Valve Now Funding Blumenkrantz - Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan To Continue

[pal666]

This is somehow unexpected. I'm very happy about Valve's commitment to support Mike's fantastic work! At some point in the near future I might only need a Vulkan driver for my hardware :-)

if you don't care about speed

Mostly if I had issues with Mesa they have been related to llvm, so I'm quite happy about this new option to use Zink then on top of RADV+ACO.

then you should hope for something which will improve rather than worsen situation, like radeonsi+aco

[pal666]

i guess valve prepares for novideo dropping opengl support

[hajj_3]

I'm surprised that valve is still funding linux development considering that linux that has a miniscule gaming marketshare of 1% or so. I would have thought that valve would have given up by now. I'm not complaining btw, i'm very happy they are still working on making linux better.

[shmerl]

This is somehow unexpected. I'm very happy about Valve's commitment to support Mike's fantastic work! At some point in the near future I might only need a Vulkan driver for my hardware :-) Mostly if I had issues with Mesa they have been related to llvm, so I'm quite happy about this new option to use Zink then on top of RADV+ACO.

I think in a way it is expected. Steam has games that use OpenGL. Going forward, there is a chance OpenGL support will start deteriorating as everyone will prioritize Vulkan (or it can even be lacking altogether on some new platforms, unlike Vulkan). So having a robust OpenGL to Vulkan translation can keep Valve's games playable.

[piorunz]

Wow that's fantastic! I wish there was more companies like Valve! Maybe they are for-profit and DRM fans, but they support Linux like no one else. When I was a kid I could only dream to have functional Linux desktop (well, Debian Woody wasn't that :P) not even thinking about AA games natively on Linux, with open source drivers and full support from companies contributing to kernel. Year of Linux is every year!

[doublez13]

I get so confused how all these graphics stacks fit together. Someone please correct me! This can only be used with graphics drivers that support Mesa right? You wouldn't be able to use this with the nvidia proprietary driver?

[Ipkh]

You don't need this if you use the proprietary drivers. Why would you translate to OpenGL to Vulkan if the driver supports it natively?

[Inopia]

I'm surprised that valve is still funding linux development considering that linux that has a miniscule gaming marketshare of 1% or so. I would have thought that valve would have given up by now. I'm not complaining btw, i'm very happy they are still working on making linux better.

OpenGL over Vulcan over Metal (over Rosetta 2) helps with Valve's MacOS effort. They've been heavily invested in all kinds of compatibility layers past several years.

I also think that they're playing the long game for an eventual SteamOS Chemist or other dedicated Linux based gaming system.

[theriddick]

To go back to 2020? Please, NO!

You've just jinxed 2021 now! sigh...

[baryluk]

You don't need this if you use the proprietary drivers. Why would you translate to OpenGL to Vulkan if the driver supports it natively?

Because it is cool technical feet. Also not all platforms support OpenGL well, but have decent Vulkan support. Also because macOS. And Windows. And maybe if zink manages to run faster than "native OpenGL" in some drivers, we could simply drop these "native OpenGL" versions, and focus on zink and vulkan. Not that it will happen, but to know that, we need to try and test.