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Strata Source

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The Strata Source logo

Strata Source Strata Source (more informally known as Strata, and formerly known as the Chaos Engine) is a third-party Source Source engine branch using licensed code. It is a modified version of the CS:GO engine branch CS:GO engine branch that combines the features of both CS:GO and the Portal 2 engine branch Portal 2 engine branch, along with many improvements that bring Source close to modern standards. This engine branch was first released publicly with the launch of Portal: Revolution Portal: Revolution, and is still in active development.

Features

Example from Portal: Revolution showing the intricate environments capable with Strata Source

Feature list from the Strata Source Wiki
New since the CS:GO engine branch:

Native Direct3D 11 renderer
Replaces Direct3D 9 renderer, and adds some new features that previous version of Direct3D doesn't have.
Vulkan renderer on Linux, using DXVK to convert DX11 calls to Vulkan
64-bit executable
Game runs on 64-bit on all platforms; 32-bit and Mac OS support has been dropped. 64-bit allows better performance and allows the game to access more than 4GB of RAM.
PBR shaders

      Introduces a new Shader-ball.png PBR shader that attempts to create realistic reactions to light

Ported Portal 2 engine branch features
Including but not limited to World Portals and Portal gun
Expanded map limits (128k x 128k x 128k) via BSP v25 and increased entity cap
Backwards compatible
Compatible with BSP v19-21
Compatible with Source 2013 Source 2013 (and older) branch models
The model format found in games such as Half-Life 2Team Fortress 2PortalCounter-Strike: SourceDay of Defeat: Source is now supported.
WEBM video support, replacing older Bink videos
Increased framerate, lower file sizes, and easier to author
New v7.6 VTF version
Adds support for the higher-quality ATI1N, ATI2N, BC6H, and BC7 texture compression formats, as well as lossless Wikipedia icon deflate compression on top of existing image format, for reduced size. Better support for 4K textures[How?].
Many improvements to Linux support
Fully cross-platform engine tools and utils
Improved MP3 support with addition of OGG (Vorbis, Opus, Speex and PCM supported) and FLAC audio formats
Steam Audio
Improved HRTF, environmental reflection effects, basic occulsion
Many improvements to the Hammer Hammer level editor, named Strata Hammer Strata Hammer
Many code quality improvements (Refactors, cleanup, and C++20)
Sentry crash report integration

Availability

The following titles run on the Strata Source Strata Source branch:

The source code for this branch is not available, however, authoring tools exist for each game, located in 🖿/bin/win64/.

See also