VKGL: An Effort For OpenGL Core Profile Support Over Vulkan

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VKGL: An Effort For OpenGL Core Profile Support Over Vulkan

A few days ago we wrote about GLOVE being open-sourced as OpenGL ES over Vulkan and we were then pointed out to another project: VKGL...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VKGL-OpenGL-Core-Over-Vulkan

[tildearrow]

VKeverything...

I wonder if drivers in the future will be Vulkan-only and people are going to use these layers for OpenGL, Direct3D and the like...

Also, OpenGL ES Windows app -> (Wine) -> (ANGLE) -> Direct3D 11 -> (DXVK) -> Vulkan -> (Khronos Portability) -> Direct3D 12 -> (VKD3D) -> Vulkan -> (MoltenVK) -> Metal -> (macOS)

Oh, wait! We can use this to achieve OpenGL 4.5 (eventually) on Apple devices!

[davidbepo]

im actually surprised this didnt happen earlier

[emblemparade]

I wonder if drivers in the future will be Vulkan-only and people are going to use these layers for OpenGL, Direct3D and the like...

Yup, I think that's we're all thinking. The Vulkan API is just low-level enough to make this possible. I would go further and say that it will be possible to create "adaptive" Vulkan wrappers that would allow for game-specific optimizations. For example, when running Doom you might want the OpenGL wrapper to configured entirely differently than an OpenGL wrapper for other games. Compare to how NVIDIA releases "Game Ready" drivers for DirectX on Windows, where the driver detects the game and uses a specific driver optimization profile.

OpenGL in itself is very poorly optimized because it's designed to work across multiple GPU vendors and GPU architectures. But Vulkan lets you enumerate the hardware capabilities more minutely and pick and choose features.

Bottom line -- this "everything of Vulkan" effort will eventually allow not just compatibility, but also better optimization.

[R41N3R]

While I like the idea to run OpenGL on top of Vulkan, not sure why this project will focus on Doom 3. As far as I know, there is a Doom 3 port to Vulkan already, it only doesn't work on Linux so far as it never got fully implemented in RBDoom-3-bfg. Anyway, I hope one of the OpenGL on top of Vulkan will succeed and provide something working in the near future.

[kpedersen]

micheal, if you don't want to ban him, can you at least change his username from "BeardedGNUFreak" to "BeardedAppleTwit" please so we can more easily disregard his mad babbling in future .

On the plus side, yes Metal is pretty good. Though how is it ever going to even compete against Vulkan (or even OpenGL) if it only runs on Apple machines. I am surprised there were even enough macOS 3D users to warrant Apple even making their own 3D API. Strange.

[starshipeleven]

Valve please employ this guy, k?
Tx, bai.

[starshipeleven]

im actually surprised this didnt happen earlier

I suspect the announcement of Apple about dropping OpenGL played a role in this.

Really, for ONE time that Microsoft could be the #1 asshat when it would have been actually useful (and announce that they will eventually block OpenGL on Windows) so that these projects would have enough motivation to start, you know, to save legacy applications and whatnot, they don't do it and let Apple take the lead.

[Weasel]

Also you can't implement all of OpenGL into Vulkan yet (without relying on software implementations, which nullifies the point). Hoping this changes soon though.

[starshipeleven]

Also you can't implement all of OpenGL into Vulkan yet (without relying on software implementations, which nullifies the point). Hoping this changes soon though.

Could you explain a bit more? What would have to be done in software?