Vulkan 1.2.164 Released With Valve's Extension For Helping Direct3D 12 Implementation

Vulkan 1.2.164 is out today with the usual assortment of documentation fixes/clarifications plus two new extensions.

The two new extensions of Vulkan 1.2.164 include:

VK_VALVE_mutable_descriptor - This is the Valve-developed Vulkan extension we were first to report on last month as another stride for helping to improve Direct3D implementations atop Vulkan like VKD3D-Proton as used by Valve with their Steam Play (Proton) layer. VK_VALVE_mutable_descriptor_type is driven to allow "much more efficient emulation of the raw D3D12 binding model" with the features added by this mutable descriptor extension.

VK_NV_acquire_winrt_display - NVIDIA's VK_NV_acquire_winrt_display is the other new extension in this release. VK_NV_acquire_winrt_display allows taking exclusive control of a display on Windows 10, assuming it's not already controlled by a compositor. This extension allows for exclusive control of the display until it is released or the using application quits. This can be used for custom compositors on Windows 10 and other purposes like VR.

Those are the two main changes with Vulkan 1.2.164.

Valve contractor Hans-Kristian Arntzen has already added VK_VALVE_mutable_descriptor_type support this morning to the RADV Vulkan driver for Mesa 21.0.

VKD3D-Proton this morning was also updated to make use of this extension. VK_VALVE_mutable_descriptor_type is now "highly recommended" for this Direct3D 12 on Vulkan implementation.