While the Proton compatibility layer already has DXVK for translating DirectX 9/10/11 into Vulkan, VKD3D-Proton has become the official version for translating Direct3D 12 on top of Vulkan.
Are you confused what Proton is? See our dedicated Steam Play page for info.
VKD3D was originally a project created directly by the Wine team, the compatibility layer that Proton is built upon. However, the original founder passed away and it seems Valve-funded developers are taking the torch to push it much further. It's actually been a thing for a while but today they adjusted the name of their project as VKD3D-Proton, to give it some official status plus preventing any naming conflicts elsewhere and just be clear about their goals.
They're going for supporting the "full" Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan, with an aim of both performance and compatibility using modern Vulkan extensions and features, so this comes at the expense of compatibility with older drivers and GPUs. They're also not looking to keep backwards compatibility with the original vkd3d.
Recently, the project also merged in code to allow for a standalone D3D12 build. Like with DXVK, we might even see gamers on Windows using it in future. Yes, that's actually a thing and there's many more like it as it can boost performance on Windows too for older games.
See all the details on the updated VKD3D-Proton page on GitHub.
With the recent news that the massive Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be DirectX 12 only, perhaps VKD3D-Proton can get into a state before release where it might run it well on Linux, since CD Projekt aren't likely to bring it to Linux officially.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Apple being serious about gaming? What kind of koolaid is he drinking? Apple let OpenGL support rot, refused to support Vulkan, dropped 32-bit, then decided to change hardware architecture. If some early steps in this list didn't kill gaming for Apple users, the later ones for sure did. Serious gamers left Apple already a long time ago. These last developments were killing a dead horse. Apple was and is run by mobile eggheads who don't care about gaming.To be honest gaming on Apple computers back when I had a PowerMac G4 required to change GPU, and at the time I had to put a Radeon 8500 in place of the crappy Geforce 2 MX 200 they offered. The Apple Store offered an optional Geforce 3 Ti for a very indecent price, which nobody right in their mind would have picked up. Which tells how much of an afterthought gaming ever was for Apple, and you may notice how retail graphic cards for Mac just disappeared shortly after they switched to Intel.
Edit: just noticed you can now put any GPU into 2010-2012 MacPro, which invalidates part of my statement. Yet, who would be right in his mind and put money into a GTX 1660 only to run OpenGL 3.2?
Last edited by omer666 on 7 July 2020 at 6:01 am UTC
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MS seems to realize that a cloud based X-Box service is their gaming future. Does DX12 have any role in such a service?
Luckily MS decided to abandon their cloud gaming. So one more DX lock-in bites the dust.
That's Mixer, not xCloud...
2 Likes, Who?
Like with DXVK, we might even see gamers on Windows using it in future. Yes, that's actually a thing and there's many more like it as it can boost performance on Windows too for older games.
Now that's interesting!
*edit*
Googling for this reddit link, I found another nice one. :D
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/hgrcly/you_may_have_heard_of_playing_windows_games_on/
Last edited by Eike on 7 July 2020 at 7:40 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Some of those reverse-world comments are hilarious.Like with DXVK, we might even see gamers on Windows using it in future. Yes, that's actually a thing and there's many more like it as it can boost performance on Windows too for older games.
Now that's interesting!
*edit*
Googling for this reddit link, I found another nice one. :D
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/hgrcly/you_may_have_heard_of_playing_windows_games_on/
1 Likes, Who?
Sigh, it's very sad they couldn't come to any agreement with Wine folks and we have yet another duplication of effort, similarly to DXVK 
This approach also doesn't allow things to work out of the box with vanilla wine, just in Steam or if you modify each wine prefix. I understand the goal of each project is probably different, but still, it's sad we can't have this upstream in Wine.
This approach also doesn't allow things to work out of the box with vanilla wine, just in Steam or if you modify each wine prefix. I understand the goal of each project is probably different, but still, it's sad we can't have this upstream in Wine.
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MS seems to realize that a cloud based X-Box service is their gaming future. Does DX12 have any role in such a service?
Luckily MS decided to abandon their cloud gaming. So one more DX lock-in bites the dust.
Can you even read what you linked?
They closed their Twitch variant , Mixer. How is that related to cloud gaming?
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-streaming/project-xcloud
They still have plans for it.
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soulsource Jul 7, 2020
Wow, I had missed the original piece of news. This was a saddening moment, but that person has my respects. Kudos on Valve for picking the baton up :)
Can anybody tell whether it will be possible to completely avoid any additional shader compile stutter vs. native D3D12?IIRC (I might be wrong on this one) Windows game ship with precompiled shaders for common GPUs, so we're quite far from this. Fossilize and Steam's distributed shader cache should help a whole lot (also on windows if/when it's there)
Afaik games ship the shaders for D3D in a hardware independent intermediate language, and the final compilation is done by the graphics drivers. However GPU vendors tend to supply precompiled (and sometimes even manually optimized) shader binaries for popular games along with their drivers.
1 Likes, Who?
Can anybody tell whether it will be possible to completely avoid any additional shader compile stutter vs. native D3D12?Yes, if the game isn't completely broken. A Vulkan extension to allow that came out recently, we're still waiting for proper driver support though.
How about Ray Tracing and DLSS?
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It definitely looks like we leveled off our decline, and maybe even have a bit of an uptick (percentage-wise) now. Note that the more recent data has that fuzz because there's a bunch of missing data there for /r/pcgaming/ (not sure why that's the case, but I'm not going to go to the trouble to try and clean it).If not uptick I am confident Proton helps retain users. No point in people switching to Linux if they switch back to Windows the next week after.
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How about Ray Tracing and DLSS?
DLSS is proprietary Nvidia API, so judging by dxvk approach, I doubt vkd3d is going to bother to translate it, because it only works on Nvidia.
Last edited by Shmerl on 7 July 2020 at 3:20 pm UTC
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Arehandoro Jul 7, 2020
From a very ignorant point of view. Why start VKD3D-Proton instead of expanding VXDK to use D12 too? Is the difference in APIs between D11 and D12 so big that a different project needs to implemented?
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From a very ignorant point of view. Why start VKD3D-Proton instead of expanding VXDK to use D12 too? Is the difference in APIs between D11 and D12 so big that a different project needs to implemented?
I think they started in parallel, so may be used different approaches, especially to using dxgi.
Last edited by Shmerl on 7 July 2020 at 4:15 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
They closed their Twitch variant , Mixer.MS have probably freaked out that Stadia would tip the scales and reduce their DX domination. But if not now, then it would go bust later.
0 Likes
From a very ignorant point of view. Why start VKD3D-Proton instead of expanding VXDK to use D12 too? Is the difference in APIs between D11 and D12 so big that a different project needs to implemented?
Don't quote me on this but AFAIK the difference between DX11 and DX12 is akin to the difference between OpenGL and Vulkan.
3 Likes, Who?
They closed their Twitch variant , Mixer.MS have probably freaked out that Stadia would tip the scales and reduce their DX domination. But if not now, then it would go bust later.
What? What does that have to do with Stadia? Seems like you still don't get the difference.
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From a very ignorant point of view. Why start VKD3D-Proton instead of expanding VXDK to use D12 too? Is the difference in APIs between D11 and D12 so big that a different project needs to implemented?
Yep. Thats why D9VK is different than DXVK and VKD3D its separeted also. DX10 and DX11 are very close to eachother, DX12 its a totally different API with different aproach to graphics.
1 Likes, Who?
They closed their Twitch variant , Mixer.MS have probably freaked out that Stadia would tip the scales and reduce their DX domination. But if not now, then it would go bust later.
Mixer and xCloud are different markets. Mixer was a concorrent to Twitch and Youtube Live and never got much audience, even with that Ninja and Shroud exclusivity deals.
xCloud is in the same market of Stadia, but with a different aproach and they still didnt launch officially, its on beta, and they are still promoting
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Seems that there's important progress on EAC support too: https://twitter.com/Guy15241/status/1280242391753129985
Last edited by ziabice on 7 July 2020 at 8:14 pm UTC
Last edited by ziabice on 7 July 2020 at 8:14 pm UTC
5 Likes, Who?
From a very ignorant point of view. Why start VKD3D-Proton instead of expanding VXDK to use D12 too? Is the difference in APIs between D11 and D12 so big that a different project needs to implemented?
I think Valve want the fastest path to DX12 compatibility on Linux. Thats probably why they chose to build off VKD3D rather than start a fresh project. And from what I understand it's not really possible to work from DXVK, since DX12 is a completely different animal to previous DX API's.
It would have been nice to see them working with codeweavers, but it seems the developers have very different approaches at reaching the same goal. Maybe each project can learn something from one another.
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Seems that there's important progress on EAC support too: https://twitter.com/Guy15241/status/1280242391753129985
Awesome news, I hope we see the results of that work soon as release!!
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