There Is A Vulkan Renderer In Development For Qt 3D

While Qt 5.10 has queued initial Vulkan support, it isn't too much right now beyond some helpers and allowing Vulkan inside a QWindow as well as a new QVulkanWindow sub-class. I.e. Vulkan isn't being used to render Qt, but there is a Vulkan renderer now in-development for Qt 3D.

A sharp-eyed Phoronix reader pointed out this code review showing that indeed the KDAB consulting firm has begun work on a Vulkan renderer for Qt 3D. The code is very fresh and will be interesting to follow as it matures and become more usable.

Many of you probably are thinking "why would the toolkit need Vulkan?" especially with OpenGL already being used, but it's not just about trying to squeeze out hundreds of frames per second... Making use of Vulkan in Qt could be interesting for CPU power-savings. As we've shown in past GL vs. Vulkan comparisons, Vulkan renderers can be much more efficient on the CPU than OpenGL and this could lead to some power-savings, especially for low-power/mobile devices where Qt is common. Let's also not forget GTK4 already has Vulkan support.