Khronos gives an official update on Vulkan

Finally some official word. Ok, so spec is done and it goes trough lawyers and tests being created. This sounds encouraging.

It's not just missed the boat it's not even got a ticket :(

Great news! And like others would rather wait for a finished product.

I hope Valve releases CS:GO and TF2 with Source 2 and Vulkan next year, too. I want to enjoy some Vulkan rendered graphics, but Dota 2 just isn't for me.


Last edited by blackout24 on 19 Dec 2015 at 1:12 am UTC

Yet another delay. Shouldn't be too hard, since graphics engine engineers (if they want) certainly already have access to Vulkan and beta drivers, and have had for quite some time.

I'm looking forward, and wonder how fast graphics drivers will support it. I think the engines will be pretty fast adopting it, since it's what they've been waiting for pretty some time now. With being Windows, Android and Linux I hope there will be some interest in it, even though, the killer feature would be Sony supporting it too, and Apple jumping their shadows allowing it. Just that I need a company to allow an API is somehow .. strange :D.

Anyway, I don't see the delay as a deal breaker. Though, I hoped for a big-bang release before christmas. But companies are only (if even) 50 % operative anyway over the christmas season, so december, january ... who cares :D.

I think, even if AMD is on par or even ahead with Vulkan drivers, my next upgrade will still be with NVIDIA. I have a huge backlog of Linux games now, and unless Vulkan can magically convert OpenGL on the fly and run all of those games at acceptable rates on AMD hardware, AMD will still not be an option for me. I am not going to throw away 800+ games and thousands of dollars.

@adolon I'm running my games just fine on the RadeonSI driver, I have not had to throw away any games apart from the Windows only ones. I think you should refrain from making judgements on the AMD drivers unless you are using them. Seeing some benchmarks and using the drivers day to day are very different. I have had very few problems with the RadeonSI driver...unlike a friend of mine who bricked his Nvidia based system because of a kernel upgrade.

General rant

Also, I don't really understand the massive hostility towards AMD. It's like watching someone trying to do the right thing and getting kicked by a mob constantly. I understand their drivers where pretty bad in the past but they have open source drivers that are officially supported and improving constantly. Can anyone point me to Nvidia's official Open Source drivers? Is there out of the box support for the latest Nvidia cards in an open source driver? No. Is Nvidia open sourcing Gameworks? No. People should really think hard about what their money is supporting.

If open source does not matter to the Linux gaming community anymore, what's the point of Linux? Windows currently provides better gaming performance and has all the proprietary code you could ask for.

End rant

The "good" thing is that we aren't seeing DX12 games yet.

However, confirmation(and playability if EA(early access) was purchased) of DX12 games that are coming have happened. Have we seen/heard of ANYTHING about in development titles that utilizes Vulkan?

Don't mean that in any negative sense.. just curious. Has any dev confirmed a Vulkan release/version of an in development title? You can get a DX12 playable version of "Ashes of the Singularity" if you have bought into early access right now apparently.


Last edited by EKRboi on 19 Dec 2015 at 4:41 am UTC

@gabsd84

I have used Catalyst and the open-source drivers. Most of my games were unplayable. I won't debate this any further with you. If you choose to be blind to the reality that AMD far, far underperforms on Linux, then that's your prerogative. The truth is out there for all to see, it's just really hard if you've got your red blinders on.

And your comments against proprietary code seem largely out of place, given the nature of gaming in general. If you're saying that people can only use Linux if they stick to free and open software, then you throw out hundreds and hundreds of games - the majority of games, in fact - not to mention Steam itself, which many gamers use. If you're going to mandate open drivers, your hypocrisy begins when you run ANY non-FOSS software on your system.

And I've run Linux since 2002, exclusively, and I have MANY reasons to never touch Windows again. Open-source this or that is not high on my list of reasons. And I'll run whatever the fuck I want to run. Take your rant and shove it.


Last edited by adolson on 19 Dec 2015 at 5:51 am UTC

Sounds like Vulkan is genuinely close now, so I expect to see it in January.

Poor deluded Liam. My bets are late February at the earliest.

Sounds like Vulkan is genuinely close now, so I expect to see it in January.

Poor deluded Liam. My bets are late February at the earliest.

my bets are on middle march on gdc.

Sounds like Vulkan is genuinely close now, so I expect to see it in January.

Poor deluded Liam. My bets are late February at the earliest.

my bets are on middle march on gdc.

Alright I will join the sad train, June :P

Also, I don't really understand the massive hostility towards AMD. It's like watching someone trying to do the right thing and getting kicked by a mob constantly. I understand their drivers where pretty bad in the past but they have open source drivers that are officially supported and improving constantly. Can anyone point me to Nvidia's official Open Source drivers? Is there out of the box support for the latest Nvidia cards in an open source driver? No. Is Nvidia open sourcing Gameworks? No. People should really think hard about what their money is supporting.

If open source does not matter to the Linux gaming community anymore, what's the point of Linux? Windows currently provides better gaming performance and has all the proprietary code you could ask for.

End rant

Of course open source matters, but I've used AMD and I know how terrible it was when I used it. Their open source driver is nice and improving, but it won't run all the latest ports (neither will their closed driver). So, they still aren't the best choice right now.

I would rather be on an open source system, and have 1-2 things closed source (Steam, Nvidia drivers) to play the games I want rather than an entirely closed system. I think it's going a bit fucking overreacting to suddenly say things like "what's the point of Linux" just because some of us choose to allow ourselves a couple closed bits of kit.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 19 Dec 2015 at 10:02 am UTC

Liam, all your Steamgames are closed source. ^^

@ gabsd84:

You buy games on Steam? Stop it.
You want a open source only system, stop use steam, gog , etc and delete steam, gog games, etc.
You use a printer, thats don't have opensource driver? Burn your printer.

And for me: AMD GPU's are at this time NOT a option. Never ever.

If the AMD GPU driver better then the from Nvidia, i will buy an AMD Card, but not now.


Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 19 Dec 2015 at 10:18 am UTC

It was supposedly near complete many months ago, and its foundation was on a complete API (Mantle). I don't believe this new announcement.

I'm not in the least bit surprised. This is simply what happens when multiple large companies try to get something done together. Nothing happens quickly. And besides, I'd rather there's a nigh-perfect set of tools for validation and testing at launch to ensure a smooth start for the API. A month or two won't mean a thing in the end.

Edit:

I do hope that when it's ready, whenever that may be, FOSS drivers won't be far behind. An open standard isn't too open if FOSS drivers don't get a seat at the table during development.

A proof-of-concept open source Intel driver has already been demoed months ago. And if AMD doesn't come up with an implementation in their FOSS drivers, you've really got to doubt their supposed priorities. NVIDIA? Heh.


Last edited by tuubi on 19 Dec 2015 at 11:06 am UTC

about the open source thing, My personal answer is that I have priorities. Open standards are often way more important than Linux. Linux (as an open source kernel) is more important than open source drivers. Open source drivers are way more important than open source game engines. And open source game engine is more important than open source games. Although everything open source we should support, I do not see any point to fight against closed source games or game engines, and although we should be a bit more against closed source drivers, it is still less vital than other things.

Well, we're seeing a more and more shift to open source, even in drivers and game engines for the reason that they started to adopt different business models (share of the revenue of a game instead of a fixed license cost, and very low monthly payment as the $10 for UE4).

As long as we don't see a working business model for Games, we won't see them open source any time soon, because creating them is not cheap.

I understand that people want to make a living out of their work. In Linux, RedHat shows how that works. A lot of kernel developers come by hardware producing companies as well. Of course, we've a good share of volunteers, but there is a good amount of people making a living of this.

I personally see no business model you could run for opensource games which reliably works (yet), but maybe some smart person will come up with something. The kickstarter / early access thing is one way to go, but you still have the risk what you could do when you need more cash? Today, the game developers are bridging that with funds from investors to finish their product, and get the money in of the extra-sales after release.

For me, it's not so important if something is OpenSource or not. Yes, I develop OpenSource out of ideology. For me is important that those products use open standards for my data, so I can easily replace them once some better product comes along.


Last edited by STiAT on 19 Dec 2015 at 2:15 pm UTC

For the Vulkan-Release. I certainly don't see it happening in January - at least not very likely, but my bet still lies in Q1/2016.

"(share of the revenue of a game instead of a fixed license cost, and very low monthly payment as the $10 for UE4)."

There is no monthly fee on UE4 any more. But it was $19.

Edit:

CryEngine's fee is $9.99/month though. But with no royalties and no source code access.


Last edited by Kristian on 19 Dec 2015 at 4:35 pm UTC

This is not particularly a surprise. Khronos actually has a decent record of getting things right since they took over OpenGL. I think they are aware that they need to have existing implementations available at release with no inconsistencies between them. Whether it is available now or some time q1 2016 does not really matter until game back-ends are recoded to use Vulkan.

I am more interested to see what Apple, Sony and Microsoft try to do. It is important long term that Android support Vulkan as it is the largest open platform, but the vendors more inclined to lock their platforms could cause problems by preventing Vulkan implementations or providing only bad implementations on their platforms.