Intel Vulkan Driver Patches Make For Playable Experience With Skyrim On DXVK

Intel open-source graphics driver developer Jason Ekstrand has published a set of patches that help with playing Skyrim Special Edition with Intel graphics hardware under Linux when using the DXVK layer.

Ekstrand has worked out a NIR optimization patch that moves large constant variables to a uniform buffer object. This work that's wired up from the common NIR code into the Intel ANV driver was geared to help out Skyrim Special Edition.

Skyrim Special Edition does not have a native Linux port at this time nor a Vulkan renderer, but Ekstrand has been testing the game under Wine with the DXVK library that maps the game's Direct3D 11 calls into Vulkan.

It turns out with these eight yet-to-be-merged patches, it's enough for actually making this game playable with Intel Skylake HD Graphics hardware. Ekstrand commented, "This series takes Skyrim Special Edition running under DXVK from a slide show to a smooth and very playable framerate on my SKL desktop."

These Mesa NIR / Intel ANV patches can be found on Mesa-dev but hopefully will be merged to Mesa Git soon in time for the Mesa 18.2 branching in July.