Unity 3D Web Player on Linux via Pipelight

Hello, Habrasoobschestvo. I think many have wondered if there is a working port for the Unity 3D Web player under Linux. Unfortunately, officially this platform (at the moment) is not supported, and the web plugin works only under Windows / Mac OS. Some used a bunch of Wine + Firefox for Windows + Unity 3D WP for Windows to solve this problem. However, this bundle is unstable, and there are problems with the looped update of Unity 3D WP. Today we will look at a more functional solution using browsers for Linux, and we will do it with the help of Pipelight.

What is Pipelight?

Pipelight is a Windows NPAPI for Windows plug-ins (Unity 3D WP, Silverlight, Flash, etc.) that allows you to use these plug-ins in nativ-Linux browsers. Pipelight consists of two parts: the Linux library, which is loaded by the browser, and the Windows program, which starts in Wine. The Windows program emits a Win-browser and loads the Win-DLL of the necessary plug-in. When you open a web page that requires this plugin, the library sends all requests from a Linux browser through the tunnel to the Windows process, forming a kind of “bridge” between the browser and the plugin. More information can be found here .

Installation

I installed and tested Pipelight under Kubuntu 13.10 and Firefox 28. Accordingly, I will describe the process for it, but your system and browser may differ (also supported: Debian , Arch Linux , openSUSE , Fedora 18/19/20 , AVLinux , Slackware , CentOS 6 , SteamOS , Mageia 4 ... and custom distros ).
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The installation is very simple and is carried out in just a few steps, the necessary Wine libraries to pull themselves:

#  ppa : sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable #  : sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install --install-recommends pipelight-multi #    : sudo pipelight-plugin --update 

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the new version of the package is called “pipelight-multi”, and not “pipelight”, which has passed into the state of deprecated.
Also due to Silverlight's original focus, Pipelight can draw fonts that are protected by a Microsoft license. In this case, you will have to accept the license agreement. However, it was not requested from me even after turning on Silverlight.

Now, enable Unity support:

 sudo pipelight-plugin --enable unity3d 

We press [Y], after that the Wine application will start, we are waiting for it to load, we restart the browser - that's it, that's it!

You can also enable other plug-ins that are supported by Pipelight (Silverlight or, for example, Flash, since the Linux version is behind Win):

 # Silverlight sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight # Silverlight 5.0 sudo pipelight-plugin --disable silverlight --enable silverlight5.0 # Flash sudo pipelight-plugin --enable flash 

Does not work!

If the installation was successful, but the Unity Web application refuses to load on the page, then, most likely, it has a built-in User Agent check that does not shut down the Win / Mac OS system.
The problem is solved quite simply.

Install one of the recommended plug-ins (the developers do not vouch for compatibility with other plug-ins) for a quick change of the user agent:

Chrome:
1. Install the plugin - chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg
2. For Unity 3D, select "Safari / Mac OS X"
3. For Silverlight - "Windows Firefox 15".

Firefox:
1. Install the plugin - addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-overrider
2. Open the settings of the plugin and append the following lines:

 Firefox 15/Windows: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1 Safari/OSX: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3) AppleWebKit/534.55.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.3 Safari/534.53.10 

3. For Unity 3D, select "Safari / OSX"
4. For Silverlight - “Firefox 15 / Windows”.

Still does not work!

If everything worked well and then suddenly ceased, try clearing the home folder of the pipelight ( Note: it is advisable to backup this data before this operation, otherwise you may lose game saves and settings for applications! ):

 rm -rf ~/.wine-pipelight/ 

Check out the official FAQ and the bug tracker .
For distributions other than Ubuntu, it may be necessary to reassemble the special Wine packages, details are here (English) .

Everything broke after updating the browser!

Try to disable and re-enable plug-ins, as well as execute the command:

 sudo pipelight-plugin --create-mozilla-plugins 

Known Issues with Unity 3D WP

Pipelight supports most Unity Web applications, but some have problems that developers are working on (according to their assurances at the time of this writing):

1. Stop file download in the middle. It is solved by reloading the page: the download does not stop, the download of the rest of the file begins.
2. Constantly holding down the left arrow key (left arrow key). It is solved either by reloading the page, or is an insoluble problem for a specific application.
3. A specific application does not start at all. Unfortunately, it meets with a chance of about 1 to 20.

Conclusions and PS

Pipelight makes it easy and quick to enjoy Unity 3D Web applications in your favorite Linux distribution.
Of course, this is not quite a full-fledged performance "as from the manufacturer", but it is much easier in terms of resources than a parallel VM machine, more stable than Wine, and much better than nothing :-)

PS I will be glad to any constructive criticism regarding the post, wishes, as well as indications of errors, reservations and typos in a personal.