Not exactly Linux news, but still interesting since Vulkan is what will likely power many Linux games in future and having Vulkan on Mac could result in easier ports to Linux. The Khronos Group has worked with Valve, LunarG, and The Brenwill Workshop to make this happen.
Announced today by The Khronos Group, the MoltenVK project is now officially open source under the Apache License 2.0 and you can find it on GitHub right now. There's no fees or royalties involved, so any game developer can use it without any hassle—which is really great. Seems SDL2 has added some support for it already too.
I've spoken to a number of a developers over the last few years, with a few of them being quite worried about supporting Metal as well as Vulkan/OpenGL when doing ports. The extra time needed for yet another graphical API was cited as something of a concern (and a possible reason for some Linux ports not happening, due to the extra time vs market share), hopefully with MoltenVK now being open source we can get Vulkan on all platforms, to reduce the game porting burden.
From the official announcement, it seems Valve share that same feeling (with it helping to reduce porting costs):
“We have been running substantial production loads through the Vulkan tools on Mac, including Dota 2 which is now running faster than the native OpenGL version,” said Pierre-Loup Griffais at Valve. “These efforts are aimed toward reducing development and porting costs for any developer supporting multiple platforms.”. Valve also showed off this video to show the difference:
Direct Link
With developers now having the ability to target one API, we may even see Vulkan adoption increase along with better performing ports. The more games that use Vulkan, the better tested drivers will be and the more developers will become familiar with it. Not only that, but if Apple is slow to react with Metal API updates that developers need (I've seen many complain about it already), developers can simply opt for Vulkan.
Worth noting though it's not fully complete yet, with certain limitations like Tessellation and Geometry shader stages not being implemented and more that you can see here.
Read more here in the official announcement. Again, not Linux-specific news, but it's hopefully going to be good for us in the long-run.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Edit: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-macos-ios-but-no-thanks-to-apple/
QuoteThe portable subset will also soon be able to target another platform: DirectX 12. Expected within the next few months, a similar translation layer is being developed that will enable Vulkan applications to use a DirectX 12 back-end. While Windows, unlike macOS, does have Vulkan drivers from GPU companies, applications sold through the Microsoft Store are only permitted to use DirectX. Already today, some Store applications use ANGLE—an implementation of OpenGL ES that runs on top of DirectX—so that their developers can use a cross-platform graphics API. The Vulkan layer will enable the same for software that uses the high performance, low-level GPU API.
And from the press release:
QuoteThe Khronos Vulkan Portability Initiative continues to refine and define a universally portable subset of Vulkan 1.0 that can be run at native performance levels over Metal and DirectX 12 drivers.
QuoteThe Vulkan Portability Initiative will continue to strengthen the infrastructure and tooling around bringing Vulkan capabilities to multiple Metal and DX12 platforms - our long-term goal is to enable portable Vulkan code to be executed on any platform that developers care about.
Last edited by MayeulC on 26 February 2018 at 8:48 pm UTC
Avehicle7887 Feb 26, 2018
The big step will be getting companies out of the Windows-Only mentality, Zenimax is a perfect example of this with id Software's games.
Speaking of id Software, how long till we see Doom running in Wine on macOS? ;)
Quoting: hardpenguinRight, he forgot to mention the Switch. The other two aren't cool enough for Vulkan.Quoting: natewardawgThis means we can use Vulkan on all of the major platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS... that's a huge benefit! :)Aren't you forgetting something? ;)
The main potential issues for developers will be performance impact and ease of integration with development workflow. Don't forget that Vulkan/DX12/Metal are really designed as abstractions of the parallel processing environment on the GPU. That is good for rendering and some other tasks, but there are many other elements of games and simulations that will remain on the CPU, often using OS specific APIs for performance or ease of programming.
It's a necessary step for Vulkan, but I doubt it will lead to Elder Scrolls VI appearing on Linux.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyNow all we have to do is get Sony to use Vulkan. Hey, weather keeps getting freakier, we could have a cold day in Hell any time!
I guess someone will have to make GnmVK for the same purpose.
appetrosyan Feb 26, 2018
Quoting: lejimsterWhen Vulkan was originally announced I was really happy to see it come to Apple and Linux. With Apple Mac having a larger market share (gamer wise) as of right now, it seemed a great thing. Then they had to go their own way with Metal. I just don't understand the thinking, they have made it harder to bring more games to their platform and potentially set Vulkan adoption back at the same time.
So this is a good development, and I hope porters/developers just target Vulkan from now on and ignore Metal as much as possible. I wonder what Feral think of this, since they have been working on bringing titles to Apple with Metal support.
The entirety of apple hinges on doing as much as possible in-house. That's why they build their own hardware, that's why you can't install Mac OS on every machine.
It does seem stupid to lock yourself away from potential revenue from, say, competing with Windows (which they definitely would have won), but that's their philosophy of doing business, and it makes sense.
The good thing is, though, that Vulkan is a cross-platform library that doesn't suck. Now Fruits and Animals can play the same games as inanimate objects.
Quoting: pete910We still won't get Native Doom/whatever Vulkan AAA title so...While we may not get Doom, having more games using Vulkan even to begin with is still a good thing for the possibility of future ports and for all the people who can be bothered to fudge about with Wine.
Avehicle7887 Feb 27, 2018
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