Jul 91? Now I feel old.

In all fairness: A lot of physical releases from back in the days can be redeemed on Steam nowadays. It’s not often obvious but it works for a lot. e.g. for Prey (the 2006 one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2006_video_game) ) - which saves me the trouble to look for a CD drive I no longer have xD

Yes, I understand that archiving is more tricky nowadays and even Valve may defunct one day. Alas in reality is a > 15 yrs old CD also prone to errors and may no longer work already.

Ah that’s where I did see it in DRM free. Yes you’re correct. It refuses to launch without Steam running.

At least Steam lets you still download it when you purchased it before. I checked today just to make sure it really does still download. Granted, this is as long as Valve may exist but I don’t think there is anything DRM related here that would stop anyone from making a copy of the downloaded game 🤔 May try that later.

Mebbe I should have phrased it more as “underrated in the beginning when it went on sale and was considered a sales fail” 🤔

Well, I can confirm that it can still be downloaded. It’s notable that this is one of the few that even got a native Linux PC version as well and yes I agree on the narrative that this game is very very underrated. Not your average military shooter.

The idea of random bloggers having any impact in 2024 made me laugh. Thanks for that :D

– a random blogger

Good to know that the Virpils work. They are totally on my list as a replacement device when my current gives up.

My head tracker did cost me 5 EUR and is made from cardboard 🤓 Any dead cheap webcam can keep up with the required FPS with good settings and a proper filter. I say this in case no Playstation Eye is available any more. The cam is perfect for this, of course.

I attached a quick demo and the more important settings here: https://social.tchncs.de/@bekopharm/108317573758997762

This is how I built it: https://beko.famkos.net/2021/07/08/diy-headtracker-for-gaming-on-linux-pc/

Both. It’s complicated. Wild mix of my trusty X52 Pro, my own virtual joystick written in Rust and AntiMicroX and/or Moltengamepad.

Think you have to configure the sticks on Windows. Don’t think Wine can do this. That’s hearsay though so YMMV. Mine are software anyway or just work™.

TrackIR API works. I demo this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7n4hwABJFU (it’s also on PeerTube but our instance is bust atm)

TrackIR hardware does not. That’s a blackbox since v5. Tobii hardware does AFAIK not work but this may change any day. Some people started hacking at this again and again.

Also do check out the StarCitizen LUG and the helper scripts: https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper

This. It’s basically only a thing for rotary encoder, where interrupts should be used for the reading, so they don’t miss a beat.

Also: Combining several joystick devices on the PC again is a pain in the neck especially if the game only supports one device of each kind.

I played “The Expanse” (on Linux PC) and I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t put the controller down for over 6 hours (https://beko.famkos.net/x/1CMPu)

X4: Foundations

Can relate 🤓

Only thing I’m missing is “real” head tracking. There is simply none in the Linux version and while I can map a virtual joystick driven by OpenTrack to each camera corner it’s just not the same. Sadly this is not exposed via LUA or I’d have wired up a UDP connection by now. So this feature sadly works only via Proton. Still sticking with the native Linux version though. It’s faster.

Oh btw that’d also be the point where I’d pour money into this. That’s my sweet spot xD

CIG may gift us an API

So say we all =)

kinda :D

Watt the…

Same :) Not a SDF member but grinning inside every time I see the logo 🤓

Why yes it’s a SAS drive. You can find that in some NAS models for home use too. Otherwise this is usually server land.

The thing with HBAs is that you usually only get virtual disks on the system side because the controller masks the real disks. This is not really needed any more since modern filesystems can do RAID functionality too - and even better and faster - but that does require direct access to the drive.

Many controllers can be patched though or come with a pass through (JBOD) mode out of the box, which allows you to use that kind of drive directly again. Such drives can be obtained used for cheap too so this may be a feasible option to extend the possible amount of drives for a desktop computer at home too a lot. Most controllers support 4-8 devices.