NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver 440.66.14 released

NVIDIA have released a brand new Vulkan Beta Driver for Linux which pulls in another Ray Tracing extension and some bug fixes.

Here's what's new in 440.66.14 (you can find the changelog here any time):

• New:
  • Added support for the VkPhysicalDeviceRayTracingFeaturesKHR.rayTracingPrimitiveCulling ray tracing feature*
• Fixes:
  • Fixed the returned pCheckpointDataCount value for vkGetQueueCheckpointDataNV when there are less than the requested values
  • Process the VkTimelineSemaphoreSubmitInfo structure correctly for vkQueueBindSparse
  • Fixed vec3 immediate indexing in ray tracing shaders

*rayTracingPrimitiveCulling indicates whether the implementation supports primitive culling during ray traversal.

It's really great to see NVIDIA continue to expand their support of Vulkan Ray Tracing, and they were really early in getting even a test driver out with support for the provision cross-vendor Ray Tracing extensions for Vulkan that were announced recently.

Reminder: you know it's a special Beta driver thanks to the additional two numbers on the end of the version string, with the newest stable version of the NVIDIA driver for Linux at 440.82 which released on April 7. This special Vulkan developer beta driver is where all the shiny new stuff goes in before making its way into the stable release for everyone. Really, it's mostly aimed at developers. Unless you need what's in them, it's best to wait for the stable drivers.