Vulkan gets new Dynamic Rendering extension, NVIDIA Vulkan Beta 470.62.07 rolls out

Two bits of Vulkan news to cover this morning as there's a new Vulkan version up with a brand new and useful sounding extension for optimization. Plus, NVIDIA released a new Vulkan Beta Driver.

With the Vulkan 1.2.197 spec update the VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering extension was released with contributors from AMD, Roblox, Google, Arm, NVIDIA, Valve and more. Here's what it does:

This extension allows applications to create single-pass render pass instances without needing to create render pass objects or framebuffers. Dynamic render passes can also span across multiple primary command buffers, rather than relying on secondary command buffers.

This extension also incorporates VK_ATTACHMENT_STORE_OP_NONE_KHR from VK_QCOM_render_pass_store_ops, enabling applications to avoid unnecessary synchronization when an attachment is not written during a render pass.

Soon after NVIDIA launched the 470.62.07 Vulkan Beta driver which added support right away for VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering and support for bufferDeviceAddressCaptureReplay on Linux. On top of that it also has these fixes:

• Fixed a regression which prevented DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 variable refresh rate (VRR) G-SYNC Compatible monitors from functioning correctly in variable refresh rate mode, resulting in issues such as flickering [Linux]
• Optimized the Vulkan fullscreen presentation path for X11 and direct-to-display swapchains [Linux]
• Fixed a compiler bug with Ray Tracing shaders which could cause shader execution timeouts, resulting in device loss

Reminder: This special Vulkan 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 and serious enthusiasts. Unless you need what's in them, it's generally best to use the stable drivers.