Vulkan -New Replacement For OpenGL

Is Vulkan an opportunity to have better graphic card drivers and better game performances on Linux ?

 

It's merely the OpenGL equivalent to Microsoft's DirectX 12 and AMD's Mantle. Whether or not it brings any improvements for Linux is still going to depend on the hardware manufacturers. I wouldn't hold your breath that anything will really change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)

 

I cross my fingers so ;-)

 

I would say that yes it should, and my reasoning is that as Vulkan like Mantle and DirectX12 is a low level multi-threaded Api, allowing programmers to write code that takes advantage of the combined power of your CPU and GPU.

But now it depends upon the games programmers to take advantage of this.

Note that a lot of modern games, have needed a graphics driver update to get the best from your graphical hardware's capabilities, often as soon as a AAA game is out a new driver is available tweaked to run the game faster and better or fix errors.

So games made for Vulkan should be faster and 'better' but it is very dependent on the games/graphics/engine programmers using this new technology well.

Maybe we will still need graphics driver updates at least until the graphics/engine programmers get to grips with these new API's?!

 

Great they finally got things finalized.. now to wait a few years longer to see how we can take advantage of it in our games.

One month of windoze 10 was enough to wipe that garbage off and go back to win7, so I can't wait for the first game engine to actually make Vulkan features more readily available. dx12 can go die in a ditch for all I care, multiplatform support is where things should be going, just a shame it took this long.

"Is Vulkan an opportunity to have better graphic card drivers and better game performances on Linux ?"

Every year I try Linux desktop variant, I still feel like desktop usability is generally worse than winxp overal, though given MS direction with win8/10. I sure do hope this APi can spur some more progress for Linux. Valve seem to have there own agenda as far as supporting Linux goes with there steamOS, but if it rubs off to providing better driver support and bug fixes its a positive. Still Unity support of Linux 32/64 has been flakey at best, and no end to problems with some Linux servers of unity made games, let alone actually playing native on desktop without going through wine (yeh its the developers, but alot come back to blaming Unity linux support/bugs in the end)

How long before Unity support for Vulkan? This year?, should be higher priority than Dx12 now imo.

 

Yes, I agree that if there are any real improvements to the Linux-side of things it'll largely be for this reason. After all a gaming card only sells for a few hundred but a card intended for server-side computations can go into the thousands.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla-supercomputing-solutions.html

 

Just sticking my oar in, as I wrote a response on this on the UE4 forum too.

Vulkan is not meant to be an outright replacement for OpenGL. I imagine OpenGL will eventually fade over time but it still has it's uses. Don't make the mistake of thinking that OpenGL is being obsoleted.

It is a low-level API for advanced graphics programmers, giving them tighter control and thus offering the opportunity to write more efficient code. It is NOT meant for beginners, it is for people who already have a solid understanding of how the underlying hardware works. The general consensus in the OpenGL community is that those wanting to learn graphics programming should still start with OpenGL first.

Vulkan is also not a "magic bullet" that will make everything x times faster out of the box. It is designed specifically to address certain limitations with OpenGL, specifically driver overhead, poor error reporting and handling and multi-threading, among other things.

It is still possible to write highly efficient code in OpenGL (particularly the newest versions), and you may find that Vulkan offers only minor performance enhancements if you're not CPU bound. Look up "approaching zero driver overhead", a list of techniques for super-optimised OpenGL programming. If you're GPU bound then Vulkan will be useless, as it can't make your GPU faster.

 

Does this means that tools like shader editor( shader forge) should be rewritte ?
Or all plugins very shader centric ?

 

Why would you need to? Shader Forge doesn't really do anything aside from convert the visual nodes to actual code. Any modifications will largely depend on Unity for their shader language and on the person making the actual shader.

 

Err no, you're completely wrong here. It is not OpenGL.
See code samples on the net.

 

Fine. It's the Khronos equivalent. Most people (including some on Slashdot) don't know who that is by name though.

 

Khronos is not an api.

 

People who aren't trying to nitpick will understand I meant the organization behind it.

 

Imagine a dx12 made for linux. Considering the kind of environment windows is, dx12 performs really well! A linux dx12 would surely be a powerhouse / monster.

 

Naturally only a couple of days after I started exploring OpenGL for 3D game dev Vulkan would finally come out. lol

Think I'll just stick with OpenGL for now. It is pretty low level itself. Been very educational so far. Most folks here I am sure know about shaders but I never did anything with them and didn't see the big deal. Mainly because I was thinking of the original use of shaders. Didn't realize until researching OpenGL that gfx cards now have multiple shader processors (like thousands in some cases) all working in parallel and they can now be used for all kinds of things.

At any rate I see no sense in learning Vulkan until I have learned OpenGL. Besides anything this new I don't trust. Always bugs somewhere until it has gone through the fires of real world development.

 

So far there seems to be good news for Vulkan potential, though the hardware support for all features still seems to be a bit of a wild west

Less than 1% frame-rate variation, faster texture updates/readbacks
http://www.libretro.com/index.php/vulkan-progress-report-and-initial-impressions/

If you read up on the precursor to render passes, pixel local storage it allows things like up-to 22% faster deferred rendering on mobile in a Mali testbench.

Mobile support seems for future devices seems to be good as seen yesterday by the Galaxy S7 presentation, and the Nvidia shield last week.

 

Unreal starts supporting Vulkan : https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/epic-games-unveils-protostar-at-samsung-galaxy-unpacked

Maybe Unity will follow soon

 

Well the March 16 th release looks like it will be fully DirectX 12, and Vulkan is already in the roadmap/research section.

So if they have done a good job of abstracting the unity graphics engine for multi-threaded rendering with DirectX 12 then fingers crossed we should see Vulkan soon, maybe even this year!

 

windows - directx
mac - metal
linux - vulkan

No more cross platform D:

 

I guess it could help to have each platform team working with native stuff. Will it be easier for the mac team to implement metal and the linux team to implement vulkan instead of all teams implementing opengl?

 

Why not all platforms - vulkan?

 

Last I heard, from news articles dated last August, Apple isn't getting Vulkan.

 

As Ryiah said, it looks like Apple doesn't want vulkan and insists on pushing their own tech instead. I don't use their products, though, so I don't know for sure.
It is kinda similar to microsoft's attitude towards OpenGL.

Micro$oft had interesting behavior. MS is interested in their tech gaining and keeping foothold, but at the same time, they use DirectX as a bait to force OS upgrade (No DX10 on WinXP, no DX12 on Win7, etc). Apparently Apple now wants to do the same.

 

Aren't all OS upgrades after windows 10 free though? And hasn't that also been the case with apple since like snow leopard? And before that os upgrades were already really cheap for apple.

When it comes down to it, directx can have a lot more layers on a pbr shader than opengl can. A lot more. I believe vulkan will make things better, but I doubt it's going to make up the HUGE gap between directx and opengl for some things. Besides, if unity is doing the hard work for us, why opt out of using directx?

 

It is not about upgrades, it is about trying to block off or snuff out competing technology.

That would be a problem with implementation of pbr shader. OGL/DX are largerly equivalent with exception that you can run DX10+ level effects on WinXP/Linux if you use OGL. OF course, if you can support that statement with citation from official DX/GL spec, go ahead and do it. It IS possible that I'm missing some info...

Speaking of DX vs OpenGL, you might want to check this thread out for fun example:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/reuse-depth-buffer-of-main-camera.280460/

I remember hitting some kind of similar difference last year.... details are quite hazy at this point, though.

 

The difference was like opengl could use 8 materials and directx was significantly more.

The koch brothers are trying to do that now They're trying to hurt the electric transportation industry.

 

You monsters

--edit

I inspected the smileyface. Why is the natural size of these images 1x1 pixel?

 

I honestly don't see the point in using DX12. Sure, Vulkan isn't supported on iOS, but that's not a problem for any other non-console device, whereas DX12 is entirely restricted to Windows 10, and there is still quite a bit of resistance to upgrading to Windows 10 for many, many users. Vulkan doesn't have that problem.

 

Actually, Microsoft's approach backfired. By locking the DirectX versions to Windows versions, Microsoft segmented and weakened their own market. The adoption of DirectX11 was delayed since many users were still using Windows XP, so developers continued making games that targeted DirectX9. If Microsoft had added DirectX11 to Windows XP, DirectX11 adoption would have occurred instantly and a lot more DirectX11 games would have been developed.

From an end user point of view, asking for the latest DirectX version in every major Windows version is different from asking for Dx12 support in Unity 4.6. A user can install many games, and each game can use a different game engine and/or version of a game engine. With the OS, the user usually only has one OS version at a time. There are edge cases where users have dual boots or multiple computers, but most users have one OS at a time.

 

I think it's too early to judge whether their strategy with Windows 10 & DX12 has paid off for them. If we start to see notable games featuring notable performance gains on DX12 then it will increase Windows 10 adoption by some percent. If it goes in a different direction, for example lots of Vulkan games and barely any DX12 ones, then yeah, it blew up in their face.

 

I hope people adopt windows 10 too. Microsoft dropped everything below ie11 so people might be using insecure browsers!

 

just watched the unreal vulkan mobile demo and it sounds highly unreal, i just feel my laptop could not even run this demo so how a mobile could?

 

FTFY

//edit: Also no sane person uses IE, while insane few who does deserve what is coming to them.

 

I don't mind the back door. I think we out it to our freedom to occupy nsa resources with our trivial nonsense so that with our infinitely growing population they eventually will be unable to keep up with any of it.

 

typical apple

 

We can only hope it'll hit soon. SteamOS just gained support through version 355 of Nvidia's Linux driver.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035...cross-platform-alternative-to-directx-12.html