TransGaming Technologies, a developer of software portability solutions, has released WineX 3.0, the company’s flagship Linux application. WineX 3.0 is a natty application that allows Linux users to run PC games and Windows applications straight ‘out of the box’.

WineX 3.0 supports a large number of the most popular PC games, including Battlefield 1942, SimCity 4, EverQuest and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, but support for older games is unclear. The new release also boats a new graphical interface, Point2Play, enhanced graphics capabilities with implementations of vertex shaders and cube maps, improved copy protection support, extended installer functionality and a number of game speedups.

The new Point2Play graphical front-end helps you to manage multiple WineX versions, store configuration options and minimise the use of command line options and syntax. Support for hardware-accelerated vertex shaders have been implemented, but currently only support OpenGL drivers that implement the NV_vertex_program extension. TransGaming Technologies says the ARB extension will be supported in future releases. Force feedback joysticks are now supported, but untested, on the Linux 2.5 series kernel.

Many installer-related issues have also been resolved, such as autorun.exe files, multi-disc installs should now have fewer issues with disc changing and large installers are now compatible. The core threading model has moved to pthreads to decouple WineX from the continuing changes to certain core system libraries and WineX 3.0 does a much better job of going into full-screen mode. You should also notice faster frames with a lot of games.

Linux gamers who know better than to wait for Windows ports should go to TransGaming Technologies’ Web site to download the pre-packaged files.

Rob Christian, Apr 17, 03 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Linux