FCAT? What is that?
https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/fcat/technology
Anyone out there want to test this under their wine setup and report back? It isn’t working for me and I’m not sure why. I spent a bit of time poking at it, but nothing super obvious jumped out at me. Other than, you know, it’s not going to work because those methods aren’t implemented in WINE.
Is there anything like fcat for linux natively? If not there will need to be in order to help developers and enthusiasts troubleshoot performance and analyze platform differences.
Who’s got time to do a bit of poking around?
I need to move pretty quick on this sub project as it’s related to something I’m working on that is going to get a huge push of decent to good PR, I think.
For one I’m comparing the output of bioshock infinite’s built-in reporting, to fcat captures, to performance on Linux. I’m chasing down a performance anomaly where bioshock infinite is faster on linux than windows in some scenarios (typically 1440p or 4k). I can see the Phronix guy experienced the same. I am able to reproduce his results but only if I create a situation where the game is not actually rendering what it says it is.
anyone got bioshock infinite for linux and windows and can run the built-in benchmark and post the results here? To run the benchmark on linux just add “DefaultPCBenchmarkMap.xcmap” to the launcher params from steam. ty <3
I am wanting a little bit of clarification. BioShock Infinite has a linux port. Are you asking to get FCAT to hook into the linux version of the game as it is doing the benchmark?
Also, do you want us to do the recording? Or are you just wanting to get it working on your end and then you do the captures?
So a little update to help others know what is being talked about. I got the game installed on windows and got the overlay working for the thing. The below screenshot is while it is running the benchmark with the FCAT overlay running. What happens is the bar on the left is from FCAT. The colors mean things (probably just frame counts) and FCAT is injecting these colors somehow. If you watch it in action, there are multiple colors per frame as it runs. You are supposed to have another computer use a capture card record the output. Then with the recorded video, there is another program to extract the information from the color bar to tell you things.
Ideally both – I’m comparing bioshock infinite performance on windows vs linux (and other stuff), and also other games that don’t have a native port that otherwise run fine in wine. fcat doesn’t run in wine, even though it seems like it is running in the background, it just doesn’t hook the frame draw calls I guess.
I initially thought that it was because it was only intercepting the graphics calls to wine, who might have had an API shim or something, and it might have been working. I have tried getting the bioshock linux port to work with it by running a wine console, starting the overlay, and then the game from the same console, but no luck so far. I will try the windows version of the game under wine and will update this response with the results. (not expecting it to work still)
update - can’t get the windows version of the game to run under wine, so i am giving up for the moment
update - move content to my next comment
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Alternative software voglperf
Will give a csv of frame timings apparently
Problem - apparently does not always intercept the function calls correctly if the program uses SDL; and BioShock Infinite does use SDL and is not working on my system
Ill keep looking a bit, but not sure what else to do… 
Alternative software glxosd
Looked good, but still did not work, nor does it seem to work for most anything besides glxgears. probably SDL causing more problems.
