We just recently had the DXVK 1.8 release for Direct3D 9/10/11 to Vulkan and now we also have the VKD3D-Proton 2.2 release landing as well. As the name suggests, this is the project especially made for the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer to work with newer games that use Direct3D 12.
According to the developer, the VKD3D-Proton 2.2 update is only a "maintenance release which fixes bugs and regressions" but as a big step it also "unblocks significant future feature development" so things shall continue to get exciting on it.
For the Windows games Death Stranding and Cyberpunk 2077 they have a workaround replaced with a "more correct and performant implementation" and there's also a workaround removed for Assassin's Creed Valhalla that's also no longer needed.
Seems like Cyberpunk 2077 should work better overall now too, as they mentioned their inability to reproduce a previous GPU hang. It's not clear if the game was fixed or if their work in VKD3D-Proton with a "memory allocation rewrite in 2.2" fixed it. Either way it seems to work okay now.
For other game specific improvements you can expect Horizon Zero Dawn to have better screen space reflections on water surfaces, DIRT 5 can get in game but not playable yet and stability on AMD Polaris cards should be improved in "certain titles".
On top of all that Variable Rate Shading tier 1 is supported now and for the big one — there's been a lot of background work added to support DirectX Raytracing but it's not supported just yet. The previously mentioned memory allocation rewrite has paved the way for more progress on it. As more and more games add in Ray Tracing or release with it, along with AMD and NVIDIA having capable hardware and Vulkan having an official Ray Tracing API - it's vital work.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I know wine is quite conservative, but was that the reason for the fork?
Cloversheen Feb 20, 2021
Quoting: STiATHmh, I could not find why they forked it from wine. As a dev branch to be faster paced than wine or is it for technical reasons?
I know wine is quite conservative, but was that the reason for the fork?
Most likely for organizational purposes. Doing a fork gives you a clean environment for bug reporting, pull requests, branching etc. It can then easily be turned into a pull request for merging back into upstream.
It is a very common way of doing development. And is often the recommended approach.
Quoting: STiATI know wine is quite conservative, but was that the reason for the fork?
IIRC, it was done to build it as a dll that they could also run on Windows. Which would greatly help debugging by getting Wine out of the picture.
Quoting: STiATHmh, I could not find why they forked it from wine. As a dev branch to be faster paced than wine or is it for technical reasons?
I know wine is quite conservative, but was that the reason for the fork?
The reasons it was forked instead of keeping with original are mostly posted here: https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton#priorities
Basically it won't focus too much on older hardware if it's for game performance/compatibility reasons.
Wine might also care more about supporting other platforms and architectures Valve doesn't care too much (Mac, Android, ARM…).
Incredible work!
QuoteSeems like Cyberpunk 2077 should work better overall now too, as they mentioned their inability to reproduce a previous GPU hang. It's not clear if the game was fixed or if their work in VKD3D-Proton with a "memory allocation rewrite in 2.2" fixed it. Either way it seems to work okay now.
Boy do i know this type of bug. It's solved but you dont know how that happen so the fear of that bug returning is big.
Also it's kinda hard to explain to other people on the team that the bug dissapear but you dont know how
Quoting: WJMazepasQuoteSeems like Cyberpunk 2077 should work better overall now too, as they mentioned their inability to reproduce a previous GPU hang. It's not clear if the game was fixed or if their work in VKD3D-Proton with a "memory allocation rewrite in 2.2" fixed it. Either way it seems to work okay now.
Boy do i know this type of bug. It's solved but you dont know how that happen so the fear of that bug returning is big.
Also it's kinda hard to explain to other people on the team that the bug dissapear but you dont know how
In french we have a joke for those "c'est tombé en marche" as opposed to "c'est tombé en panne" (it stopped working). "c'est tombé"(it fell) gives this sense of it miraculously working.
AlbatrosGaming Apr 6, 2021
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