Intel Exhorts Developers Towards Vulkan Usage as Graphics API of Choice

[Raevenlord]

Intel, via a Game Dev Developer Zone blog post, took it into its hands to urge game developers towards usage of the industry-prevalent Vulkan API. Some unapologetic puns are thrown in, such as "(...) You might say that Vulkan lets apps live long and prosper", but these are only meant to entertain. And it's well known that Intel has supported the Khronos Group and Vulkan's inception from the beginning, alongside Google. The reasons for this blog post to make it into a front page, however, are twofold.

Vulkan APIs are positioned to become one of the next dominant graphics rendering platforms.

First, Intel commands the biggest graphics card share in the market - remember that most work PCs, tablets or even laptops are powered by Intel's integrated graphics, which means there's a huge slice of the market that developers have to account for while writing/developing their apps. Secondly, this could spell something when it comes to Intel's Visual Computing Group's strategy and development energies - a division that is being helmed by one other than Raja Koduri, himself with AMD's Mantle program - which would be then transmogrified into Vulkan. An interesting point to consider, certainly, as ntel's support behind Vulkan as a prime API could put Microsoft's DirectX - which suffers from not being cross-platform - under duress. And it's high-time that happened, since DX12 seems to be frozen in time for a long, long while now.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[cucker tarlson]

Good !

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Vulkan lets apps live long and prosper

it was only a matter of time before this went public...

 

[dj-electric]

Screw DirectX, All power the Vulkan and hope for better Linux gaming.

 

[rtwjunkie]

And it's high-time that happened, since DX12 seems to be frozen in time for a long, long while now.

Why would MS move forward on the next DX when 12 has been mostly ignored? Even Vulkan only got one new game in 2017.

https://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/the-state-of-dx12-games-in-2017-is-directx-12-losing-its-steam/

Adoption has gone backward. DX11 is where it mostly is at.

 

[phanbuey]

Yeah but if the xbox uses DX12 and it's easy to port to PC why would a dev use vulcan?

Seems like a waste of resources if you're doing multiplatform.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Why would MS move forward on the next DX when 12 has been mostly ignored? Even Vulkan only got one new game in 2017.

https://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/the-state-of-dx12-games-in-2017-is-directx-12-losing-its-steam/

Adoption has gone backward. DX11 is where it mostly is at.

Its called lazy ass developers, they are at a point when they can make extraordinary looking games with dx11 very easily, cheap and fast, so they either have no clue what dx12 can truly do or flat out dont care.

 

[dj-electric]

BTW, why do you ppl think Intel wants Vulkan?

Welp, one of its biggest advocates works at Intel now

 

[dir_d]

Yeah but if the xbox uses DX12 and it's easy to port to PC why would a dev use vulcan?

Seems like a waste of resources if you're doing multiplatform.

Well, PS4 is the most selling console of the recent wars and i'm pretty sure it doesn't run DX12.

 

[the54thvoid]

Its called lazy ass developers, they are at a point when they can make extraordinary looking games with dx11 very easily, cheap and fast, so they either have no clue what dx12 can truly do or flat out dont care.

That's a strange statement to make. Why is a developer, 'lazy ass' if the process used (DX11) provides, as you rightly say, 'extraordinary looking games'? A developer that doesn't do that would surely be a financial liability.
Fact is, most Devs knows how to utilise DX11 for maximum performance, why on earth would they risk using anything else, other than to pander to a hardware vendors self important interests?
Open standards are ideologically great but in practical terms, require far higher investment with lower returns.

 

[efikkan]

Any game engine to fully utilize the benefits of Direct3D 12 and Vulkan needs to be built around them from the ground up. The games so far uses an abstraction layer to make the new APIs behave like Direct3D 11.

The interesting time will be when games start to use newly designed game engines. I fear many will continue to go the abstraction route, but familiarity will not the primary reason why they do so. The untamed potential in Direct3D 12 and Vulkan lies in the low-level control over memory etc., and to leverage this the rendering pipeline has to be tailored to all the specific parts of the game. Most current game engines use multiple levels of abstraction; first they usually abstract every API feature they need, then they add a new layer to handle all basic rendering primitives, and then probably a layer to handle generic pipelines, effects. etc. All of this needs to be completely redesigned and simplified in order to use these features properly, and using low-level code generally goes against what most programmers are taught to do these days.

 

[TheGuruStud]

That's a strange statement to make. Why is a developer, 'lazy ass' if the process used (DX11) provides, as you rightly say, 'extraordinary looking games'? A developer that doesn't do that would surely be a financial liability.
Fact is, most Devs knows how to utilise DX11 for maximum performance, why on earth would they risk using anything else, other than to pander to a hardware vendors self important interests?
Open standards are ideologically great but in practical terms, require far higher investment with lower returns.

DX 11 gimps performance heavily. We should just go back to dual cores while we're at it. Who needs multicore draw calls?

 

[eidairaman1]

Why would MS move forward on the next DX when 12 has been mostly ignored? Even Vulkan only got one new game in 2017.

https://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/the-state-of-dx12-games-in-2017-is-directx-12-losing-its-steam/

Adoption has gone backward. DX11 is where it mostly is at.

Just like how it took forever to get away from DX 9, we get choked by MS and not to name a certain other company involved in greed.

I wonder if this involves intels use of amd igp on their certain cpus.

 

[W1zzard]

Why would MS move forward on the next DX when 12 has been mostly ignored? Even Vulkan

DX12 and Vulkan are pretty much the same thing from a developer perspective. There's no more handholding, which for most games doesn't justify the added development cost.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Gotta love those frame drops! And still terrible performance, anyway. Totally worth being lazy. We better spend more money on marketing!

 

[Tiger]

Intel should work and convince Nvdia to give all Vulkan Fermi GPUS support

* Because there are still millions of Pcs, Laptops, etc. with Fermi GPUS cards
* These gears are still powerful enough to tun strongly much more years...
* Millions of Consumers are not dumb to waste their money to change their strong gear
* Millions of Laptops do not have Intel graphics enable like mine from ASUS

 

[TheGuruStud]

Intel should work and convince Nvdia to give all Vulkan Fermi GPUS support

* Because there are still millions of Pcs, Laptops, etc. with Fermi GPUS cards
* These gears are still powerful enough to tun strongly much more years...
* Millions of Consumers are not dumb to waste their money to change their strong gear
* Millions of Laptops do not have Intel graphics enable like mine from ASUS

Nvidia isn't in the business of supporting old cards. Don't you remember the historical performance degradation to make new cards look better? Lol

Fermi is too slow to be useful, anyway.

 

[Basard]

Intel should work and convince Nvdia to give all Vulkan Fermi GPUS support

* Because there are still millions of Pcs, Laptops, etc. with Fermi GPUS cards
* These gears are still powerful enough to tun strongly much more years...
* Millions of Consumers are not dumb to waste their money to change their strong gear
* Millions of Laptops do not have Intel graphics enable like mine from ASUS

I dunno dude...... It would been nice a few years ago.....

 

[Tiger]

Nvidia isn't in the business of supporting old cards. Don't you remember the historical performance degradation to make new cards look better? Lol

Fermi is too slow to be useful, anyway.

xxxx Bullshit xxxx Lies Lies Lies Lies xxxx

Search YouTube and you will find many people posting videos using Fermi GPUS when playing new video games

I have written to Nvidia CEO to ask for Vulkan Fermi support and they lied about old promises...OUTRAGEOUS

Attention I do not receive any gifts, money, holidays or whatsoever from Nvdia, Intel or any other IT companies!
I am just a consumer who likes to play PC game sometimes....having nice and smooth gaming experiences
Nvidia only very recently ended their Fermi drivers support
*My ASUS G73SW still runs well almost new PCs games full HD like FC5, GOW4, Rise of the Tomb Raider - 20 Years Celebration...and much more
* Nvidia not supporting Fermi users for more time with drivers and Vulkan, will loose millions of clients in the next years * angry clients
* FULL HD is still the King

See the picture please

Game developers would be mad Kamikazes if they change their strategy, because they will lost million of sales...

 

[TheGuruStud]

xxxx Bullshit xxxx Lies Lies Lies Lies xxxx

Search YouTube and you will find many people posting videos using Fermi GPUS when playing new video games

I have written to Nvidia CEO to ask for Vulkan Fermi support and they lied about old promises...OUTRAGEOUS

Attention I do not receive any gifts, money, holidays or whatsoever from Nvdia, Intel or any other IT companies!
I am just a consumer who likes to play PC game sometimes....having nice and smooth gaming experiences
Nvidia only very recently ended their Fermi drivers support
*My ASUS G73SW still runs well almost new PCs games full HD like FC5, GOW4, Rise of the Tomb Raider - 20 Years Celebration...and much more
* Nvidia not supporting Fermi users for more time with drivers and Vulkan, will loose millions of clients in the next years * angry clients
* FULL HD is still the King

View attachment 103729See the picture please

Game developers would be mad Kamikazes if they change their strategy, because they will lost million of sales...

C'mon, man. Lowest details and low framerate isn't exactly gaming once you're in potato mode.

A GTX 970 barely cuts it for 1080 gaming, nowadays.

 

[RichF]

Doesn't DX11 favor Nvidia's architectures? Since Nvidia apparently "sponsors" a lot more development...

 

[TheGuruStud]

Doesn't DX11 favor Nvidia's architectures? Since Nvidia apparently "sponsors" a lot more development...

Seems as if they've built the chips that way, too. They do not want anything else.

 

[windwhirl]

Developers will do whatever they want, unless a strong incentive is given.

 

[Captain_Tom]

The best thing that could happen to PC gaming (besides a decentralized/cheaper game distributor), is the removal of DirectX as the standard.

No matter what you think of it from a fanboy-ish point of view, aren't we all tired of:

1) Waiting for the new version of DirectX to be supported by the newest gen of GPU's?!

2) Guessing if a given DirectX version will actually be used? (DirectX 10, 12)

3) Waiting years for ports to come to other platforms like android/OSX/Linux/console to get a random game that was made on DirectX first? (Or the other way around! If we used Vulkan many more console-first games would have been on PC quickly)

 

[phanbuey]

The best thing that could happen to PC gaming (besides a decentralized/cheaper game distributor), is the removal of DirectX as the standard.

No matter what you think of it from a fanboy-ish point of view, aren't we all tired of:

1) Waiting for the new version of DirectX to be supported by the newest gen of GPU's?!

2) Guessing if a given DirectX version will actually be used? (DirectX 10, 12)

3) Waiting years for ports to come to other platforms like android/OSX/Linux/console to get a random game that was made on DirectX first? (Or the other way around! If we used Vulkan many more console-first games would have been on PC quickly)

But how is vulcan going to be different for 1 & 2 - or even 3? "If we used Vulkan many more console-first games would have been on PC quickly" PS4 has it's own api for most games (vulcan support still incoming afaik) and Xbox uses DX. We will still be waiting for new version features (just like OGL back in the day) and we will still be guessing.

Regardless of the standard used there will still be porting/version issues and developers stuck in their old ways.