Quoting: MaelraneI fear that then it will not happen at all. Nvidia has far more resources to spend on optimizing their binary blob. So it's a classic chicken/egg-problem.

Vulkan drivers won't do as much to abstract the hardware as OpenGL drivers do, which means there will be less room for optimization and workarounds on the driver side. However, games and engines can still be optimized for different hardware architectures, and thus give an edge to one hardware vendor over another.

I'm sure we'll get a lot of badly optimized Vulkan code though, and that's where Nvidia might still employ their heuristics or game specific fixes to increase performance. It would be better for us gamers if they directed that money and effort towards helping developers produce better code, by providing freely available documentation and code snippets instead. Even if said documentation would be biased towards Nvidia's hardware strengths and quirks.

PS: Sorry if this is a tad off topic, I know this thread isn't about Vulkan.

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Quoting: MaelraneSo, I'm really, really curious how long it will take after the drivers are on par for the crowd to stop spreading nonsense. I guess it will be a few years at least.

This crowd right here on GOL doesn't really seem like the childish fanboys you describe, and not even very tolerant towards such behaviour. I'm sure most of us will be happy to see AMD competitive again on Linux when the time comes. I know I'd love to have an actual choice when buying a GPU for Linux gaming.

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Quoting: sleortIf Vulkan bears resemblance to DX12, I can imagine how amd cards may improve in Linux when using the Vulkan API.

The simpler drivers will level the playing field quite a bit, I'm sure. Everyone knows that AMD's inferior OpenGL driver has held them back on Linux. By how much, we'll see. Let's not jump to too many conclusions based on a single benchmark.

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Quoting: Nyamiou

QuoteIf kittens like getting warnings like this, we can do them more often, as I personally feel it's important for kittens to know. I don't like to see kittens waste their bits.

No, It would give the wrong idea to people about games on Linux to give a special attention to crap. Maybe a full article reporting the good, the bad and the terrible ports to Linux over a period of a month or two.

What is this, a propaganda outlet? I'd say it's more important for us to know about shitty ports as early as possible so we don't waste our money on them. Although Early Access is Early Access, and personally I'd never pay for a beta - or in this case - an alpha version of a game.

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Quoting: maodzedunWonder if they'll be able to be ready by November.

I very much doubt Vulkan is out by November, but we'll see. I don't think anyone's come out with anything less vague than "this year".

Quoting: maodzedunAlso I'm curious whether the two new APIs will remove the need for Crossfire/SLI profiles - a huge problem in Linux. At the moment anybody with more than one GPU basically has an expensive dust collector in their case.

As far as I understand, Vulkan allows developers to spread the workload between any Vulkan-compatible GPUs in the system as they see fit. No need for special SLI/Crossfire kludges and no restriction to single-vendor hardware combinations. It remains to be seen how this works out in practice. No Idea about DX12.

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Quoting: mr-eggAny ideas when they might release this or when the spec is expected to be finalised ?

"Later this year" or "by the end of the year" according to various presentations at siggraph.

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Quoting: mr-eggSorry to be all serious about this but IMO gaming seriously needs a legal shake up, one that crosses continents and is enforceable. You should not buy any product that doesn’t work day one ( unless you opt-out with an Early Access, which we are now seeing being abused due to rushed releases ). There should be proper workable legal recourse and damages levied at companies that sell or mislead consumers.

+1

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Quoting: Bumadarwe got to have Vulkan drivers then though, and if the GoL Survey is any indication people want those in their bin-blob drivers.

Nvidia has already indicated that they'll release a blob with Vulkan support as soon as the spec is final. I'm sure AMD will (try to) do the same. There's already a preview implementation for some Intel GPU models with Vulkan, done by LunarG. Again, this will apparently be released as open source as soon as the spec is final. Hopefully other OSS drivers won't be far behind, as Vulkan drivers seem quite a bit simpler than their OpenGL counterparts.


EDIT: The intel driver isn't actually released as open source yet.

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TL;DR: Linux gamers should not pre-order, kickstart, pay to be allowed to beta-test (EA) or in any other way support projects or developers if/when it's not certain that this actually benefits Linux as a gaming platform and thus themselves as Linux gamers. Don't trust a developer until they have shown their ability and will to deliver. It's too early for us to take anything as a given.

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Quoting: HunterZIs there a forum thread or something to read words written by these guys? Just posting a link to a barebones PPA gives me no context, and thus no assurance that I'm not installing crap.

You can see that the PPA is owned and maintained by Canonical employees and there's a mailing list thread here as linked in the first GOL article on the subject. I don't know if it's official in the literal sense of the word though as the whole thing is very much a work in progress still.

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