Progress Being Made On OpenCL+OpenGL Over Direct3D 12

[starshipeleven]

Why? Gaming industry (mostly) doesn't care about FOSS. They want money, and windows is an established platform.

cccc-consoles!

Note that he was not talking about FOSS.

[starshipeleven]

This is true unfortunately. I was quite disappointed to see CP2077 is to have DX12 exclusivity and no Vulkan support, also no generic ray tracing support but exclusive RTX features..

Considering that it's massively multiplatform (i.e. it's for Playstation and Stadia too), it's just a gimmick to get some cash from MS and NVIDIA

[cb88]

Vulkan has added support for translating DX12 shaders directly to vulkan IIRC... so there is no shader work that needs to be done when porting a game from DX12 to Vulkan or at least much much less than before.

[pjmlp]

Considering that it's massively multiplatform (i.e. it's for Playstation and Stadia too), it's just a gimmick to get some cash from MS and NVIDIA

Since when? Playstation main APIs are GNM and GNMX.

[pjmlp]

All of the big engines support Vulkan.
Android + iOS + Playstation + Nintendo are WAY more important than the Windows + XBox gaming market. At least internationally. The story might be different in the US since XBox is not a non-factor there.

So even if the PC Version of CP2077 is DX12 only (MS and NVidia probably paid big money), the engine still supports Vulkan.
Im pretty sure Vulkan will be the primary developement target, since only very few titles are Windows/Xbox-exklusive.

Maybe in an alternative reality I guess.

Playstation => GNM and GNMX.

iOS => Metal, Middleware engines use Metal directly, MoltenVK is a third party solution with all the caveats it entails

Android => Vulkan was introduced as optional API in Android 7, largely ignored except by Samsung and Google flagship phones, so it was made compulsory in Android 10 and given how Android updates are.....

Nintendo => NVN, there is OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan support for porting titles. About 50% of the titles are using Unity, most first party titles use NVN.

[kpedersen]

It's not about FOSS, it's about the number of supported platforms.
...
The situation was different, when the Windows-gaming-market was much bigger (relatively speaking) and OpenGL sucked in comparison to DirectX (in terms of drivers and development-burden) ...

Agreed. Plus there was *so* much sodding marketing from Microsoft brainwashing the developers that "the only way is DirectX".
That coupled with the fact that game developers are an interesting breed of developer in that they are much more easily governed by brand names than your typical software developer (perhaps a slight inferiority complex? Perhaps a slightly more immature demographic? Perhaps lacking solid analysis skills because "code" is simply a means to an end?).

Most indies from between 2000-2014 locked themselves down to DirectX because "it is the AAA standard!(TM)", even though their graphical requirements were so simple that even an older OpenGL would have sufficed.

The whole situation was just annoying. Microsoft thrived on this. Even developing XNA as a gateway drug.

[ermo]

This sounds like MS trying to keep existing DX12 investment somewhat relevant (from a technical perspective, one would think that they could just as easily have used Vulkan).

I'll keep supporting Vulkan (and not DX12) with my wallet, thank you very much.

[dragon321]

Maybe in an alternative reality I guess.

Playstation => GNM and GNMX.

iOS => Metal, Middleware engines use Metal directly, MoltenVK is a third party solution with all the caveats it entails

Android => Vulkan was introduced as optional API in Android 7, largely ignored except by Samsung and Google flagship phones, so it was made compulsory in Android 10 and given how Android updates are.....

Nintendo => NVN, there is OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan support for porting titles. About 50% of the titles are using Unity, most first party titles use NVN.

What's your point? That wasn't about where Vulkan is mandatory or even widely used but where it can be used compared to DX12 As for Playstation - yes, you're right but only about Playstation 4 which become quickly dead after Playstation 5 will be released soon. When Vulkan was ignored on Android? Developers used OpenGL ES to target earlier versions of Android or devices without Vulkan support. Even on Android 10 OpenGL ES is still supported - as I recall correctly Google also want to implement OpenGL ES on top of Vulkan to simplify drivers and graphics stack. OpenGL ES won't be abandoned in near future because why it would be? As for updates and fragmentation - do you want to talk about fact Windows 7 still has almost 28 % marketshare? Why Windows 10 still can't dominate market?

DX12 is used mostly because it's mandatory on Xbox. You can't say same thing about Vulkan because there is no popular device (well, excluding Stadia now) where Vulkan would be only option. Just look how many years passed before developers stopped using DirectX 9.

[TemplarGR]

Really? I thought those days of writing non-portable win-games were behind us?

Yes, really. Cyberpunk 2077 for example, is D3D12 only. And it is the most important AAA video game of the year. Vulkan is going to be the next OpenGL, it is clear that Khronos is useless, as it has always been, helmed by Nvidia puppets. They ruined OpenGL chances and they are going to ruin Vulkan too. There is no proper marketing push, no vision, if AMD hadn't gifted Mantle to Khronos, Vulkan wouldn't even exist right now.

[theriddick]

Maybe CP2077 will see vulkan support after release, a few games are doing this now, exclusive dx12 release then update to vulkan later. We can only hope. Should be easy now that NGX exists.