Guys, what’s up with Vulkan? Why is no one really talking about this - as I understood, you can then publish games also for Linux no?
With the Steam Deck coming out, it feels like Vulkan is a way to go - it’s open source, multiplatform, etc. Even through my tests, I’ve been getting much better framerates!
Why is no one using this? Or am I blind?
For the same reason nobody talks about directx, they sit in the background, nobody even asks what they mean or do. Vulkan is used, but it doesnt have as good support from ue4/5, so its used as a very similarly performing fallback option, rather than the main thing.
It’s so promising though… I understand that DirectX is the main pipeline for ages, though it would be nice for Unreal to have more support for Vulkan, for smaller games, without some triple A features. Then, Unreal could run also on weaker hardware and Linux.
For example when I was building with Vulkan, my friends had error that they don’t have the proper Vulkam prereqs installed. Couldn’t it anywhere how to solve this. It’s a shame.
Oh, it has 95% support, just no SSGI/Lumen, am on ue5 and it builds perfectly fine. you might be missing an sdk or something somewhere. TBH i want vulkan to succeed over dx12+, so every platform can run the same stuff, no extra work required. Vulkan browser support, anyone? Imagine something like krunker with almost pc-like performance/graphics
Vulkan indeed works well in unreal 5. Once few more things are fixed it should be better than dx. Vulkan is even already for future gpus as it already support using multiple gpus together.
Both packed games and engine has issue with wayland which is used by many linux distros nowdays. Some of use had submitted feedback on this to epic last year.
So when sending packed games in the requirement it should stated to install the latest propietary drivers from amd or nvidia, run gnome or kde in x11 instead of wayland.
Also just be cautious as device lost error happens on vulkan in packed linux games sometimes.
And does volumetric fog work for you in Vulkan? Also with the steam deck coming out, based off linux distro (i know they have some kind of a “emulator” for win games based off wine), it would be great to have it in Vulkan instead of DX.
I am not really experienced in packaging games apart from DX games, how does one go about packaging with Vulkan drivers?
I am guessing user’s input would be required, for example manually installing the drivers, without installer, right?
Volumetric system has some issue. Unreal has to go a long way to be ‘good enough on linux’ and thus native steam os, upstream the ue5 is fully broken on linux.
Normal propietery drivers from amd or nv will do the job and if distro has that in its repo that will be better tahn doing it manually. Most of the linux folks should be knowing these and so linux audience will be more expert than windows. Some where it should be noted in readme to use only propietery drivers. I am not sure but vulkan runtime might be in the drivers ( I assume that because when developing vulkan apps I get vulkan from the drivers, too new drivers and your app might be broken too, who knows vulkan is a slippery slop at times.)