V-EZ: AMD Releases New Easy-To-Use Vulkan Middleware, Simplified API

AMD's GPUOpen group in cooperation with Khronos today is announcing V-EZ, a new project of theirs designed to make the barrier to entry for the Vulkan graphics API lower. V-EZ provides a middleware layer and simplified API for making it easier to get started with Vulkan development.

V-EZ provides an "easy mode" to Vulkan by reducing the amount of boilerplate code to get started with Vulkan development and making the API easier/simpler to understand by new developers.

V-EZ is compatible with existing Vulkan drivers and is engineered to add minimal overhead to Vulkan games/applications. The V-EZ library makes use of native Vulkan types, provides much simpler memory management and frees the developer from needing to become familiar with the low-level details, the software doesn't need to deal with the management of descriptor set pools, OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) has first-class support under V-EZ as well as SPIR-V, and other simplifications.

This is far from being the first project for trying to provide a simplified interface for getting started with Vulkan. In fact, another GPUOpen project has been their Anvil framework that is a Vulkan wrapper library aiming to reduce the amount of time needed to start writing Vulkan applications from scratch. Given AMD/GPUOpen involvement, it will be interesting to see if it takes off any further than the other efforts in this area.

V-EZ code should be appearing shortly over on GitHub and will be interesting to dive in with this new open-source Vulkan wrapper effort.

Update: There is also now a post on GPUOpen.com about the V-EZ initiative.