Vulkan 1.3 Released With Dynamic Rendering In Core, New Roadmap Guidance For Modern GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Vulkan 1.3 Released With Dynamic Rendering In Core, New Roadmap Guidance For Modern GPUs

It's crazy to think that in a few days it will already be six years since the debut of Vulkan 1.0, but here we are. The Khronos Group is continuing on their two year major update regiment for Vulkan and today debuting Vulkan 1.3 with more extensions moved to core as well as introducing a new "profiles" concept.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=30881

[bug77]

It's also hard to find another API that got so little adoption 6 years in. Android is supposedly the poster child for Vulkan, but even there, things look pretty grim: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards#Vulkan

[jrch2k8]

Well if the steam deck is a success it will gain popularity instantly thanks to vkd3d and dxvk

[programmerjake]

It's also hard to find another API that got so little adoption 6 years in. Android is supposedly the poster child for Vulkan, but even there, things look pretty grim: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards#Vulkan

afaict that's just because of the large number of older android devices, newer android requires vulkan if they implement opengl es 3.1.

[Mitch]

I wonder if they'll incorporate some type of upscaling like FSR, DLSS, or the Intel one at some point.

[bachchain]

as well as introducing a new "profiles" concept.

Wasn't one of the stated goals of vulkan to get away from the nightmare of opengl profiles?

[Luke_Wolf]

It's also hard to find another API that got so little adoption 6 years in.

Are you thinking of DirectX12?

Android is supposedly the poster child for Vulkan, but even there, things look pretty grim: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards#Vulkan

I don't know where you get the idea that mobile is some poster child of graphics APIs, that was always and forever the Windows Desktop, mobile has always been so bad it barely knows how to put it's pants on in the morning and it's a wonder it works at all because all of the drivers are so wretched. AMD's Linux driver is better than their Windows one, but for the other two vendors Windows get most of the love, and on desktop Vulkan is doing more than fine. It hasn't taken over gaming but neither has DX12, however it's got a strong foothold there and anyone wanting to write a compatibility shim these days targets Vulkan not OpenGL or DirectX.

Vulkan is certainly in a vastly better place today than OpenGL has been in the last 20 years.

[bug77]

afaict that's just because of the large number of older android devices, newer android requires vulkan if they implement opengl es 3.1.

Pay attention the version of Vulkan supported

[bug77]

Well if the steam deck is a success it will gain popularity instantly thanks to vkd3d and dxvk

My point exactly. If a project that runs about 1% of the desktop gaming in the world, Vulkan gains in popularity.

I've called this from day 1: Vulkan is to OpenGL like C is is to .net/java. Crucial in some specific scenarios, but a lot of headaches with little to show for in others. It's not the API's fault, it's just that developers don't love low-level APIs. DX12 had the same problem. But that was worked around when major game engines implemented support in game developers' stead.

[rmfx]

Great. No breaking news. That means the API is stable a great basically. I would have been worried if a ton of rework and extension was shown as needed but it’s not the case. I also like that they go slow with versioning, meaning that they have a good long term vision.

Concerning Vulkan adoption, it’s slow only because it requires a broad and complex work to be fully adopted. 64bit, Wayland, Vulkan, these key steps always take much more time than planned unfortunately. But when they land, it’s solid and it stays.