Problems with Steam/Proton on Intel NUC (2017) integrated graphics

[Shigakka]

Hello, I'm encountering problems trying to run some old game (Car Mechanic Simulator 2015) on a 2017's Intel Nuc kit (NUC7i5BNH, see https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/95067/intel-nuc-kit-nuc7i5bnh/specifications.html). The OS is Xubuntu Xenial (Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS).

My NUC has an integrated graphic card and the output of inxi -G is:
Graphics: Card: Intel Device 5926
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.6 drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 (Kaby Lake GT3e)
GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 18.0.5

I tried both Proton 6.3 and Experimental

Launching the game, nothing happens... (no error message, nothing).

Any suggestion about how to figure out where is the problem and fix it?

Thank you very much!

CS

[thetargos]

Indeed, at least the driver you are using is quite old, and does not seem to support vulkan. Even though you are using an LTS distribution, the software stack on it is rather old, and especially so for the graphics drivers. Mesa drivers for Intel do support vulkan (provided the other pieces are present, like the vulkan ICD).

You seem to be better off upgrading the whole distribution, but if that is not possible, try and install the latest bits and pieces of the graphics stack: Mesa, libdrm, vulkan, X11, etc (alas, you may be locked out of some of the performance, if you do not upgrade to a more current kernel).

If doing all that is not possible in your current setup, as catbox says, you will have to force the GL render path for Proton with the PROTON_USE_WINED3D variable, and give up the performance boost from DXVK (and D9VK), not to mention, that you would not be able to run Vulkan games at all.

[thetargos]

Originally posted by catbox:

due to the fact that 16.04 LTS doesnt have any updates offered anywhere they wont get any official repo downloads
to get _any_ updates they will need to dist-upgrade to 18.04
facts of life.... when EOL happens they remove alllllllllll downloads for it.

Yeah, sucks. Even when a distro is perfectly working otherwise, when you rely on bleeding edge bits for certain apps and gaming is no exception here, but rather the rule, you're better off upgrading to the next LTS, or ideally, the latest. Alas, that does come with its own costs (in terms of configuration, orphaned packages, TONS of house keeping etc, etc).

[Cat on Linux]

maybe if steam fails game still can be run with system wine. I recall running it years ago with wine lower than ver. 5