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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 17 2016, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the live-long-and-phosphor dept.

After 18 months of work, the Vulkan 1.0 graphics specification has been released:

This is a little different from the Khronos Group's past launches, however, in that this time around there will be more than a specification PDF available – there are drivers, support documentation and a free SDK, and there is even a game that you can download with a Vulkan backend. There is a multitude of companies comprising the Khronos Group, and those in the working group for Vulkan include not only AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, but game engine makers and even Oculus VR.

[...] Unlike DirectX 12, Vulkan is completely open-source and royalty-free. Anyone who wants to use the code or adjust the code to fit their personal needs is free to do so, be that for private or commercial purposes. [...] DirectX 12 is Microsoft's graphics API, and it works only on Windows 10. Metal is an API made by Apple, and although it is also a low-overhead API, it works only on Apple devices. Vulkan, by contrast, works on many platforms. You can use in on operating systems as old as Windows XP on up to Windows 10, pretty much any Linux distro including SteamOS, and Android. Interestingly enough, Apple has opted not to integrate support for Vulkan into its devices -- although it is free to do so, so a day may come when Apple devices do have Vulkan support.

The development of the API owes a lot to AMD's Mantle:

[Continues.]

Since Khronos's last major press update almost a year ago in March of 2015, not a great deal has changed on the technical side from a high level. After being gifted Mantle 1.0 from AMD – an action that significantly sped up the development process and bypassed the need to figure out some fundamental questions about how the API should be designed – the consortium went about adapting Mantle to serve as a wider, more generic API suitable for hardware from multiple vendors across multiple OSes.

The end result is that Vulkan has its roots firmly in Mantle, through Khronos has worked to make it very clear that multiple vendors are responsible for contributing IP that ultimately went into Vulkan. And while the specific low-level details of the API are beyond the scope of this article, I do know that the shader resource binding system is significantly different from Mantle, and that's not the only system that was updated or overhauled during Vulkan's development.

More coverage at Ars and The Register. Check out Khronos Group's hub for the Vulkan 1.0 specification. Both AMD and Nvidia have released Vulkan drivers. Finally, here is the Valve-funded LunarG Vulkan-based SDK.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:22AM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:22AM (#305628)

    I don't care about multi-OS support, I'm only interested in Linux gaming...just as I commented.

    Ugh ... every day must be a struggle. Anyway. beating DirectX in performance won't make one dev leave Microsoft. The potential to sell 250,000+ copies will. You are *years* from seeing the sort of numbers in Linux that will make that happen. In the mean time cheaper porting costs offer your only short-term hope.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @10:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @10:52AM (#305698)

    Anyway. beating DirectX in performance won't make one dev leave Microsoft.

    Most devs I know use Linux and Windows equally well. With cross platform engines it doesn't matter what system you make your game assets and write code on. You can still deploy it across Win / Lin / Mac. It's called a cross compiler. The OS is irrelevant, and has been so for a loooooong, fucking time. Tell me something? What OS did Doom run on? If you said MSDOS you get a gold star. Did you know Doom was developed on a NeXT machine?

    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday February 17 2016, @05:11PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 17 2016, @05:11PM (#305848)
      That's a nice little story but doesn't cover the point I made that the devs go where the audience is. It's not lack of wisdom keeping games from being cross-platform, it's lack of sales.
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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:14PM (#305888)

        You just ignored that even Doom shows that the dev platform is irrelevant. The situation has gotten even better. Today damn near everything is cross platform. Assets are largely not platform dependent, and can be converted for the specific platform. Code is written in cross platform languages.

        The false dichotomy proposed is that devs have to leave windows to gain linux, but that is a farcical stance. Carmack did not have to leave NeXt to develop for MSDOS. Similarly, Windows devs can check a box in their compiler toolchain to target Linux. You continue to argue without evidence, and yet the evidence proves that devs will develop for linux, even poor indie devs, and giants like Valve, id Software, Unreal, etc.

        My point is that you're being disingenuous, or are willfully ignorant of how the development process works. In this day and age there is no financial burden for releasing only on one platform EXCEPT for exclusivity deals or gross lack of foresight.

        My point is that the devs are already on linux. Do you know what a Steam Box is? It's a platform where anything produced for Valve's Source engines can run, and it's on Linux... Previously the Source engine only ran on Windows. Obviously there already is enough financial incentive or else there would be no games running on Linux. The burden to make a cross platform game is next to zero when you select for a cross platform development toolchain. Testing is the only substantial cost you might argue, but testing multiple platforms is peanuts, esp. when nearly all the bugs are going to be cross platform bugs, not platform dependent ones. Testers get paid minimum wage OR NOTHING AT ALL in the case of pre-release, closed alpha and closed beta games as seen in indie games and even on consoles. Point being that the cost is minimal.

        What's keeping games off of Linux is exclusivity deals, not technology capability or developer adoption. This can be trivially demonstrated by the fact that the games exclusive to Windows are also kept off of Apple's OSX, which has a significant enough user base to attract developers. Protip: If it runs on OSX it's trivial to make it work on Linux (and it will likely run better on Linux too).

        • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday February 17 2016, @08:15PM

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 17 2016, @08:15PM (#305914)

          You just ignored that even Doom shows that the dev platform is irrelevant. The situation has gotten even better. Today damn near everything is cross platform. Assets are largely not platform dependent, and can be converted for the specific platform. Code is written in cross platform languages.

          I didn't ignore it, I just know that even if it runs reliably it's still extra testing, quality control, technical support, packaging, etc. Releasing a game on another platform is not, nor will it ever be, free of cost, and it requires sales to justify it.

          What's keeping games off of Linux is exclusivity deals, not technology capability or developer adoption.

          Hahaha. Not true but even if it were that still brings us right back to the minuscule size of the customer base. Money, or more specifically the expectation of making more of it, is the only reason a deal like that would ever be signed. Again, nothing to do with which platform they use.

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