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Vulkan 1.2.162 Released With Ray-Tracing Support Promoted
Earlier this year Vulkan ray-tracing arrived in provisional form while with today's Vulkan 1.2.162 specification update this functionality has been promoted to stable and ready for broad industry support.
The Vulkan ray-tracing support is now deemed final and out of the provisional guard. This includes the finalized versions of VK_KHR_acceleration_structure, VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline, VK_KHR_ray_query, VK_KHR_pipeline_library, and VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations.
The Vulkan ray-tracing specification now has the support of AMD, Arm, EA, Epic Games, Facebook, Imagination, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Unity, Valve, and other stakeholders.
It's official: Vulkan now offers an alternative to DirectX Raytracing
Today marks the moment the Vulkan API is officially ready for ray tracing. The Khronos Group behind the open API has announced the final Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions, and that means there's finally a firm alternative to Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing API used extensively in ray-traced games today.
Integrated right into the existing Vulkan framework, the new Vulkan Ray Tracing is a set of extensions—Vulkan, SPIR-V, and GLSL—that allow developers to adopt ray tracing in games utilising the Vulkan API.
Vulkan is a hot ticket item amongst game developers due to its generally solid performance with fewer legacy or convoluted systems to weigh it down, but it's also popular simply for the fact it's not tied intrinsically to any single hardware or platform provider—unlike, say, its main competitor in the gaming API space, DirectX 12.
See also: NVIDIA Releases Beta Driver With Khronos Vulkan Ray Tracing Support
Valve Now Funding Blumenkrantz - Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan To Continue
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 24 2020, @06:20PM
Today is a good die to die...for DirectX. Live long and prosper, Vulkan, you green blooded, pointy eared----
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2020, @06:25PM (8 children)
so does this mean more games for GNU+Linux?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2020, @08:14PM
More importantly, can you see the grue before he eats you?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 24 2020, @10:51PM (2 children)
Hardware accelerated ray tracing features are likely optional until 2023 or later. I don't think DXR/Nvidia is blocking anyone from running games on Linux (which you'll be doing with WINE/Proton).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday November 25 2020, @04:08AM (1 child)
or Geforce Now if your internet's good enough. I've heard it's been usable with a user agent tweak for a while, but nvidia's officially adding support for Chrome on Linux so it should soon be effortless. Technically the games are running in Windows on someone else's machine, but you don't have to deal with it that way and it lets you use your own games library instead of having to buy things again (like Stadia).
It's not interesting to me since I have GPU passthrough set up and can run Windows games natively if the Linux support sucks, but might be interesting to others.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 25 2020, @04:48AM
I remember early on some big publishers were torturing that service by pulling their games (mostly due to greed, and maybe an indie dev or two being hardasses). I don't know if it has settled down since then.
Nvidia’s GeForce Now is becoming an important test for the future of cloud gaming [theverge.com]
Nvidia’s GeForce Now loses 2K Games titles, following Activision and Bethesda [theverge.com]
Full Stream Ahead: PC Community Rallies Behind GeForce NOW [nvidia.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday November 25 2020, @09:20AM (3 children)
As a linux user I wish this was true.
However, despite the already existing capability of using cross platform tools, many publishers do not like to support linux.
Supposedly, a linux port of Doom (2016 version) was made and never released. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/doom-2016-could-have-been-on-linux-id-software-made-a-linux-version-sound-easy-to-do.11465 [gamingonlinux.com]
IMHO, I believe that the publisher did not want to support linux. (Game companies rarely like to support anything because it costs money after the product is sold... Linux is just an easy reason.)
There are plenty of high quality games that do support linux. There is no big reason why it is not possible. Yet the largest game publishers do not support it at all. (EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft.) Epic Games even has a cross platform unreal platform (which can be used for linux game development), yet they do not release linux games themselves. (and rumours that I have not confirmed have said that bugs that 3rd parties have fixed on linux, wait forever to be corrected in their code.)
Google's stadia runs on linux servers... i.e. games on stadia run on linux... yet they are not necessarily released on linux.
Sure sounds to me as if publishers just don't want to support anything, and linux is easy target to not support.
(All this said, there are plenty of good developers who actually do support their products and do support linux... but it seems as if the larger the developer/publisher is, the less likely to see any support let alone linux support.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 26 2020, @05:26AM (2 children)
Valve/CodeWeavers Releases Proton 5.13-1 With More Windows Games Running On Linux [phoronix.com] (October 15)
Wine 6.0 Release Preparations Begin In Two Weeks [phoronix.com] (November 23)
Valve Now Funding Blumenkrantz - Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan To Continue [phoronix.com] (November 23)
4A Games Still Working On Linux Port Of Metro Exodus [phoronix.com] (November 25)
WINE/Proton is how you will get your Linux gaming, mostly. The sands could be shifting with the prominence of ARM and other developments.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday November 26 2020, @10:38PM (1 child)
I heard about Metro Exodus. Also Valve has ported Half-Life Alyx. There is some very good development for linux.
But as for WINE/Proton, I personally do not consider that linux game development. (While technically it is a great achievement, it does not solve the problem of companies actually supporting their products)
For the record, I think proton is great for allowing people to move to linux and keeping their existing game library... But many devs use WINE as a crutch to ignore linux.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 27 2020, @02:01AM
What you said is true, but it's also the way it's gonna be as long as Linux is around 1% [phoronix.com].
WINE is increasingly well polished (that's clear to me from WINE/Proton running the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Death Stranding), and ideally game developers could put in a tiny extra effort to make sure games cooperate with WINE, maybe submitting bug reports ahead of release if necessary. I haven't heard of that happening though.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 24 2020, @07:00PM (6 children)
As an Nvidia guy, I'm perfectly aware that ray tracing is a huge deal on the latest hardware. But, looking at the downloads page for drivers, I found this:
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 24 2020, @09:52PM (5 children)
no disrespect intended but .. WTF?
Other than knowing I have a nVidia card in my desktop I know next to zero about the different graphics cards that are in use.
what exactly are you trying to say with that driver support list and how does it relate to the article?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 24 2020, @10:20PM (4 children)
Well, it means only one thing: An ancient GTX730 can do some limited ray tracing. Which may (or may not) enable someone to play "modern" games on very low settings.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 24 2020, @10:45PM
Thank you for the clarification.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 24 2020, @10:57PM (1 child)
Non-RTX/RDNA2 cards have been able to do raytracing (outside of a handful of games using Nvidia's proprietary thing only). How well depends on factors including the implementation.
The latest games are still based on rasterization, with some amount of ray tracing features thrown in on top. That could change to a purely ray tracing approach in the future, which would be great for game developers since it can look good and natural with less work. But that is 3-5+ years from now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2020, @01:14AM
Yeah, we're post the peak-bitcoin-mining-on-desktop, we need to spur the consumption of expensive hardware. Besides, the home consumer needs heating during winter (and extra A/C in summer).
(grin)
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday November 25 2020, @09:26AM
Ah, the old "it's all about the games" thing.
The raytracing APIs may well be useful for far more than gaming, and if they are a simple layer of already-existing work that can work on older hardware (just slowly), then why not expose them in the driver?
Remember how back-in-the-day we abused GPUs to do things that weren't graphics-related? They formalised that and turned it into CUDA, OpenCL and similar!
And there's nothing stopping indie games, say, selectively employing a small feature of ray-tracing in a game that only needs limited power but can benefit or requires RT functions... better to be able to run it than it just crash out with a driver error.
Forget the game thing. Think "this is a new capability in the driver that we're able to expose and use for no effort at all, even on limited hardware". That's pretty much how standards are made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2020, @09:04AM (2 children)
Why can't Microsoft, a member of the Linux Foundation and champion of Github, spin DirectX into open source? Why aren't they helping Linux become a platform for native games? I mean, Linux isn't a cancer anymore, right? They want interoperability, right? They're our friends, right?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday November 25 2020, @09:31AM (1 child)
It's inherently tied into the MS driver platform, and does nothing special. If you want to use it, you still have to convert everything you do to "Windows-like" features anyway, which has the same kind of costs as just using Wine.
Much better to just talk a low-level protocol that's close to hardware and supported by everything on all platforms anyway. Almost like you'd want, say, the people who made OpenGL to come up with something like that...
Nothing's changed, DirectX is just a different way of making OpenGL that's basically locked into one manufacturer. Opening it up won't do much at all. For a start, we know exactly the way it works because every game producer on the planet targets it. And they can swap out their DX functions for Vulkan or OpenGL any time they liked. That's basically how Half-Life was born, we're just repeating the same thing 20 years later.
Vulkan exists because both DX and OpenGL got too bulky and weighed down for their core purpose, and don't reflect the underlying hardware any more. And is cross-platform. And major studio games support both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2020, @06:19AM
nice dance, but they should still open source it.