CodeWeavers Reflects On The Wild Year Since Valve Introduced Steam Play / Proton

[theriddick]

Sorry I don't quite follow you, there are commercial products using vulkan on Switch, I dunno about PS4.
Also what has MoltenVK got to do with mobile?
Additionally why would it be solely up to a platform to support vulkan when its mostly done via the drivers? IE. Nvidia, AMD or Intel

Probably why we don't see more vulkan use is largely due to development funds being limited to already well known and established methods (DX11/OGL), most the big game engines have these in the bag while DX12 and Vulkan are additions in NEWER builds of these engines which very few developers use (unless they started development in late 2018 or 2019).

Lets not forget Microsoft is handing out huge bags of money to help get DX12 established!

[andy22]

there are commercial products using vulkan on Switch

Ok seems Nintendo got there stuff together and Vulkan is now viable on switch, was not viable in the past.

Also what has MoltenVK got to do with mobile?

Isn't MoltenVK needed to run Vulkan on iOS or does iOS now also have native Vulkan support?

Additionally why would it be solely up to a platform to support vulkan when its mostly done via the drivers? IE. Nvidia, AMD or Intel

Vulkan needs the driver support sure, yet each platform get custom drivers. So the platform owner works together with the chip manufacturers, than the platform holder also needs to adapt, provide compatible Vulkan libs via there SDK's.

Probably why we don't see more vulkan use is largely due to development funds being limited to already well known and established methods (DX11/OGL), most the big game engines have these in the bag while DX12 and Vulkan are additions in NEWER builds of these engines which very few developers use (unless they started development in late 2018 or 2019).

Yes and no, adapting the Vulkan APi is relatively easy, even for small studios. The core GPU programmer might just need a few weeks to full adapt the API. In most cases you already have extra abstraction layers in-place, so you can use/adapt multiple API's. Even dx11/12 on PC is different from what XBox has, so types/interfaces are not fully compatible.
The problem is QA and testing the API with your existing pipeline, since many small studios don't really have QA and switching the API mid project is risky. It boils down to what the programmer prefers and how he/she "sells" adding the Vulkan API to there bosses.

Lets not forget Microsoft is handing out huge bags of money to help get DX12 established!

Not sure about this one, you have any examples?
All i know is that Microsoft "hands out" first class developer support if you are big enough, this includes QA testing and speed optimizations, similar to what nVidia/AMD provides on big titles.

[theriddick]

I meant vulkan on android, who knows about iphone, but moltenvk is used on MacOS

Yes and no,

This is actually pretty much what I said.

Not sure about this one, you have any examples?

I do but can't be bothered really, for the most part MS will pay a developer to also go MS Store exclusive or outright buy the studio.

[L_A_G]

As noted Vulkan support on Switch/PS4 is experimental atm, so if you want to actually ship a commercial title you use there native API's. I also don't think this will change with better Vulkan support, since historically using there native API's you get full access to all the platform specific tricks and workarounds.

Vulkan support of PS4 may be experimental, I've never heard that it had it, but support on Switch has been there since day 1 with certified drivers based on the same common codebase as Nvidia's Windows, Linux and Android drivers. Hell, apparently the Switch pulls a whole bunch of code from Android including a lot of graphics code, which I suspect is a side effect of Nvidia just re-purposing their android drivers rather than creating a more bespoke port of their common driver codebase.

[torsionbar28]

Ah yes, CodeWeavers. The company who decided, instead of taking the ethical route by selling support for a foss project they own, they're going to hold back improvements to the FOSS version for x amount of time and keep them in the closed source version so anybody who really needs something to work has to pay for it.

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable business model to me. If only more companies would follow their example. CodeWeavers is showing real leadership in the FOSS arena by simultaneously making very significant code contributions to FOSS software, and proving that you can indeed run a profitable business selling and supporting FOSS. Bravo CodeWeavers! And yes, I've been a subscriber for over a decade - they take the hours of guesswork and tinkering out of Wine, and make it "just work".