Experimental Project Gets Intel XeSS On XMX Working With Valve's Steam Play (Proton)

Last month I wrote about Intel working on adding proper XeSS support to Steam Play (Proton). While those efforts haven't yet been completed for benefiting Linux gamers running Intel Arc Graphics, in the meantime an independent open-source developer has managed to get XMX-accelerated XeSS working under Proton. Open-source developer Patrick has been working since September on getting XMX-accelerated XeSS working under Steam Play and has succeeded, including for XeSS frame generation support. In an email to Phoronix, with today's update to the code he describes it as: "I think it is more or less ready, and it is a lot more complete than it was a few weeks ago." As for how this xess-xmx-linux project works: "- XeSS super resolution and XeSS frame generation run on the XMX units inside Proton games, instead of the DP4a fallback. A shim igdext64.dll (based on Intel's dxvk-igdext) answers XeSS' driver queries like Intel's Windows driver; a patched Mesa ANV compiles XeSS' own kernels with Intel's IGC on the user's machine. - Frame generation works as on Windows, including multi-frame generation. Since today's release, frame generation also comes with lower latency by default. - Games with FSR 3.1+ can run XeSS SR and XeSS-FG instead (FSR=xess). - Patch series for Mesa 26.1.2 and 26.3.0-rc3 (Jay). Developed on an ONEXPLAYER 3 (Arc B390, Xe3) with SteamOS; users report it working on Arc B580 (Xe2), A310 (Xe-HPG) and MSI Claw handhelds." Where as Intel's recently talked about XeSS Proton effort is working on a native Linux XeSS library, this xess-xmx-linux project is making use of the Windows XeSS libraries given no official release yet of the Linux libraries. This has been successfully tested with games like Forza Horizon 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil 4, and others. Those wanting to learn more how it works or explore its capabilities for Intel XeSS with Valve's Steam Play on Linux can do so via the project's repository with xess-xmx-linux on GitHub.