Vulkan 1.2.177 Released To Help Graphics Translation Layers

Vulkan 1.2.177 is out today as the newest version of the Vulkan specification and this time around introduces one new extension that aims to help OpenGL translation layers and potentially other implementations atop this graphics API.

Besides the usual internal and public bug fixes, the main addition to Vulkan 1.2.177 is the VK_EXT_provoking_vertex extension. VK_EXT_provoking_vertex is for changing the provoking vertex convention from the default of the first vertex to instead the last vertex. This change is to match the OpenGL convention of using the last vertex.

With the provoking vertex extension being to match the OpenGL behavior, the extension is intended to help with API translation layer projects working to run OpenGL over Vulkan. The provoking vertex extension was worked on by engineers from Google, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and other organizations -- including Mike Blumenkrantz of Valve who is known for his work on the Zink OpenGL-over-Vulkan Mesa code. Thus we'll probably see Zink beginning to make use of VK_EXT_provoking_vertex in short order.

This though isn't only of relevance to desktop OpenGL but OpenGL ES and Direct3D 11 too may benefit from this extension for matching the provoking vertex convention. This extension was originally first proposed back in 2019 by a Google engineer while now has made it to the official spec.

The latest Vulkan 1.2.177 spec is available from Khronos.org.