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Update: To be clear, they did not actually mean Deus Ex was going Vulkan. They misspoke a bit during the livestream and they aren't saying what game it will be yet.

Note: Article updated to be clearer, with the actual quote of what they said.

I didn't expect this so soon, but it looks like early next year we may have a Linux port from Feral Interactive that uses Vulkan.

Linux gamers! We just announced, live on Twitch, that we are looking towards Vulkan implementation in the first half of next year.

— Feral Interactive (@feralgames) October 27, 2016


They confirmed during the livestream that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will use OpenGL on Linux, but they also said:

QuoteWe can confirm that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on Linux is using OpenGL, and we're very happy to announce that we are looking towards Vulkan implementation in the first half of next year.


So, while we are getting OpenGL for now, the possibility of Vulkan so soon is fun news.

Just remember though, Vulkan won't automatically gives us better performance. Like OpenGL it does depend on how it's used, how the original engine was designed and so on.

It will be interesting to see if Vulkan is added into any of their previous games, to see what difference it makes there. Could make for some fun benchmarking.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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33 comments
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0aTT Oct 28, 2016
doom! please! bethesda please give use some love...
The crazy thing is they just would have to omit Denuvo and Doom would run perfectly in Wine again. I would even buy it in this case and would certainly not be the only one. See Skyrim. However, cracks are probably a problem. I know some people who play cracked Games to a great extent. Nevertheless, I wonder whether copy protection such as Denuvo is an economic advantage in the long term.
amonobeax Oct 28, 2016
Maybe now we will find out just how well Vulkan can really perform on wait hang on what OS? oh yeah. GNU/Linux!

Hold up, it's still going to be just a port. We will only truly know once a game has been built from the ground up for Vulkan.

Exactly.


I really hope I'm wrong but I doubt that Feral's Vulkan versions will have Doom level performances.

In order to have that kind of an impact Vulkan need to be implemented at the GAME ENGINE level, which Feral can't/won't do AFAIK (would be too costly probably). Almost all their ports currently using wrappers also indicate the same.

In other words the "Vulkan" version of the game will most likely benefit those gamers that have poor OpenGL performance (cough AMD owners) because of subpar drivers.

If I'm right NVIDIA users won't feel much perf difference between OpenGL and Vulkan, sadly


Last edited by amonobeax on 28 October 2016 at 9:17 am UTC
kirgahn Oct 28, 2016
In other words the "Vulkan" version of the game will most likely benefit those gamers that have poor OpenGL performance (cough AMD owners) because of subpar drivers.
furthermore, AMDGPU open source drivers use RADV, since AMD still hasn't live up to its promise of delivering an open source Vulkan implemantation. RADV is nice and coming along at a fast rate, but, lookin at benchmarks, it seems to perform worse than Mesa/OpenGL at the moment.
Maquis196 Oct 28, 2016
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Bit off-topic, sorry, but can anyone give me any pointers on how to use Vulkan on an Optimus laptop? I currently rely on Bumblebee, but it does not seem to support Vulkan.

As a fellow optimus user I ditched bumblebee about 6mths ago. It's unsupported and extremely fragile, got annoyed trying to get it working whenever it broke which was often.

Using nvidia Prime is much easier imho, you're either gaming or "working" so trivial to jump between the modes.
Sgt.Romeo9 Oct 28, 2016
I understand that this great and the fact that they are looking into it and simply by telling us that Linux gamers can look forward to Vulkan games in the new year indirectly tells us that Feral are not looking to stop anytime soon with Linux support, which is all great. That being said though, I do feel its important to mention that Deus Ex Mankind Divided is using DirectX12 on Windows and the Mac version is running on Metal. The Linux version is the only one that is going to be running on old tech (OpenGL). Just thought I'd mention that aswell.
STiAT Oct 28, 2016
While I don't expect it to have more FPS in Vulkan, I expect it to have more "stable" FPS, aka less frame drops / minfps which we have due to bottlenecks.

The only reason they'd consider a Vulkan port is probably to test their implementation for DX12->Vulkan layer, for the reason that DX:MD has DX12 support by now, making it an ideal test case.

We will continue to see it that way:
DX11 things will be ported to OpenGL
DX12 things will be ported to Vulkan
neowiz73 Oct 28, 2016
this is awesome news, i wonder just how many games they will be able to port over using Vulkan? if that makes porting easier in the long run with the right dev tools. this should be some interesting things to come next year.
sr_ls_boy Oct 28, 2016
...I do feel its important to mention that Deus Ex Mankind Divided is using DirectX12 on Windows and the Mac version is running on Metal. The Linux version is the only one that is going to be running on old tech (OpenGL). Just thought I'd mention that aswell.

Feral never saw the DirectX12 code until they were well into development.
DirectX 12 support only went public in the first week of September.
johndoe86x Oct 28, 2016
In the near future, I'd like to see Vulkan make use of multiple GPU's. Right now, the main reason I play the Linux titles I own in Windows is because of SLI support.

Don't worry, I know the rules on buying from the Linux platform and playing it for a week on there to make sure it counts as a Linux sale ;)
tuubi Oct 28, 2016
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We will continue to see it that way:
DX11 things will be ported to OpenGL
DX12 things will be ported to Vulkan
Maybe so, although the only reason for porting DX11 to OpenGL in the future might be the porters' existing shims and wrappers. And their inexperience with Vulkan I guess. OpenGL's feature list might be very similar to D3D 11's, but that doesn't mean they're a good match.
Purple Library Guy Oct 28, 2016
Maybe now we will find out just how well Vulkan can really perform on wait hang on what OS? oh yeah. GNU/Linux!

Hold up, it's still going to be just a port. We will only truly know once a game has been built from the ground up for Vulkan.

Exactly.


I really hope I'm wrong but I doubt that Feral's Vulkan versions will have Doom level performances.

In order to have that kind of an impact Vulkan need to be implemented at the GAME ENGINE level, which Feral can't/won't do AFAIK (would be too costly probably). Almost all their ports currently using wrappers also indicate the same.

In other words the "Vulkan" version of the game will most likely benefit those gamers that have poor OpenGL performance (cough AMD owners) because of subpar drivers.

If I'm right NVIDIA users won't feel much perf difference between OpenGL and Vulkan, sadly
+ Click to view long quote

Far as I'm concerned it's not really about any of that. What it's about is:
--Feral showing that Vulkan is real and viable for real games that people really buy commercially and play
--Feral acquiring and demonstrating expertise with Vulkan, such that if anyone out there develops a Vulkan game initially for Windows only, Feral will be able to easily and cheaply tweak it for cross-platform use
--Same to a lesser extent for DX12 games, which by all accounts will be easier/better ports to Vulkan than to OpenGL

Basically, this move helps increase Vulkan's general viability and mindshare and the future efficiency of Linux ports and cross-platform development. It's not about whatever existing games they happen to port using Vulkan instead of or as well as OpenGL.
iuno Nov 2, 2016
Hi guys,

I think this is the replay of the stream you all are talking about?
https://www.twitch.tv/feralinteractive/v/97437782
Could somebody who saw it live please tell the timestamp where they say that Deus Ex will be their first Vulkan title?

Thanks in advance
ellie_feral Nov 3, 2016
Hi guys,

I think this is the replay of the stream you all are talking about?
https://www.twitch.tv/feralinteractive/v/97437782
Could somebody who saw it live please tell the timestamp where they say that Deus Ex will be their first Vulkan title?

Thanks in advance

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is using OpenGL! :)

We're looking towards Vulkan implementation in the first half of 2017, but we haven't named games. We'll let you know in due course what our first Vulkan game will be.
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