Simula VS Proton

Compare Simula vs Proton and see what are their differences.

Simula

Linux VR Desktop (by SimulaVR)

Proton

Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components (by ValveSoftware)
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Simula Proton
58 1447
2,856 22,475
1.8% 2.1%
1.4 9.6
11 months ago 4 days ago
Haskell C++
MIT License GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Simula

Posts with mentions or reviews of Simula. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-04-25.
  • Seeking info about nreal air usb interfaces
    3 projects | /r/nreal | 25 Apr 2023
    That's the dream! I really want to see if I can get it working with a VR compatible desktop env like https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula; but failing that, just getting the second display surface to be floating instead of fixed would be a huge boon!
  • VR for office work - a viable strategy?
    2 projects | /r/archlinux | 20 Dec 2022
    That's a clever way of doing it. =) I have considered xrdesktop, Immersed and Simula (SimulaVR's window manager without their headset) as well. Seemingly, Immersed can only create virtual monitors and not separate windows for each application, which leaves xrdesktop and Simula the better options.
    2 projects | /r/archlinux | 20 Dec 2022
    There's also Simula, but I have a Quest 2 which isn't supported under Linux. Their GitHub page has a list of supported ones.
  • Godot Desktop Environment
    2 projects | /r/godot | 14 Dec 2022
    You might be interested in looking at SimulaVR - it's a VR desktop built with godot (and haskell), but it uses, iirc, wlroots to handle windows and grab their surfaces to display as textures in godot.
  • Ask HN: Working in a VR Headset
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2022
    So, you might be interested in https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula . There have been a few examples of VR windows managers on Linux which don’t require an entire OS rewrite.

    Is that the solution Meta will go w/ almost certainly not. But replacing a WM for a different “view” of your OS is a pretty common thing on Linux. (For some distros like Arch, replace isn’t the right word. You have to install whichever one you’d like from the beginning)

    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2022
    We're still in preorder phase, aiming to ship most headsets in ~Q2 of 2023.

    This is our first foray into hardware, but we already developed a stable Linux VR Desktop (https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula) from 2017-2021.

    We try to provide frequent updates on our hardware engineering progress. For example, here's a recent post showing some videos of our review units: https://simulavr.com/blog/first-glimpse-of-review-units/ If you're interested in community discussion, you might also check out https://hn.algolia.com/?q=simulavr.com.

    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2022
    Yep, you can try out our software at https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula on the HTC Vive and Valve Index platforms.

    If you don't have one of those headsets, there are some videos of people (whom we have no affiliation with) on YouTube testing it out: https://youtu.be/8gVLF8SnK84?t=424 Here's also (a pretty old) video of me hacking on Simula, in Simula: https://youtu.be/FWLuwG91HnI.

    It's also true that we're more focused on hardware right now. We plan on reverting more towards software development in 2023. For more details: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/issues/180#issuecomment-1...

    Some things we have planned to implement include VR window tiling and some other UI stuff.

    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Nov 2022
  • Mentor-ship
    2 projects | /r/learnprogramming | 2 Oct 2022
  • XR2 Processor for purchase
    2 projects | /r/virtualreality | 25 Sep 2022
    The Simula One is a Linux-based, standalone VR headset with compute specs that are comparable to premium laptops (x86 architecture) as well as very high pixel density (35.5 PPD). The software its built over is open-source (https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula), and its hardware is being built in the open (though not entirely open-source since it would violate many of our NDAs, etc).

Proton

Posts with mentions or reviews of Proton. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-01-30.
  • Proton, a fast and lightweight alternative to Apache Flink
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jan 2024
    Or Valve's Proton[0], a tool for playing Windows games on Linux.

    https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

  • How do I use multiple hard drives on Kubuntu for steam?
    2 projects | /r/Kubuntu | 10 Dec 2023
    there is a hack to try and use your existing windows game install from an NTFS drive, but i don't recommend it as steam will try to save file names that are not allowed on NTFS...plus ext4 is faster.
  • Game crashes within 10 seconds of launching unless I reinstall from scratch
    2 projects | /r/satisfactory | 9 Dec 2023
    From a quick search, here's what I found. It looks like you're encountering some common issues that can occur with games running on Linux through Proton, especially with the recent updates to games like Satisfactory that might affect compatibility. The log entries you're seeing related to D3DCompile2 failing to compile shader and the issues with Ternary operator and LinearToSrgbBranching not being defined, suggest that there's a problem with shader compilation. This can often be related to the version of Proton or the graphics drivers you are using. Some users have reported that the game does launch with the -vulkan option but with graphical glitches and lower performance, which indicates that the Vulkan renderer is working but possibly not optimally on your setup. From the discussions in the community, users have suggested ensuring that the latest drivers for your graphics card are installed and, if using an Intel GPU, that the Mesa drivers are up to date since Intel XeSS references were found in the logs. If you're using NVIDIA graphics, make sure you have the latest drivers and possibly set the PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 %command% to enable DLSS if you're under Vulkan. If you're using an Optimus laptop with both Intel and NVIDIA GPUs, make sure your Optimus setup is correctly configured. Some users have found success by specifying DXVK_FILTER_DEVICE_NAMES=GeForce to force the game to use the NVIDIA GPU. It's also worth noting that if you're encountering issues with DirectX 11, you might want to try forcing the game to use DirectX 10 if possible or look into DXVK configurations that could resolve compatibility issues. Lastly, if none of these solutions work, you could try running a trace with apitrace to gather more detailed logs that might point to the specific issue. If you're still stuck, it would be a good idea to report the issue to the Proton GitHub page or seek further assistance in the game's community forums where others might have encountered and solved similar issues. For more information and to find others who might have resolved similar issues, check out the community discussions on GitHub​​, Steam Community​​, and the DXVK GitHub page​​.
  • Been thinking of switching to linux but I am a noob
    8 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 6 Dec 2023
    There's an official mini-guide on using your NTFS game drive on Linux, though I would strongly suggest trying to use it as-is without following the guide first! https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows
  • Proton 8.0-4 – Wine Valve Software Steam Linux
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Oct 2023
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Oct 2023
  • Space Engineers crashing when I try to join an online game
    2 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 5 Sep 2023
    What steps have you taken to try and fix the issue?. for example, have you looked through the protondb page for SpaceEngineers or tried different proton versions (or protonGE), you could also read through the proton issue tracker for SpaceEngineers to see if there are any other users with multiplayer issues
  • FYI: Today's update broke compatibility on Linux and MacOS, game won't start
    3 projects | /r/aoe2 | 28 Jun 2023
    Workaround in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3189 worked for me
    3 projects | /r/aoe2 | 28 Jun 2023
  • CAN'T PLAY ON LINUX. Latest update broke game - Steam
    2 projects | /r/aoe2 | 27 Jun 2023
    Here's the proton issue about it. Doesn't look that unsolvable. I'm optimistic that we can play again with an experimental proton within a few days.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Simula and Proton you can also consider the following projects:

lutris - Lutris desktop client

proton-ge-custom - Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components

dxvk-async

mf-install - Media Foundation workaround for Wine

yuzu - Nintendo Switch emulator

gamescope - SteamOS session compositing window manager [Moved to: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope]

wine - Wine with a bit of extra spice

Magpie - An all-purpose window upscaler for Windows 10/11.

Complete-Single-GPU-Passthrough - Single GPU VFIO Passthrough Guide

Textractor - Extracts text from video games and visual novels. Highly extensible.

csgo-osx-linux - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

vkd3d-proton - Fork of VKD3D. Development branches for Proton's Direct3D 12 implementation.