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***The Official Vulkan API Thread***

shankly1985

shankly1985

shankly1985

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What is Vulkan
Vulkan is the new generation, open standard API for high-efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs. This ground-up design, previously referred to as the Next Generation OpenGL Initiative, provides applications direct control over GPU acceleration for maximized performance and predictability.
“Industry standard APIs like Vulkan are a critical part of enabling developers to bring the best possible experience to customers on multiple platforms. Valve and the other Khronos members are working hard to ensure that this high-performance graphics interface is made available as widely as possible and we view it as a critical component of SteamOS and future Valve games.”
Gabe Newell - Valve
Direct control over GPU operation, with minimized driver overhead for maximum performance
Multi-threading-friendly architecture to increase overall system performance
Designed to be used in a wide variety of devices including mobile, desktop, consoles, and embedded platforms
Uses Khronos’ new SPIR-V™ intermediate representation for shading language flexibility and simplified drivers (see more on SPIR-V here)
Extensible layered architecture enables innovative tools without impacting production performance while validating, debugging, and profiling
Simpler drivers for low-overhead efficiency and cross vendor portability


News!
AMD’s Mantle Lives On In Vulkan – Lays The Foundation For The Next OpenGL
http://wccftech.com/mantle-lives-vulkan-wip/#ixzz3TSh9SWCt
Valve also announced a special version of Source 2 that will be compatible with Vulkan, a "cross-platform, cross-vendor 3D graphics API that allows games developers to get the most out of the latest graphics hardware."
http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-announcement-free-developers

Khronos targets DirectX 12 with next-generation Vulkan API
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/200265-khronos-targets-directx-12-with-next-generation-vulkan-api

Vulkan will not be limited to Windows 10 and similar operating systems.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/GDC-15-What-Vulkan-glNext-SPIR-V-and-OpenCL-21
Many companies have made great contributions to Vulkan, including AMD who contributed Mantle. Being able to start with the Mantle design definitely helped us get rolling quickly – but there has been a lot of design iteration, not the least making sure that Vulkan can run across many different GPU architectures. Vulkan is definitely a working group design now.
http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/GDC-15-Khronos-Acknowledges-Mantles-Start-Vulkan

Links
https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

More to follow! Continue to discuss this new API in a friendly manner.
Thanks :cool:
 
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Great stuff and could well give SteamOS that much needed kick start. Nice to see non proprietary APIs as well and good for everyone :D

No reason this discussion shouldn't be friendly, as it benefits all.
 
Hope this gets used a lot, Competition is great for the industry as a whole.
Not being tied to windows is a good thing imo :)
 
Gregster said:
Great stuff and could well give SteamOS that much needed kick start. Nice to see non proprietary APIs as well and good for everyone :D

No reason this discussion shouldn't be friendly, as it benefits all.
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Completely agree on this Gregster, anything that pushes GPU performance onwards and upwards is a good thing in my book. By the way, congrats on the new avatar on the forums, didn't recognise you at first! :)
 
IMO, it's a good thing that the good bits from Mantle were absorbed into Vulkan. AMD no doubt made some mistakes building Mantle (no software is ever perfect the first time, you learn from making it then fix what didn't work out so well as originally thought), and through Vulkan we should be getting a better API overall.

Its success will largely depend on the software that's going to use it though and the rate of its adoption.
 
Mixed views on this, on one hand if it makes my games look better and or run faster then I am all for it :)

However I do have a couple of reservations:

1: The name, OpenGL is a very recognised brand, moving away from it will be hit or miss. OFC the new name may help remove some of the stigma OpenGL has due to point 2.

2: Microsoft, don't fool yourselves OpenGL hasn't failed to compete with Direct3D for the last 15 years because it wasn't as good, it failed to compete because Microsoft made it fail via FUD and promotion of Direct3D.
 
ubersonic said:
Mixed views on this, on one hand if it makes my games look better and or run faster then I am all for it :)

However I do have a couple of reservations:

1: The name, OpenGL is a very recognised brand, moving away from it will be hit or miss. OFC the new name may help remove some of the stigma OpenGL has due to point 2.

2: Microsoft, don't fool yourselves OpenGL hasn't failed to compete with Direct3D for the last 15 years because it wasn't as good, it failed to compete because Microsoft made it fail via FUD and promotion of Direct3D.
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1: Well, it's not OpenGL anymore so using that name would be wrong. It's more an evolution of OpenGL, it's quite different.

2: Driver support I'm guessing will have played a large part in that as well.
 
Shiari said:
1: Well, it's not OpenGL anymore so using that name would be wrong. It's more an evolution of OpenGL, it's quite different.
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You mean like DirectX 12 is an evolution of DirectX 11? OpenGL is currently on version 4.5, this would have been 5.0 before the name change to Vulkan (looks messy on the OpenGL wiki now lol).


Shiari said:
2: Driver support I'm guessing will have played a large part in that as well.
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True, but to be fair to AMD/Nvidia, after Microsoft made sure most devs used Direct3D instead of OpenGL it simply wasn't as important to them so it fell behind with driver support.

Obviously this lack of driver support would manifest itself in the RAGE debacle which was basically the kiss of death for OpenGL in recent times.
 
ubersonic said:
2: Microsoft, don't fool yourselves OpenGL hasn't failed to compete with Direct3D for the last 15 years because it wasn't as good, it failed to compete because Microsoft made it fail via FUD and promotion of Direct3D.
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I disagree

Once DirectX 8.1 was released in 2000 (15 years ago) it was competing with OpenGL and innovating much more than they were. MS worked soley with Nvidia and ATI (now AMD) whereas OpenGL were hamstrung working with many different parties with different agendas, and at the time they were mainly developing for high-end silicon graphics workstation type hardware, and didn't forsee the move towards fast and cheap (comparatively) 3D gaming GPU's

DX9 was even better in terms of innovations, supporting high-level shader language and at that point OpenGL was left well behind.
 
VincentHanna said:
I disagree

/snip
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That basically agrees with what I said (well, before the ninja), DirectX 8.x 15 years ago was the last time OpenGL and Direct3D were on a mostly equal footing, afterwards support dwindled off and Direct3D became dominant (this transition of developers had actually been going on for some time, just OpenGL was superior pre DX8).


Noctifer said:
Happy to see Blizzard on the list of companies supporting Vulkan. WoW and D3 could seriously use a low level API.
Click to expand...

That's because they support OpenGL for their OSX client, and Vulkan is the next version of OpenGL.
 
Martini1991 said:
I'm talking for the desktop market..
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A lot of mobile games are starting to turn up on Steam. Vulkan will mean almost no porting is needed to transfer the game from mobile to desktop. having 1 API across all the markets should make it semi successful and is a clear advantaged over DX.
 
I mean our "bread and butter" titles.

And those aren't mobile games, although I see where you're coming from, and since you're a bit of a mobile lover, I guess for you, vulcan will be good, and probably have mainstream success. But for the majority of us, mobile ports of games are not what we would consider a successful breakthrough of an API.

If say, the next 20 games from bioware, EA, Valve, Ubisoft all were vulcan, that's when it'd probably be considered a mainstream success.

I know it sounds like I'm moving the goal posts, but I'm not. The majority of us do not consider OpenGL in the current market a success (mainstream) for our desktop gaming. What you've basically described is the current situation
 
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