Will there be a native ARM Unity3D Linux Player?

[Coburn64]

As the title suggests, I’m hoping Unity3D will be able to make a ARM Native Linux Player.

You see, I work with little devices like the ODROID-U2, ODROID-U3 and ODROID-XU. These can either run Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean”, or Android 4.4 “Kit Kat”. There’s also the nVidia K1 Board, which does OpenGL ES 3 and OpenGL Desktop Level 4.4.

The thing is, sometimes when you want to take a little device in this case, a ODROID, around with your game around to various events to showcase your work, and you don’t want to have it running on top of Android. Yeah, you could take a laptop or something else with an AC adapter, but that adds bulk.

What I’m hoping Unity3D will do is a native build of the Linux player for ARM, since we have x86 and x86_64 Linux targets already, and most ARM devices that are development boards have a GPU that can be accessed through Xorg’s HW Acceleration Drivers. In short, the Unity3D developers could potentially take the Android engine runtime, that uses Android’s OpenGL ES instructions and adapt it to use Xorg OpenGL ES instructions. May be trivial to complex, but it would be ideal for giving game build testers little boxes that are set up to run the game on boot and nothing else. End result is a runtime that runs on ARM devices, but does not have any roots in Android. Just run the game (double click on the executable) and off she goes.

Also, ARM Linux needs more games to shine, and I think Unity3D can capture this sector. After all, the devices, like the ODROID feature pretty competent GPUs (Mali/PowerVR). Yes, we might need to add a cross compiler to compile ARM code in the Editor pipeline’s Export stage, but it’s worth the trial and error in my opinion. Without Android’s overhead, the games have more room to play around.

That’s my 2 cents. Sorry if it’s in the wrong category.

[Tomza]

@Coburn64

As the title suggests, I’m hoping Unity3D will be able to make a ARM Native Linux Player.

You see, I work with little devices like the ODROID-U2, ODROID-U3 and ODROID-XU. These can either run Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean”, or Android 4.4 “Kit Kat”. There’s also the nVidia K1 Board, which does OpenGL ES 3 and OpenGL Desktop Level 4.4.

The thing is, sometimes when you want to take a little device in this case, a ODROID, around with your game around to various events to showcase your work, and you don’t want to have it running on top of Android. Yeah, you could take a laptop or something else with an AC adapter, but that adds bulk.

What I’m hoping Unity3D will do is a native build of the Linux player for ARM, since we have x86 and x86_64 Linux targets already, and most ARM devices that are development boards have a GPU that can be accessed through Xorg’s HW Acceleration Drivers. In short, the Unity3D developers could potentially take the Android engine runtime, that uses Android’s OpenGL ES instructions and adapt it to use Xorg OpenGL ES instructions. May be trivial to complex, but it would be ideal for giving game build testers little boxes that are set up to run the game on boot and nothing else. End result is a runtime that runs on ARM devices, but does not have any roots in Android. Just run the game (double click on the executable) and off she goes.

Also, ARM Linux needs more games to shine, and I think Unity3D can capture this sector. After all, the devices, like the ODROID feature pretty competent GPUs (Mali/PowerVR). Yes, we might need to add a cross compiler to compile ARM code in the Editor pipeline’s Export stage, but it’s worth the trial and error in my opinion. Without Android’s overhead, the games have more room to play around.

That’s my 2 cents. Sorry if it’s in the wrong category.

We have many wishes. Unfortunately, they can’t come true.

[kaz2057]

I UP this interested discussion.

Any reply from developers?
Thanks

[Coburn64]

Not yet as far as I know. Still hopeful they’ll consider doing ARM build targets, because Linux is a viable gaming platform too - it just needs to get the recognition and you’ll find that people’s eyes will start being opened to the platform. Besides, Linux by nature allows you to get more oomph out of the hardware your PC has - I’m sure we want to push every single last frame out of the GPU to make our games not only to make them look great but show the market that Linux does games, and it does them quite well.