The Vulkan Graphics API - what it means for Linux

[@astarothgr]

Ah, that's the stuff I wish I was involved in.. Great job Dave, your efforts are appreciated!

[@mridulapandey6489]

astarothgr that's one big ass 🐈

[@cchittleborough]

Great overview of Vulkan and the state of its implementations. Thanks!

[@jptbaba]

This guy is a genius.

[@jptbaba]

@Alfredo Zeke Scammer

[@jptbaba]

@Jack Rene Scammer

[@RobertoFierrosZepeda]

Great talk.

[@sephirothsoul999]

Nice one, Dave :)

[@JasonCunliffe]

Great talk - thank you !

[@tommarnk]

nice converter, Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort (Passive) to DisplayPort to DVI (Active) then to DVI to HDMI (Passive) :=)

[@RonJohn63]

It seems like the driver is pushing most complexity into user space. Will Gtk and Qt have to have new releases for every big change in video card feature set?

[@FreeScience]

If that's how vulkan would start evolving I'm pretty sure there could be a sane vulkan abstraction layer developed.

[@SianaGearz]

GTK and Qt shouldn't need more than the bare fundamentals - to the extent that they decide to make use of Vulkan acceleration at all, which isn't at all a given. I don't see any changes which would upset the basics being anticipated. As to unanticipated things, i guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there, but consider that a compatibility layer that can be transparently wedged in between is a possibility. Such one layer already exists, general-purpose apps already need to contend with running on MoltenVK, which doesn't actually have nearly as much hardware access as a hardware specific driver. This is how all prior DirectX and OpenGL versions have been supported too, by adding layers of translation - by the time you have to make the next bigger step, you have a lot more CPU power to waste on such compatibility layers, and old software would be less performance critical by then.

[@andreyVK_D3D]

Vulkan forewer!

[@chuuni6924]

It's just a pity we can't use Vulkan for another decade for programs that don't want multiple API backends, since vendors won't support it on hardware that is still current, like Fermi.

[@SimGunther]

Maybe those vendors don't want to invest in the Vulkan "ecosystem" because the vendors are comfy with their own obfuscated ecosystem that's built to confuse rather than clarify its details. To be fair, I would have been more excited for Vulkan if it was a plug and play solution for moving bits from one place to another rather than an entire ecosystem :P

[@thedude4795]

great speech! 37:14

[@carroll6]

He is smart. Well..I am developing now with UNITY. I want to use the new UNITY Editor for Linux. How do I make it work? Can you design a game with VULKAN in mind? I understand the things he is doing, but I don't code..and wonder how I can use it.

[@faresgeek-dz5692]

carroll6 that mean vulkan is good for linux game devloper with unity or unreal engine 4??

[@leezhieng]

As far as I know, unity editor won't be supporting linux due to third party libraries' compatibility and license terms.

[@lucma3622]

15:56 He said it exposes all the what?

[@draaguaD]

"all of the hardware queues"

[@Pachupp85]

spoiler alert 2 years later completely nothing

[@iwankazlow2268]

Game programming today is more of a sandbox game for devs. No surprise there that people are not willing to do more of the ground work themselves.

[@Tony_Goat]

1 year later: Unity, Unreal, and Source 2 support it as an option, Godot and Cryengine are developing support. People developing new games don't need to do all the groundwork anymore unless they're writing the engine from scratch.

[@squelchedotter]

Uh, it's enabled near-native emulation of proprietary graphics APIs such as DirectX, making 99% of games without anticheat run perfectly?