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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: 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]