These are lovely news indeed. Not many games utilize Vulkan yet, but it very good, and in general I wish Multi-Gpu will become more common, just like multi-core CPU's.

Considering the amount of people who refused to upgrade to W10 when given the opportunity, this could be the beginning of more cross-platform games, and a major wound to DirectX.

Give power to MS and DX, ban Vulkan and other OS platforms. Boycott now!

Give power to MS and DX, ban Vulkan and other OS platforms. Boycott now!

What?

Considering the amount of people who refused to upgrade to W10 when given the opportunity, this could be the beginning of more cross-platform games, and a major wound to DirectX.

Unless big publishers adopt it, it will be fairly minimal. Bethesda seems to be the first one to do it, as they will be partnering with AMD to port their engines to it. I hope more follow through.

Give power to MS and DX, ban Vulkan and other OS platforms. Boycott now!

Why ?

For sure great news. But the likes of Arcane studios do more harm than good with their technological disaster game releases and I'm bobbing it when it comes to PREY2. Another techno disaster release on the gaming public. What a bunch of loons for not going with the 666 engine for PREY2.

Considering the amount of people who refused to upgrade to W10 when given the opportunity, this could be the beginning of more cross-platform games, and a major wound to DirectX.

Major wound to DX12? :3eyes: Maybe Vulkan could be a real competiton for DX12 but certainly not because MGPU support. How many MGPU users are there? 200K possible customers? Maybe a little more? 500K? The existence of an extension to add MultiGPU support in an API doesn't mean it will be automatically used by game devs in all their projects. DX12 also has (several) MGPU support mode but only a few games use it. I suspect the new Vulkan MGPU extension implementation will be similar to DX 12 one: it won't be cost free. Don't get me wrong, i would like to play more games with flawless MGPU support but game devs aren't interested in spending time (and money) adding support for MGPU because the number of possible customers is too small.

Unless big publishers adopt it, it will be fairly minimal. Bethesda seems to be the first one to do it, as they will be partnering with AMD to port their engines to it. I hope more follow through.

Publishers use what gets them the most money. That may include: * Best overall performance * Compatibility with the largest common demographic * Least amount of technical issues Despite OpenGL being compatible with just about everything, it is generally more difficult to work with than DX. Of all platforms that don't support DX, they collectively were still a tiny fraction of the PC gaming market, so for developers it just made more sense to code games using an API that was slightly more restricting but overall easier to work with. However, Vulkan isn't like OpenGL. From what I heard, it's not really any harder or easier to use than DX12. It performs roughly the same. The only major difference is cross-compatibility. Personally, I don't understand why any developers would bother with DX12. I don't know of any distinct advantages of using it.

Major wound to DX12? :3eyes: Maybe Vulkan could be a real competiton for DX12 but certainly not because MGPU support.

Yes, MGPU support isn't really going to make up anybody's mind over what's better. I was more pointing to the fact that this is yet one more reason why Vulkan should be prioritized instead of DX12.

However, Vulkan isn't like OpenGL. From what I heard, it's not really any harder or easier to use than DX12. It performs roughly the same. The only major difference is cross-compatibility. Personally, I don't understand why any developers would bother with DX12. I don't know of any distinct advantages of using it.

+++ Better development tools; ++ Deeper tested drivers; + Deeper HW support (intel Haswell and Broadwell are not supported by Intel) +++ XB1 and Project Scorpio Support. + Theoretically support on WM (though there are no public driver yet available by Qualcomm) and ARM64 for PC support is coming too. ++ Windows 10 Windows Update "aggressive mode (C)" assure a fast spread of the last runtime model as well supported drivers (Windows Store should allow driver update too). This will include SM6 support when the compile will reach a stable development state, since DXIL format has been finalized months ago and will included in the "Creator Update". Please note that PS4 does NOT use Vulkan NOR OpenGL. Shader landuage on PS4 is also basically HLSL (and NOT GLSL). Vulkan is good if you want to target Windows 7 users (Windows 8.1 users are most non-gamers, while Windows 8.0 is no longer supported). Linux users as target is valid only for AAA games with very few 3rd-party middle-ware dependencies (note that most of AAA has tons of 3rd party middle-ware dependencies). Driver model on Linux is still a clusterfùck thanks to Canonical. Mobile support is still a chimera due the mobile devices software and hardware fragmentation, with huge inconsistencies inside the same OS and hardware thanks to OEMs resellers and telco "branded & firmware-locked (C)" devices. OS update on mobile is still a huge joke for the 90% of devices. OS-X support is a Joke since Apple does not allow third party drivers and software runtimes updates. Summary: the biggest and only valid reason to adopt Vulkan is Windows 7 (which could be a huge reason for upcoming games in the following 3 years).

LOL. As irrelevant as Vulkan itself.

Unless big publishers adopt it, it will be fairly minimal. Bethesda seems to be the first one to do it, as they will be partnering with AMD to port their engines to it. I hope more follow through.

as far as I know quality of Beth's announcements, Im expecting they are adding vulkan to 15yo Gamebryo engine used in 1st morrowind and fallout4 thus creating some ultimate abomination:puke2:

+++ Better development tools;

Not universally...

++ Deeper tested drivers;

According to who? Logically, that doesn't make sense considering there are more platforms that use Vulkan to test on.

+ Deeper HW support (intel Haswell and Broadwell are not supported by Intel)

This is just plain false. Vulkan is even supported on many ARM platforms. Haswell and Broadwell support Vulkan too...

+ Theoretically support on WM (though there are no public driver yet available by Qualcomm) and ARM64 for PC support is coming too.

And these devices are also Vulkan compatible.

++ Windows 10 Windows Update "aggressive mode (C)" assure a fast spread of the last runtime model as well supported drivers (Windows Store should allow driver update too). This will include SM6 support when the compile will reach a stable development state, since DXIL format has been finalized months ago and will included in the "Creator Update".

I don't how this is relevant.

Please note that PS4 does NOT use Vulkan NOR OpenGL. Shader landuage on PS4 is also basically HLSL (and NOT GLSL).

I'm aware. I never said otherwise.

Vulkan is good if you want to target Windows 7 users (Windows 8.1 users are most non-gamers, while Windows 8.0 is no longer supported). Linux users as target is valid only for AAA games with very few 3rd-party middle-ware dependencies (note that most of AAA has tons of 3rd party middle-ware dependencies). Driver model on Linux is still a clusterfùck thanks to Canonical. Mobile support is still a chimera due the mobile devices software and hardware fragmentation, with huge inconsistencies inside the same OS and hardware thanks to OEMs resellers and telco "branded & firmware-locked (C)" devices.

Vulkan is good if you want to target the widest audience possible without having to make serious sacrifices. As for Linux, 3rd-party dependencies are irrelevant - most games comes with their own dependencies. Both AMD and Nvidia have fully compliant Vulkan drivers. I heard Intel does too, but hardcore gamers don't care about Intel GPUs. Android seems to be pushing for Vulkan moving forward, since the reduction in overhead will make a substantial difference in battery life. There's no point in porting Vulkan (or DX12) compatibility to older phones since they likely don't have the hardware compatibility in the first place. It will be a slow transition.

DX12 would be thing for internal studios. Best DX12 title were Gears 4 and but doesnt use internal magic MS engine, but Unreal and.. Epic dont like DX12 and whole UWP, so i thing that DX12 is lost, unless they will backport it to Windows 7 a 8, but they dont want to, because this OSes dont have inbuild data mining.

Good to see this. Now we only need to get every game out there to run on Vulkan in the near future. Just like mGPU under dx12, this won't make the API rise or fall, sadly, due to the lack of dev adaption.

Thats great! xD i hope it comes to more tittles soon

interesting that all this news about Star Citizen using Vulkan and now MGPU Vuilkan around the same time. I have a feeling Star Citizen will be a technical showcase for multi-GPU Vulkan. It will be the next "Crysis", mark my words...

Not universally...

Visual Studio and PIX are just enough to confute you, however and even IHVs tools provides earlier support for every feature to DirectX 12 too compared to Vulkan. Earlier support = more time tested by client user = more stable tools. It's obvious you never touch none of those tools.

According to who? Logically, that doesn't make sense considering there are more platforms that use Vulkan to test on.

More platforms and more hardware and OS does not mean more stability, but it's inverse. Moreover IHVs begins to develop D3D12 drivers from 1 to 2 years before Vulkan.

This is just plain false. Vulkan is even supported on many ARM platforms. Haswell and Broadwell support Vulkan too...

Intel does NOT support Vulkan on Haswell and Broadwell. Intel drivers currently do not support Vulkan at all on those devices.

And these devices are also Vulkan compatible.

Windows Mobile will never support 3rd party runtimes. Of course WM is currently irrilevant by a market point of view (Like Linux is on PC gaming). Windows on ARM64 for PCs is still in a undefined state of capabilities, if Microsoft decide to make a Windows RT again, they will never support Vulkan too.

I don't how this is relevant.

Before Windows 10, the graphics platforms updates were always released as an optional update for Windows. Some àssholes also on many websites advised against install them for never demonstrated performance issues. The miss of Windows Vista platform update and the Windows 7 platform update on tons of user PCs caused a lot of headaches for developers which could do quite nothing except prompt a message pop-up to users and ask to install those updates. Of course tons of users blamed developers for their own fault. Moreover if you have the certainty that your consumers have a certain runtime within a small range of time (ie: the time users can push-back the Windows Update) make you able to compute and decide precisely if you can or not use the last version of the Windows SDK, like on consoles.

I'm aware. I never said otherwise.

I did not quote you. It was a general advise against all people saying khronos group "graphics things" runs things on consoles (at least on the big sale consoles), which is false.

Vulkan is good if you want to target the widest audience possible without having to make serious sacrifices. As for Linux, 3rd-party dependencies are irrelevant - most games comes with their own dependencies. Both AMD and Nvidia have fully compliant Vulkan drivers. I heard Intel does too, but hardcore gamers don't care about Intel GPUs. Android seems to be pushing for Vulkan moving forward, since the reduction in overhead will make a substantial difference in battery life. There's no point in porting Vulkan (or DX12) compatibility to older phones since they likely don't have the hardware compatibility in the first place. It will be a slow transition.

You never saw a serious project code. Big application, especially games, usually come with tons of 3rd party dependencies. 3rd party dependencies is a minefield in hell when you develop on Linux. Intel is still the biggest GPU HIV, and you would be surprised how many users play "AAA" games on integrated graphics (of course with huge compromises). Low overhead APIs also are really useful on systems running on iGPs, since they allow do drain part of the CPU TDP to the iGPU. This is the same reason low abstraction APIs are shiny gold for mobile... But Android development is a clusterfùck for the reasons I wrote: just because Google decide to put Vulkan runtime in the official android branch, this does not automatically mean you will get Vulkan support on Android devices released after that, moreover the number of OEMs leaving Android is not irrelevant. Finally do you know how many versions of the Vulkan runtime have been released so fare? A lot, and targeting the last version of Vulkan does not guarantee you will be able to run on devices with a older version of the runtime. As long as the mobile market will remain a clusterfùck, Vulkan will never revolution the mobile gaming (if you call Farmville a "game").

LOL. As irrelevant as Vulkan itself.

Irrelevant ? RSI just announced thet DX12 will be dropped for Star Citizen and that they will go Vulkan. That's only irrelevant if you're in the camp of those who believe the game will never be finished. And I wish people would stop talking about moving away from MGPU. Triple 4K monitors can't be driven with proper FPS without MGPU, period. And 8K displays are on the rise. Single cards will never evolve fast enough to be able to handle the latest cutting edge display technology.