According to this ArsTechnica article, Vulkan is now official with the release of its API 1.0 specification. AMD has released a beta driver with Vulkan support, and NVidia also has released beta driver that support Vulkan API as well.
Still from the article above, Unity, Epic (Unreal Engine), Valve (Source 2), and Dice (Frostbite) also have pledged to support Vulkan in future release of their engine.
What is Vulkan? Simply put, Vulkan is OpenGL built for modern systems. So like OpenGL, Vulkan is also cross-platform: it will run on Win 7, Win 8.x, Win 10, Linux, and Google also has announced that future Android will support Vulkan API.
Hopefully the next UE versions that come with Vulkan will be less bloated.
Im also looking forward to Vulkan, which is based on Mantle.
And hell, the Mantle demo with thousends of simultaneously rendered and calculated AI battle fighters was freaking impressive on my R9 290.
I’m even waiting with my project until it is fully implemented into UE, so i dont have to wriggle with any complicated changes afterwards.
Im reading and learning Vulkan right now, and its kind of complete madness. MUCH harder than using brand-new opengl with latest extensions and stuff. Lets see if i can get my shittyengine v6 to have Vulkan support in the 7th version.
Yeah, this is one thing to consider. Vulkan is not meant to be a total replacement for OpenGL, though OGL will probably start to fade out over the years. It is a lower level API without the abstraction layer and subsequent bloat that has accumulated over the years. It is meant for advanced programmers already familiar with how the GPU hardware operates, giving them closer control. Newbies will be quickly overwhelmed and are better off learning some OpenGL first.
Also worth bearing in mind is that it is not a “hail mary” to performance. In some circumstances it will allow for more efficient programming, but it is already possible in OpenGL to write highly efficient code with close to zero driver overhead, depending on what you’re trying to do of course.
Just want to avoid the inevitable hype cycle that accompanies new tech like this. Vulkan opens up new possibilities to advanced developers who know what they’re doing, but it is not a magic bullet that will speed everything up automagically.
No ur not, I’ll wait and see how it pans out, Im not hyped, but doesn’t mean Im not interested, I just think its a bit early to be dumping D3D in favour of Vulkan.
Vulkan probably has the same recommendations as D3D12: It has much more work on the programmer side and Requires a somewhat better understanding of how GPU’s work.
So I can understand why adding low level 3D API’s could/is hard.
I remember on another forum where some people were/are experimenting with D3D12 and making some pretty silly mistakes once you realize what they are doing and what the Docs say.
Such corporations like Microsoft block the development of new technologies. The profits are always the most import thing for them. DirectX12 should have been done a long ago. They did that because of Mantle and then Vulkan API. Competition is good for us, users. In other words, Vulkan API is beneficial even for the people who stick to the Mircosoft environment only.
The Microsoft low level API should have been released a long ago, if not with Windows 7, for sure with Windows 8/8.1. Microsoft made a decision to do that seeing Mantle’s efforts. They didn’t want to stay behind because the gaming industry is the most important sphere why Windows is so popular. Microsoft used the low level DirectX12 as a strong attraction for the people who play games. Don tell me you don’t see many people installing Windows 10 to have Directx12 only. Now, developers have a choice: two good APIs, where one is limited to one (or two) platform and the other is cross-platform.
I don’t know about D3D12, But I know some people who are very knowledgeable about graphics programming who have said that some of the reasons that newer D3D API’s are not ported to older versions of windows is due to the amount of work required( And the dev time and money that would take).
They have also said that (at least Khronos members) were saying that Mantle was not needed.
That is quite possible.
D3D12 appears good so far, Vulkan should be too.
And BTW it really is Direct3D12, the last three versions of D3D have mostly been on the graphics side.
Well, on the Linux side of things they seem to be able to do just that without much work.
Since Driver Model 2 on Windows there hasn’t been much changes so I’d say it wouldn’t be that difficult. It’s just not in their interest
They are basically the same but just different function names. There were early descriptions of DX12 that were literally copied and renamed from Mantle.
And Vulkan is just continuing Mantle too.
Some things even Vulkan has, that DX12 doesn’t. DX12 was rushed because they noticed that they had to move.
The only fear I have is that MS is lobbying to bad against Vulkan, but for now it seems to go on quite well.
Croteam even ported their engine to a basic Vulkan Proof-Of-Concept already, drivers are lined up the road, the API is open and media has taken up on it a bit.
Hopefully all goes well and DX12 can be ditched in favor of Vulkan.
Ofcourse DX-pre12 and OpenGL won’t die immediately as they are more easy for basic stuff.
Maybe some new simple OGL-like API will emerge that is a neat wrapper around Vulkan so vendors only need to provide a Vulkan-Implementation and not more Graphics-APIs.
That appears to be more or less what has happend with D3D.
Competition is good, Plus it sounds like a “god-send” to those working with OpenGL (Quite a few people complain about support and what is deprecated and what not).
I saw one or two other threads there in the “New Content” section, You will probably find them under the OpenGL forum.
