Croteam Will Be Supporting Vulkan For Serious Sam 4 & Others

[duby229]

Yeah, I agree with the general sentiment in this thread. Mantle may have started out as AMD's attempt to develop their own API, but that's not what happened and the end result is much better than it would have been otherwise. Personally, I honestly don't think DX12 would have been what it is (low level, resources not features) if Mantle hadn't set the precedent first.

[smitty3268]

Yeah, I agree with the general sentiment in this thread. Mantle may have started out as AMD's attempt to develop their own API, but that's not what happened and the end result is much better than it would have been otherwise. Personally, I honestly don't think DX12 would have been what it is (low level, resources not features) if Mantle hadn't set the precedent first.

DX12 was going nowhere until Mantle came out. Then suddenly it all came together as a new low-level API that was heavily based on Mant.... Oops, I mean the console API's.

[Luke_Wolf]

Remember that after we offered Mantle as the basis for Vulkan we started telling developers to use Vulkan or DX12 rather than Mantle...

APIs like Mantle / Vulkan / DX12 don't use or need Crossfire/SLI-type functionality because they expose multiple GPUs directly to the application or game engine. That's actually one of the key attractions, since modern games are not working so well with "invisible" multi-GPU support.

The big investment in Mantle happened years earlier. Agree that the transition to something like Vulkan or current DX12 would probably have happened eventually even without Mantle, but having it happen sooner is worth the investment.

Based on how other Khronos standards have been developed, I find it very likely that if AMD hadn't developed mantle and subsequently given it to Khronos that sure they would have come up with something eventually but it would be something crappy, and too little, too late, and Microsoft would still be holding onto it's graphics API monopoly, whereas Vulkan actually has a fighting chance.

[Kano]

@bridgman

It is good to see that Mantle could be used as inspiration for Vulkan, but I am really waiting for benchmarks. DX12 tests seem to run well with AMD cards. OpenGL is definitely too slow for many games compared to Nvidia. The main problem is however that you need new Vulkan ports, but for most Linux games powered by Unity this should not be a huge problem. But there is no Unity based game in PTS I think.

[bug77]

The big investment in Mantle happened years earlier. Agree that the transition to something like Vulkan or current DX12 would probably have happened eventually even without Mantle, but having it happen sooner is worth the investment.

I hope it's worth it, because I cannot fathom how it's good idea for company that's traditionally in the red to fund a project as big as Mantle only to retire it in less than a year after its public unveiling. Maybe there's more to be gained from the move to Vulkan, but having Vulkan out a little earlier just doesn't seem enough to justify the cost. Not to me, at least.
Technicalities aside, it's still disastrous (from a PR PoV) for end user to be sold such a short-lived technology.

[bridgman]

Maybe I'm not following you, but those end users are now hotly anticipating that "short lived technology" in the form of Vulkan.

[duby229]

DX12 was going nowhere until Mantle came out. Then suddenly it all came together as a new low-level API that was heavily based on Mant.... Oops, I mean the console API's.

Sure the consoles did it first, And a long time ago too. Long before Mantle or even DX10. There has been several DX versions that could have been influenced by console API's, but I personally think it was Mantle that set the precedent on PC's. If Mantle didn't come out when it did I believe DX12 would be much different.

[Gps4l]

Cro team, the guys who pointed out that the performance / energy saving settings were not working right.
They also stated that steam coming to Linux was for them a big thing. It removed all their issues with Linux ports.

[smitty3268]

Sure the consoles did it first, And a long time ago too. Long before Mantle or even DX10. There has been several DX versions that could have been influenced by console API's, but I personally think it was Mantle that set the precedent on PC's. If Mantle didn't come out when it did I believe DX12 would be much different.

You're missing my point, which was similar to yours. DX12 was Microsoft taking Mantle and making it cross-vendor. Just like Khronos did with Vulkan.

Without Mantle, neither of those API's would have been created.

[blackout23]

I hear Half-Life 3 will have Vulkan support on release...

If it ever comes out and Vulkan isn't a thing of the past by then it probably will.