Open-Source Project Trying To Map Vulkan Onto Direct3D 12 & Metal

[Luke_Wolf]

Why cant everyone just use Vulkan?

Because Apple is Apple... The real question is why is anyone even humouring Apple rather than just ignoring them and letting them slit their own throats? Especially given their ever increasing irrelevance

[numacross]

It's not entirely pointless on desktop Windows, since the UWP is DirectX 12 only there too. So if you want your game in the Windows Store for whatever reasons (and you want to have a single Vulkan renderer backend), a translation layer like this can definitely help.

Since both XBox and UWP are beautiful walled gardens it's all on Microsoft whether to allow this translation layer at all. I'm betting that they won't, at least not for XBox

[schmidtbag]

I don't really understand the point of creating Vulkan translation layers for Metal. How exactly is that going to be used? DX12 to Vulkan can be utilized via Wine, but there aren't any compatibility layers for Mac binaries that are ready to take advantage of Metal, let alone OpenGL.

[gnarlin]

I don't really understand the point of creating Vulkan translation layers for Metal. How exactly is that going to be used? DX12 to Vulkan can be utilized via Wine, but there aren't any compatibility layers for Mac binaries that are ready to take advantage of Metal, let alone OpenGL.

Not yet. Maybe in the future?

[PackRat]

Why cant everyone just use Vulkan?

Yep. Amazon Lumberyard game engine (cryengine fork) drops Linux support, chooses Windows directx and Apple Metal. The editor has been switched from mfc to qt 5.6 (qt 5.10+ has vulkan). Amazon "The resource compiler and the remote shader compiler do not run on Linux" . Amazon told me Linux is still supported for servers. I guess Star Citizen that is suppose to go vulkan only is doing it themselves.

Crytek has experimental vulkan on windows and has been working on the resource compiler. They have not released editor source code yet.

Maybe this project would help these 2 game engines.

[pal666]

Why cant everyone just use Vulkan?

the whole point of subj is to allow everyone just use vulkan, even on oses where there is no vulkan

[pal666]

I'm betting that they won't, at least not for XBox

i'm betting they will not be inspecting source code to find out whether it directly uses dx or via helper library

[schmidtbag]

Not yet. Maybe in the future?

Projects like Darling have been in development for a while and aren't showing that much progress. If the project is relatively easy to work on, I guess there's no reason it shouldn't be done, but I don't see it ever being used. The efforts spent working on that could be put to better use with the DX12 translating.

[eydee]

Since both XBox and UWP are beautiful walled gardens it's all on Microsoft whether to allow this translation layer at all. I'm betting that they won't, at least not for XBox

If it's source code, compiled into the application, there's nothing Microsoft can do. All they see is the application calling D2D12. Similar to what Feral, Valve etc. do with the Linux ports, all internal.

[dragon321]

It's not entirely pointless on desktop Windows, since the UWP is DirectX 12 only there too. So if you want your game in the Windows Store for whatever reasons (and you want to have a single Vulkan renderer backend), a translation layer like this can definitely help.

Yeah, that's true. Open source layer like this can bring new users to Vulkan which is good. Vulkan has good and popular player (Android) so it can't be ignored.