Tag: Steam

The Last of Us Is Coming to Steam Deck

Paul
Last of Us on Steam

Steam and Steam Deck

This is one of those games that has been out for years. I won’t say it hasn’t been something that I look forward to play.  It has some graphical scenes but that goes along with the zombie apocolypses that you see every time in movies and shows.   This popped up on my radar last week when I saw this over the weekend on some social media.  I thought they were kidding so I went did some searching and it is comign to the Steam.  I can imagine it will also be coming to the Steam Deck because of how old the game is.   It’s is almost a 10 year old game but has been remastered to work with the Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.   With all this in the air, I am fairly certain it wil work on the Steam Deck out of the gate as it is released.  Even the newer versions of the game doesn’t require as much as Spiderman game.  Which I love to play on my PC or Steam Deck when I am on long car rides.  I can’t see this not being released to the Steam Deck.

Pre-orders 

It is currently on preorder for the game.  It will cost people $59.99 and it looks to be very interested when they finally release it.  I have heard this game has some great story lines and will be like Laura Croft to a point so that much will always keep me going with puzzles and being able to explore the worlds.   I’ve watch people play through the game from time to time on Youtube and it looks to be insteresting.  I have already put my money down for Pre-order since I don’t have a playstation.   My Steam Deck is ready to recieve the game once it is released.  I suspect the first week or two there may be problems with the Steam Deck but I am hopeful that they will fix them quickly enough.

March 3, 2023

That the time it is set to be released on Steam, I am hopeful they don’t delay it because this will be so helpful on my next trip in April that I am all set to go. I will have several hours to waste while traveling and this game will be my game to play to keep my busy while traveling.  I suspect this will be a 30 or 50 Gb download and install on any system.  So i will be keeping that much ready to be downloaded to my Steam deck.   I also have found a really small portable dock that I can take with me.   I’ve found it around town.  It’s Call the Gizmovine USB-C hub and it is currently not available on Amazon.  I guess you can go to Newegg and buy it if you want to pay more for it.  I do wonder if I can find more of these these hubs to use for later.   Small Post about this upcoming game.

Are you planning to buy this game or do you think it is worth the 60$ price range?  Let me know what you think and tell me if you have played this before.  Thanks.

How to play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Steam version on Linux Mint 20.1

Paul
MSFS2020 on Linux Mint 20.1

Run Microsoft Flight Simulator

I’ve been trying to get this to work the last few days on Linux because of Windows 11 set to come out in the follow months.   However, I was also wondering if this would work on Linux as it should be able to to do.   As you know steam has some great ways to run windows games on it.   The problem that most people have is just to figure out the right way to run it.   I am here to help those who might still be having difficulty in running Msfs2020(Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020) on Linux because it seems to have so many people having issues with running it.   According to ProtonDB, This game should be playable with Gold standards which means it should run perfectly after some tweaks.   I don’t know about the rest of you but It’s more than some tweaks but I digress.

Install wine

The First step you will need to do is check out my other post about installing Wine on Linux Mint.  If you followed those instructions you are half way to getting it to run on Linux.   You’ll however want to install all the Wine DB and API’s that are associated with Wine to get it to work.  That includes but not limited to Q4wine, Playonlinux, Winetricks, All Wine Compatibility layers(Windows-Desktop-files also), Wine-binfmt  and the API layers that is associated with Wine.  I found sometimes they don’t automatically install these but they are necessary for several other games.

Install Graphics Drivers

Go to your driver manager app and make sure you have the GPU driver for your system.   I currently have a NVIDIA 1660 Super and an Intel 10-850 Core.   First I’d try the recommended but we’ll discuss this at the end.   Always download the recommended driver on Linux Mint but if you have a different Linux and want to download the NVIDIA drivers, check out the NVIDIA Unix Drivers for them to work with your system.  If you have an AMD GPU, you can visit the AMD website for your Linux Driver.  Once those are installed, you will probably need to reboot your system to make sure your drivers are active when playing on Steam or other games.   Each time there is an update, it will probably be a good idea to reboot just to make sure the drivers you want are being used by the system.

Install Steam

It seems Linux Mint 20.1 or some earlier version installs the Flathub version of Steam when they install Linux Mint.   Uninstall that version first,  I’ve found that it doesn’t do as a good as a job as the one you can get from the package manager.   I also found that it won’t run some games with Proton.   So that is the reason I say, just go ahead and uninstall it and install the real one.  This is the easy part of the installation.   Once done you are more than halfway there to be able to play your games like you want.

Download and Install Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Example of -FastLaunch

Once you have steam, You can now go ahead and download and install MSFS2020 into steam.   This will be a quick process.   Steam however will not allow you to download the game until you enable proton.  Go over to the Gear icon in steam and left click properties and go to Comparability tab.   I’d recommend trying Proton 5.13-6 first because that is what everyone else used to get it to work on their systems according to the ProtonDB. Once you do that, you’ll be able to download MSFS20 and install it.  Once installed, you’ll also want to add ‘-FastLaunch’ to the Launch options.    Once done with that, hit the little “X” button and try clicking the play button and seeing if it will run.

If it doesn’t work

Sometimes each system is a little bit different.   So I’ll talk about ways you can tweak it to get it to work on your system.    Some things to try:

  • Get a New or Older version of the GPU driver
  • Change the Proton version to a New or Older version or try the experimental version.
  • Check your Wine Settings(Although I didn’t have to do much with mine just install and try to run the q4wine once that was ran.   I didn’t do anything else but quit the program.)
  • Check the ProtoDB to see what everyone else has done to get the game to run.

I suggest making one change at a time and seeing if the game will run after the change.   If it is a GPU driver change, I suggest rebooting to make sure you are using the GPU driver you want to try to run with the program.  Also Don’t expect the game to run as smoothly as it does on Windows so be thoughtful when you are playing the game.   Sometimes there will be crashes and other things going on.  You can however try different configurations to see if you can resolve those issues also.  If you like this post please consider buying something from my affiliate list to support my blog and my time in write.

Why I bought Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Paul3 Replies

Simulator evolution 101

Saying that can mean so many different things, from First person shooters to flights like Microsoft Flight Simulator.   Each one has an unique aspect in the Gaming or PC world.   Now Let’s talk about what a Simulator is and then we can get into the mechanics of why someone would use this.  According to Wikipedia a “flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes.”

In the 1990’s it used to be a big bulky room with plenty of room for hydraulics and servos to simulate the direction and motion of the aircraft.  I know this really well because I on occasion would visit one of those places where you could see the flight crews flying in the simulator and it was so interesting and quite nice to see in actions.   The cockpit would be up in the air and you’d see the simulator tilt right or left or tilt down or up and you could imagine how that would be so fun to fly.   Now I on occasion I got to join the flight in the simulator because hey I was a little kid at the time and who’d not want to see it in action.

Simulations Still amazes me

I would on occasion remember those days in the big simulator and be in awe of what you could do.  So ten years ago I started looking for a simulator game or app.   I found the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and I was just amazed about it.   I started playing that simulator in the early days when it wasn’t really as good as it got today.   It was really fun and enjoyable to fly in those days to remind me what it was like when I was young.  The nostalgia alone is something that was the best feeling in the world for me.

Fast Forward to 2020

As the Pandemic hit and we were stuck in our house for days on end due to being lockdown.   I got really bored and started playing the old simulator.   I decided I wanted to see if they’re something new and better graphics.  So I found out that Microsoft was releasing the 2020 version later that year.   I ordered my copy of the software as soon as I was able to preorder it because well I was stuck in my house and wanted something to do.   I started using it and I have had the best time of life flying the game that reminds so much of my childhood as a kid in a real simulator.   I will say that it does take some time to get used.   You will also need a Decent graphics card to be able to play this one if you really want the realism of the way everything looks and how the terrain will look.   I suggest something like a minimum of Nvidia 1060 TI or higher and that is just the GPU.  A good CPU is recommended  something like an i5 or high would work just as well.   I never tried this on a I3 cpu so I am not sure how well it would work.   I encourage you to try it out on your system and see just how nice it is to fly a plane.

Buy Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC), (Steam),(XBOX) and explore the world!