LWJGL 3.0 Brings Vulkan Support, New Bindings & Other Improvements For Java Games

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LWJGL 3.0 Brings Vulkan Support, New Bindings & Other Improvements For Java Games

After more than three years in development, version 3.0 of the Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) is now available. LWJGL is an open-source Java library for helping game developers but can also be used by other application developers for accessing other functionality that otherwise isn't offered by the Java API...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LWJGL-3.0-Released

[Chewi]

Hmm I thought 3.0 was out already. Now I don't feel so bad about not having packaged it for Gentoo yet. We do have 2.9.3 though!

[kamild1996]

Of course somebody has to ask a question about this. The most popular game running LWJGL seems to be Minecraft. As this game is very CPU-intensive (even Core i7 has problems on huge modpacks), do you think Vulcan would bring a huge performance boost? Or is that not worth it?

[AsuMagic]

Of course somebody has to ask a question about this. The most popular game running LWJGL seems to be Minecraft. As this game is very CPU-intensive (even Core i7 has problems on huge modpacks), do you think Vulcan would bring a huge performance boost? Or is that not worth it?

Not worth it. This game is just so badly coded the OpenGL overhead is nearly unnoticeable and Mojang would manage to fuck up the Vulkan port.

[Chewi]

Not worth it. This game is just so badly coded the OpenGL overhead is nearly unnoticeable and Mojang would manage to fuck up the Vulkan port.

That is true though my daughter is playing it right now on a crusty i915. It's just about playable. Don't think Vulkan would help there though!

Other games that use it include Revenge of the Titans and Titan Attacks.

[Slartifartblast]

Java ? You can go and stick it where Larry Ellison's API doesn't shine.

[silakka]

So when's Minecraft getting Vulkan support? :P

[yzsolt]

Of course somebody has to ask a question about this. The most popular game running LWJGL seems to be Minecraft. As this game is very CPU-intensive (even Core i7 has problems on huge modpacks), do you think Vulcan would bring a huge performance boost? Or is that not worth it?

Not really. They don't even use OpenGL 3 features by default! Last time I looked at Minecraft with CodeXL it was using display lists for rendering (with VBOs being an optional setting)... Minecraft's (at least the desktop, Java based version's) rendering pipeline is very outdated and inefficient. Why? I'm sure they'd say because of laptop gamers out there with graphics cards aren't supporting OpenGL 3, but come on, in 2016 it's not a valid reason. However, with they're going to China this reason may become valid...

For MC's incredibly basic graphics there's no reason to use Vulkan. Vulkan isn't a silver bullet in general. I think single-threaded renderers can get the same performance with OpenGL 4's AZDO features as they'd get with Vulkan. Also porting to Vulkan isn't an easy task, it requires a bigger knowledge about GPUs and synchronization/multi-threading. And multi-threading is hard even without involving the GPU

To be honest, I'm somewhat impressed that they're able to deliver the current performance with Java, knowing it's one of the worst choices for simulating huge dynamic voxel worlds in real time.

It's also interesting that they have at least 2 parallel code bases for the same game, one for mobile in C++ and one in Java for the desktop. I think the Win10 edition is based on the mobile version. Of course they have more than enough money to develop the two simultaneously, but looking at the mobile version's current state I'm wondering when will they switch to one unified code base, using the C++ implementation on the desktop too. However, if they'd like to support the various plugins/mods (written in Java) in the future, then it'll probably never happen...

[dEnigma]

Not really. They don't even use OpenGL 3 features by default! Last time I looked at Minecraft with CodeXL it was using display lists for rendering (with VBOs being an optional setting)...

Just fyi, the latest snapshot (1.10-pre1) enables VBOs by default.
Still, it's amazing how much faster the mobile/Windows 10 version of Minecraft is, it's the difference between almost unplayable and super-smooth on my old laptop.

[cj.wijtmans]

Just fyi, the latest snapshot (1.10-pre1) enables VBOs by default.
Still, it's amazing how much faster the mobile/Windows 10 version of Minecraft is, it's the difference between almost unplayable and super-smooth on my old laptop.

the windows 10 version is completely recoded i believe. And also not java. Also minecraft did make the renderer more efficient. it went from 100ish fps to 500ish by simply not drawing everything.