here again to post an update that SUPPOSEDLY 5.3-5.4 should have distance field support.
EDIT:
From what I’m seeing so far it seems that mobile forward has support for distance fields, but the only direct reference is in the metal rhi. I think at the moment the rest of the implementation either isn’t set up for vulkan and or you need to override yourself in the vulkan rhi to report device support for the distance fields feature.
That said, that’s only half the issue. I need to go back to the file paths listed above to see if there is some sort of path for the generation. The material editor is still reporting that distance fields are flat out not supported on ES3.1.