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***The Official Vulkan API Thread***

D.P. said:
Vulkan isn't actually natively available on iOS/osx, MoltenV is just a wrapper around metal. One could also port DX12 that way, except for licensing issues from M$.
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Was about to point that out too, Though It should make life easier for the most part. Time will tell I guess
 
shankly1985 said:
What matter is the gains and if they is gains would anyone really care if its native or not?
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If a developer is focused on ios/OSX performance then the a Vulkan wrapper will be slower than using Metal directly, and will add complexity (reliance on 3rd party tool) and potentially limit functionality.
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
Didn't Valve support OpenGL too?
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Not sure why you asking the question?

Given Valve's heavy involvement in getting Vulkan to macOS, it's no surprise they effectively have a launch title... Dota 2 will be able to use Vulkan on macOS! Valve has found extremely promising performance results for Dota 2 on Vulkan rather than OpenGL, as shown below. Valve hasn't yet communicated when that Vulkan-ized macOS Dota 2 build will go public, but hopefully soon. This is a big performance win for macOS gamers. Valve will be making an announcement of their own this morning.

OpenGL clearly isn't enough.
 
shankly1985 said:
Not sure why you asking the question?

Given Valve's heavy involvement in getting Vulkan to macOS, it's no surprise they effectively have a launch title... Dota 2 will be able to use Vulkan on macOS! Valve has found extremely promising performance results for Dota 2 on Vulkan rather than OpenGL, as shown below. Valve hasn't yet communicated when that Vulkan-ized macOS Dota 2 build will go public, but hopefully soon. This is a big performance win for macOS gamers. Valve will be making an announcement of their own this morning.

OpenGL clearly isn't enough.
Click to expand...
What I mean was that Valve got behind OpenGL because of SteamOS, so it doesn't seem surprising that they'd get behind Vulkan for much the same reason. Valve supporting Vulkan doesn't surprise me, if EA did it, then I'd be surprised.
 
Martini1991 said:
Just like how we're all now using Steam OS.
Oh no.

Vulkan's gone pretty much no where.
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It was never going to be a over the night drop everything and use Vulkan... These things will take time.
The fact is Vulkan has already shown much more promise in its limits game library than any other API on the market.

Playing Wolfenstein 2 is so dam good with Vulkan its this game that really showed me what a great API this really is its made me want more! I really do hope more and more Game devs and Game engines start supporting it. Last I heard Star Citizen will be making the switch to Vulkan.
 
shankly1985 said:
Getting support from Valve says it all.
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As other have said, Valve supports OpenGL quite heavily as well so that in itself doesn't mean anything about a Vulkan revolution. The fact that Valve seems pleased with it is promising, and as I said earlier this makes a nice addition and will surely be useful to some developers.
One should just be clear that a wrapper is not the same as native support form Apple. There are costs and constraints to consider. For example, what if Vulkan gets some killer features in the future but these can't be made to work with Metal since they rely on some lower-level construct.
My position is i am just more disapointed that Apple have gone the route of using their own API to further segregate things, and have for years failed to properly maintain OpenGL drivers.

And my thoughts on Vulkan is it will never pickup the market share of DX12 on windows or OpenGL for cross platform and professional. It is not what most developers want, especially in the professional software realm
 
 
V-EZ: AMD Releases New Easy-To-Use Vulkan Middleware, Simplified API

AMD's GPUOpen group in cooperation with Khronos today is announcing V-EZ, a new project of theirs designed to make the barrier to entry for the Vulkan graphics API lower. V-EZ provides a middleware layer and simplified API for making it easier to get started with Vulkan development.

V-EZ provides an "easy mode" to Vulkan by reducing the amount of boilerplate code to get started with Vulkan development and making the API easier/simpler to understand by new developers.

V-EZ is compatible with existing Vulkan drivers and is engineered to add minimal overhead to Vulkan games/applications. The V-EZ library makes use of native Vulkan types, provides much simpler memory management and frees the developer from needing to become familiar with the low-level details, the software doesn't need to deal with the management of descriptor set pools, OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) has first-class support under V-EZ as well as SPIR-V, and other simplifications.

This is far from being the first project for trying to provide a simplified interface for getting started with Vulkan. In fact, another GPUOpen project has been their Anvil framework that is a Vulkan wrapper library aiming to reduce the amount of time needed to start writing Vulkan applications from scratch. Given AMD/GPUOpen involvement, it will be interesting to see if it takes off any further than the other efforts in this area.

V-EZ code should be appearing shortly over on GitHub and will be interesting to dive in with this new open-source Vulkan wrapper effort.

More in depth look
Why Vulkan?
With advantages like reduced driver overhead and more control over GPUs, Vulkan has become the 3D graphics and compute API of choice for a growing number of developers. The Khronos group’s successor to OpenGL, Vulkan improves upon the previous open standard by offering access to new extensions, developer tools and useful features such as asynchronous compute and the reuse of command buffers. So why aren’t more developers building with Vulkan? The required low-knowledge of GPU hardware and behavior in Vulkan is much greater than in OpenGL which may require a steeper learning curve for many developers who may have only scratched the surface of OpenGL 4.5. Vulkan also requires applications to be responsible for many things that OpenGL did not – such as memory management and synchronization.

Introducing V-EZ
Continuing our partnership with the Khronos Group and our commitment to providing developers with the hardware agnostic tools they need to build modern professional applications, AMD is announcing the release of V-EZ, a middleware layer that significantly reduces the house-keeping overhead of Vulkan making it easier to use and more accessible to a broader base of developers. V-EZ will still retain the most powerful capabilities of Vulkan but with a simplified API that can be mixed with standard Vulkan where needed. Read on to learn more about some of V-EZ’s key technical features.

https://gpuopen.com/v-ez-brings-easy-mode-vulkan/
 
 
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-GPUOpen-V-EZ

AMD's GPUOpen group in cooperation with Khronos today is announcing V-EZ, a new project of theirs designed to make the barrier to entry for the Vulkan graphics API lower. V-EZ provides a middleware layer and simplified API for making it easier to get started with Vulkan development.

V-EZ provides an "easy mode" to Vulkan by reducing the amount of boilerplate code to get started with Vulkan development and making the API easier/simpler to understand by new developers.

V-EZ is compatible with existing Vulkan drivers and is engineered to add minimal overhead to Vulkan games/applications. The V-EZ library makes use of native Vulkan types, provides much simpler memory management and frees the developer from needing to become familiar with the low-level details, the software doesn't need to deal with the management of descriptor set pools, OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) has first-class support under V-EZ as well as SPIR-V, and other simplifications.

This is far from being the first project for trying to provide a simplified interface for getting started with Vulkan. In fact, another GPUOpen project has been their Anvil framework that is a Vulkan wrapper library aiming to reduce the amount of time needed to start writing Vulkan applications from scratch. Given AMD/GPUOpen involvement, it will be interesting to see if it takes off any further than the other efforts in this area.

V-EZ code should be appearing shortly over on GitHub and will be interesting to dive in with this new open-source Vulkan wrapper effort.

Update: There is also now a post on GPUOpen.com about the V-EZ initiative.
Click to expand...
 
Vulkan running on Unreal Engine 4 slides due soon

From RCALOCA, Unreal Engine developer:

On AMD we are faster than D3D11, once the slides from my GDC talk are out you can see the numbers.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/dev...ing/85035-vulkan-status?p=1452303#post1452303

Means the way we are generating Vulkan commands seems to be better suited for AMD for some reason. We need to do more profiling to find why it's not as great on NV.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/dev...ing/85035-vulkan-status?p=1452469#post1452469
 
A good thread to bump. SO in the last 2 years what has ahppened to Vulkan? Absolutely nothing.

I was right, Vulkan isn't going anywhere. It is a shame as a modern cross-platform API would interest me but the API is not actually what most developers want so openGL remains superme.
 
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