NVIDIA Quietly Updates Vulkan Driver Beta, New Vulkan Extensions

[yzsolt]

Wtf? I'm pretty sure the swapchain extension is a basic necessity to setup the display of rendered images on any window system and has been part of Vulkan since 1.0. But my memory might be failing me, haven't concerned myself with Vulkan for a few months.

These display/swapchain extensions are for windowing system independent swapchain creation (e.g. for headless rendering, or a Wayland compositor - the latter is why I'm pretty excited about it). The Win32/Xlib/Xcb/Wayland-specific ones were part of Vulkan since the beginning.

[bug77]

Good drivers are needed to develop a game, much less release it. Who wants to release a game with a Vulkan back end that is a mess because of drivers?

Wasn't the selling point of Vulkan that the driver remains just a thin layer between hardware and applications and the apps get the freedom to use the hardware in the most efficient way?

[Geopirate]

Wasn't the selling point of Vulkan that the driver remains just a thin layer between hardware and applications and the apps get the freedom to use the hardware in the most efficient way?

It very much is the main selling point.

IMO the 1.0 version was more of an open beta than a finalized spec. There are only a couple games with it so they are getting the user feedback that was lacking while they developed it. I really feel like they are rushing to play catch up with DX12 before that dominates the market the way DX11 has. I think things will settle in on the driver side once AMD get's their restructuring done and they hammer out whatever is supposed to replace GDM.

[Ancurio]

These display/swapchain extensions are for windowing system independent swapchain creation (e.g. for headless rendering, or a Wayland compositor - the latter is why I'm pretty excited about it). The Win32/Xlib/Xcb/Wayland-specific ones were part of Vulkan since the beginning.

I see thanks. I guess I got confused by how old the extension already is.