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***The Official Vulkan API Thread***

Why id Software Chose Vulkan over DirectX 12

“DirectX 12 and Vulkan are conceptually very similar and both clearly inherited a lot from AMD’s Mantle API efforts. The low level nature of those APIs moves a lot of the optimization responsibility from the driver to the application developer, so we don’t expect big differences in speed between the two APIs in the future. On the tools side there is very good Vulkan support in RenderDoc now, which covers most of our debugging needs. We choose Vulkan, because it allows us to support Windows 7 and 8, which still have significant market share and would be excluded with DirectX 12. On top of that Vulkan has an extension mechanism that allows us to work very closely with AMD, NVIDIA and Intel to do very specific optimizations for each hardware.”
http://www.eteknix.com/id-software-chose-vulkan-directx-12/
 
Crytek's newly published roadmap for CryEngine reveals big features are not far off at all.
First is DirectX 12 multi-GPU support, a complete DirectX 12 renderer, the possibility of support for NVIDIA's PhysX, and more. All of these are labeled for version 5.2, due out any day now. Version 5.3, meanwhile, will introduce the increasingly popular Vulkan API. Developed as a spin-off of AMD's Mantle, it serves as another low-overhead solution that's been shown to majorly increase performance in games. 5.3 is planned for mid-October. Crytek is currently developing free to play games Arena of Fate and Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, and updating Warface. Hunt will use the newest version of CryEngine, so at the very least, that one is likely to implement DirectX 12 and/or Vulkan support.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/53506...10ac&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
 
Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac
Two years and a few days since the Vulkan 1.0 release is now marked by a new significant milestone for this cross-platform graphics/compute API... It's not a new Vulkan release today, but Vulkan is now available on Apple's iOS and macOS platforms! Here are the details with the embargo just expiring on Vulkan now on macOS/iOS but still without the official support from Apple.



Apple sadly still isn't supporting Vulkan officially, but The Khronos Group is now able to get behind Vulkan on macOS/iOS. Up to now there's been the MoltenVK library to run Vulkan on iOS/OSX operating systems. That library has been proprietary and commercially licensed while developed by Brenwill Workshop Ltd. Now, thanks to an arrangement with Valve, MoltenVK is being open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license and will be available to all. The Khronos Group in our briefing didn't elaborate or purport to know the specifics of how this came about, just that Valve is to thank for their negotiations with Brenwill... I would presume a lucrative financial arrangement from Valve is to thank for that small company now opening up their code for mapping Vulkan on top of Metal. That code will continue to be open-source moving forward and thus a cataclysmic shift now that Vulkan is easily available for macOS, complementing Vulkan's existing support for Windows, Linux and Android. MoltenVK is basically a library that Apple programs can now build against that allows the use of Vulkan APIs while is then mapped to Apple's low-level Metal graphics API.



Also playing a big role in this Vulkan to Apple platforms is LunarG who has ported their Vulkan SDK to macOS. Most functionality should be working today for this macOS Vulkan SDK, but support for a few remaining features/functions will be taken care of over the coming weeks. The MoltenVK library also relies upon the open-source SPIR-V cross-compiler for turning Vulkan/SPIR-V shaders into compatible native code formats for execution with the Metal API.



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.



In terms of what is supported by Vulkan on macOS, almost all functionality! The missing pieces are just triangle fans, separate stencil reference masks, Vulkan event functionality, only a limited set of texture-specific swizzles are supported, and allocation callbacks for object creation functions are not currently supported.


The Khronos Group members working on Vulkan are also still involved in getting the API running on top of Direct3D 12 too, but today is just about the Vulkan 1.0 for Mac news. It will certainly be interesting to see what comes of this and how the adoption goes now that macOS developers can freely and easily make use of Vulkan there now too. This is hopefully good news too if game studios begin making use of Vulkan on Mac and thereby increasing support for this graphics API and Linux stands to benefit too. Wine should also be another important benefactor of this work with now being able to leverage Vulkan on macOS as part of bringing Direct3D 12 over Vulkan, etc. Interesting times ahead and let's not forget about GDC happening next month!

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vulkan-on-mac&num=1
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
Didn't Valve support OpenGL too?
Click to expand...

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.
 
Martini1991 said:
Just like how we're all now using Steam OS.
Oh no.

Vulkan's gone pretty much no where.
Click to expand...

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.
 
 
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/
 
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
 
D.P. said:
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.
Click to expand...

Ay?
Have you been under a rock?

They had been loads of releases of games patched and released with Vulkan.
Doom and wolfenstein being the biggest standouts.

If anything Vulkan has been a bigger hit than DirectX 12

Even building the way in the emulation world.
 
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