For years now, Valve has been slowly improving the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets thousands of Windows games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. But Valve’s Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games written for Direct3D 8, the proprietary Windows graphics API Microsoft released in late 2000.
Now, a new open source project is seeking to extend Linux interoperability further back into PC gaming history. The d7vk project describes itself as “a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7 [D3D7], which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine.”
More options are always welcome
The new project isn’t the first attempt to get Direct3D 7 games running on Linux. Wine‘s own built-in WineD3D compatibility layer has supported D3D7 in some form or another for at least two decades now. But the new d7vk project instead branches off the existing dxvk compatibility layer, which is already used by Valve’s Proton for SteamOS and which reportedly offers better performance than WineD3D on many games.