Mesa 24.1 Now Builds Zink By Default, Also Building D3D12 Driver By Default On Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa 24.1 Now Builds Zink By Default, Also Building D3D12 Driver By Default On Windows

As a follow-up to the news of Mesa looking at enabling Zink by default as part of the drivers to build out-of-the-box, that change has now been merged. Additionally, the D3D12 Mesa driver that sees regular contributions by Microsoft engineers is also now being compiled by default when running on Windows...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-24.1-Zink-D3D12-Default

[Kjell]

Godspeed

[middy]

how does it benefit microsoft keeping directx proprietary (its runtime)? i struggle to see how it really benefits them outside the reason of control? they don't charge developers a license for the privileged of making a game based off directx. i just don't see why in #CURRENTYEAR to keep it closed off. you would think it would benefit them MORE to have their API used EVERYWHERE.

hell, its technically used heavily on linux with dxvk / vkd3d even though its in the form of translating it to vulkan. its not like its stopping directx games from running on other platforms. which, i don't understand why they would, as that only benefits more sales for game developers...

[Melcar]

Been using Zink in all my old OpenGL games and so far so good. Performance seems to be erratic in high refresh rate situations, but that may very well be the old game engines not handling +60fps well. Zinc lets me use Vulkan's mailbox sync on The Dark Mod for example, which is a great way to play on older fixed refresh rate monitors.

[rmfx]

Just to clarify because this is the most stup.. badly chosen name in human history, the D3D12 driver is an OpenGL driver... (yep, Just like if Zink was called Vulkan).

[Daktyl198]

how does it benefit microsoft keeping directx proprietary (its runtime)? i struggle to see how it really benefits them outside the reason of control? they don't charge developers a license for the privileged of making a game based off directx. i just don't see why in #CURRENTYEAR to keep it closed off. you would think it would benefit them MORE to have their API used EVERYWHERE.

hell, its technically used heavily on linux with dxvk / vkd3d even though its in the form of translating it to vulkan. its not like its stopping directx games from running on other platforms. which, i don't understand why they would, as that only benefits more sales for game developers...

There are native D3D (graphics portion of DirectX) implementations outside of Windows. Gallium Nine springs to mind. Really, there's nothing stopping native D3D implementations from appearing on Linux other than the fact that because the API specification is controlled by MS, people don't like it. And Wine won't add support for native drivers because they would be Linux specific, just like Gallium Nine.

Linux apps won't use it, and Wine won't use it (without 3rd party patches), so there's no real point in implementing it.

[jokeyrhyme]

how does it benefit microsoft keeping directx proprietary (its runtime)?

The DirectX code was closed-source from the start, so there's probably all sorts of things in there from the mindset of developers who never thought it would ever be read by the public: patented algorithms (which actually should be public in order to patented in the first place), or possibly even code that infringes copyright/patents of others, etc

It's a huge blob of code that would need an extraordinary effort to review from a legal perspective prior to public release

[jokeyrhyme]

I agree though, Microsoft must be making less and less money from Windows and DirectX each year

Eventually, it'll make more financial sense to sunset them

[toughy]

I was hoping nouveau can still keep a native OpenGL implementation, instead of replacing what they already have ...

I can only hope Zink will indeed get as good as native drivers ... in time. It just seems unlikely for a generic, reference implementation to be as good as a native, hardware-specific one.