UWP'ed Mesa Running On Microsoft Xbox, Allowing For New Game Ports With OpenGL

Recently there has been out-of-tree successes on adapting Mesa to work on Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP). UWP is also used by the Microsoft Xbox Series X/S game consoles and in turn paired with the Microsoft D3D12 driver work within Mesa for allowing OpenGL and other APIs atop D3D12, is allowing new games/software to be ported to the Xbox.

Independent developer Aerisarn has been leading the charge working on adapting Mesa for Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform. The code is currently staged via his Mesa-UWP GitHub repository. In turn he's also ported other software to UWP like getting glxgears running on UWP and that paired with the Mesa Gallium3D code is up and running on the Xbox. Related and for allowing more games to work on UWP/Xbox, there is SDL-uwp-gl for getting SDL working with UWP and the ported Mesa code.

This UWP Mesa port appears to be working out successfully and has been used for getting this Dhewm3 fork running on UWP/Xbox. Dhewm3 of course being one of the open-source Doom 3 codebases being developed. With Daniel Worley's recent fork of it and releasing Dhewm3 HDR-Alpha, it notes:

"This port utilizes @aerisarn's recent work on libgallium and SDL to effectively run dhewm3 on the Xbox. For extra fun this build also does HDR! Play with r_gamma/r_brightness. Future builds may have better tonemapping."

So thanks to the UWP'ed Mesa, this open-source Doom 3 OpenGL-rendered game is even running on the Microsoft Xbox Series X/S. Interesting work as always thanks to open-source.

Not directly tied to these forks but it's also been similarly brought up elsewhere like for RetroArch the possibilities of a UWP'ed Mesa and leveraging Microsoft's D3D12 driver in turn for allowing OpenGL/Vulkan atop the Direct3D 12 API.