Hi there, Hopefully this is the right area for this. Technical support seemed inappropriate. As many of you probably know, a lot of people have been excited about DXVK and Proton from Steam / Valve which is making playing games on Linux quite easy very rapidly. One issue we keep hitting with getting overwatch to perfect playability is simply how long it takes to see every effect/animation in the game coupled with the fact that the game does not seem to preload these before actually seeing them happen in game. So the shader cache gets built up very slowly resulting in lots of stuttering until you have seen every hero/ability/animation. If you are willing to hear out a suggestion/request hopefully it would be easy to implement which would really help us out (It would probably also help out any windows users you have that are using toasters! )
In Starcraft II there was an arcade map, unit preloader. I have not played in awhile so i do not know if its been kept up to date with new content, but at the time it did right what it says on the tin. Just scrolls across every unit animation there is thus preloading it all. It was made for people with slow computers but it also would end up being super helpful for DXVK, we were hoping you might be willing to make something similar for overwatch. An option in the menus to just go to a little premade map that shows every effect in the game so the shader cache can be built up instantly. This would completely remove the last roadblock to perfectly smooth play on Linux.
There is a lot of work going on to try and fix this ourselves, new shader caches are being made for DXVK that are super generic and can safely be transferred between machines and merged. That way once a full shader cache is built of all possible quality settings its just a matter of distributing it to users. However i thought i would come and put forward this idea as well, since it would make a much simpler option for those less technically inclined users that still want an easier way to get the cache rolling just in case the solution doesnt end up being fully automatic.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, your support of the Linux community, and of course making great games so we can have fun!