for the first time on Manjaro with the following setup.



And in doing so I could not run the Linux port at all.


This was the error that it gave me and I cannot figure out why. It is a completely fresh install. My system is entirely updated and I am using the proprietary AMD drivers on Manjaro Linux.

When trying to launch through Steam through regular mode, safe mode and safe mode Vulkan, it also crashes. I have no idea what is going on. I can play many other games with no issues with crashing. If there is anything more I can give I will do so but I have confirmed that everything is working as intended.

 

could you try to install vulkan-tools and run vulkaninfo?

 

Here's a detailed post about my input device overlap issue issue. I haven't seen anyone else mention it but maybe there just aren't very many wheel users here. TLDR: The last image shows what I think is the problem but the context is also important.

[Wine, Working Correctly] Here's the assigned inputs, you can see that they are labeled BUTTON0 BUTTON1 etc however they do not interfere with each other.


[Wine, Working Correctly] The force feedback tab shows only one input device with force feedback.


[Wine, Working Correctly] Looking at that input device all is normal.



[Wine, Working Correctly] Here is where we can really make a comparison. Each device has a unique identifier like B660044F for the shifter and B66E044F for the wheel. We also see that The shifter is classified as joystick0 and the wheel as wheel0.



[Linux Port, Not Working] Now we take a look at Linux. Right away we notice that the symbols for the wheel are a d-pad, not a wheel icon. So it looks like the wheel is identified as a joystick. Also in this screenshot I attempted to assign gear shift position 1 to the empty 1st gear binding. The selector has identified that it conflicts with "Shift Down" however that button is on a completely different device.


[Linux Port, Not Working] Things are a bit weird here too. For some reason after only having assigned the wheel axis and paddles/buttons on the wheel there are 3 XAXIS bindings in force feedback. I didn't assign it 3 times, and only the first one receives input from the wheel. The other two look the same but don't move when I turn the wheel.


[Linux Port, Not Working] And here is where I think the problem really lies. All of the input devices, shifter, handbrake, and wheel, are classified as joysticks and their unique identifier is the same. This might explain the button conflicts during assignment. I also suspect that the force feedback assignment shows 3 XAXIS because there is an XAXIS for each of those three devices and it's using the identifier to go look for 03000000:XAXIS and finding 3 things.


I don't know how to fix this problem, but I did my best to outline the issue. If you'd like me to test anything please let me know. I really enjoy this game and appreciate all the work that's going into making it play on Linux as well!
--- Post updated ---
I confirmed that the above issues appear the same on the steam deck as well if I connect all my input devices to that. So it's not something specific with my distro or my wheel driver.

 

I'm on Kubuntu 22.04, the game opens but I can't load any map, the game window just hangs after a few seconds.

Hardware:

CPU: I7 2600s
GPU: GTX 1060 3GB driver 515.65.01.
RAM: 8GB RAM

Edit: The game does load the lightrunner mode, however performance is stuck at about 20 FPS and CPU usage is very low (20% on all cores) the game even gave me a warning that the CPU clock was under 2GHz.

 

extreme performance drop on new Pbr maps in 0.26
hardware, Intel i7-10870H (16) @ 5.000GHz, GTX 1650 mobile, 16 gbs of ram
first screen shot 0.25 second 0.26