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Valve's SteamOS Now Supports Vulkan, The Cross-Platform Alternative To DirectX 12 (pcworld.com)
SteamOS just gained support for Vulkan, the cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectX 12 and Apple's Metal. This should make it easier for developers to write and optimize games for SteamOS, closing the performance gap with Windows and encouraging more developers to support Linux. This feature arrived in SteamOS Brewmaster version 2.63. Valve added version 355 of the Linux Nvidia driver, which means SteamOS offers Vulkan support when used alongside Nvidia hardware. Intel's graphics hardware should also support Vulkan on SteamOS in the near future. AMD is still working on its new driver, known as AMDGPU, that will replace the current fglrx driver for SteamOS and other Linux-based platforms. If you use Linux distribution besides SteamOS, you can download Nvidia's Vulkan-ready Linux driver or an experimental version of Intel's Vulkan-enabled graphics driver.
Their console. Steam has been pushing Vulkan a lot.
I was surprised to learn that very few games are running on DX12 (maybe 1-3?)..
Vulkan already has one and it's looking likely to get more. I'm guessing Valve at least will port all their modern titles to it. If so, Valve is really playing the long game on becoming less dependent on MS Windows..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's weird because my cousin once used foul language in a steam game I bought and we ended up getting the Royal Marines at our front door with several chests full of gold. Given my own experience here, I highly doubt your story.
SteamOS != Steam.
I have issues with the statement "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX". OpenGL was a cross-platform graphics standard before DirectX even existed.
I have issues with the statement "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX". OpenGL was a cross-platform graphics standard before DirectX even existed.
I have similar issues, but for other reasons.
Once commanding benefit to DirectX is that it attempts to loop unroll shaders and effects, and if it can't do it -- it drops them on the floor. While this may mean that that graphical dust storm isn't as pretty as it might have been otherwise, it also means that you don't crash or hang the video card, and as of DirectX 9 and later, even if you do, to get the compatibility sticker, the manufacture has to make it possible to reset the card and restart pending operations. So if you are able to hang the card anyway, despite the unrolling, the OS can unhang the card, and go merrily on its way.
One of the big problems with games on Mac OS X or Linux is that they tend to directly target OpenGL, rather than an OpenGL emulation running on top of Direct X, as is done on Windows. Which means it's possible to take down the cards hard, because there's no unrolling layer between the instruction stream and the card to protect it. Apple tries to make this happy by always keeping a spare channel lying around, so it can talk to the card to recover, but it doesn't always work out.
Vulkan seems to have the same problem that OpenGL itself has, in this regard. So it is *NOT*, in fact, a crossplatform alternative to using DirectX, it's a replacement for OpenGL to make it more difficult to buy other people's graphics cards. Which I kind of could care less about, if it supported the unrolling the way Direct X does, rather than just being different for the sake of being different. To me, it just looks like a handy way to hang your system, instead of using the even handier OpenGL.
Cross Platform? Please tell me that it means more than just Windows + Linux, and that I can install & run it on FreeBSD
Vulkan [...] [is] a replacement for OpenGL to make it more difficult to buy other people's graphics cards.
Whose graphics cards? The graphics card vendors representing roughly 99.5% of the market support Vulkan, and the other 0.5% don't matter because their stuff is very old super low performance embedded chips that isn't useful for gaming anyhow.
an OpenGL emulation running on top of Direct X, as is done on Windows
Stop spewing bullshit. Windows provides a user mode thunk layer to allow installable client drivers (OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, Mantle) to communicate with WDDM kernel mode drivers.
there's no unrolling layer between the instruction stream and the card to protect it.
I've worked on graphics drivers for 3 major vendors, and every one of them can and does unroll loops in OpenGL shaders. The actual situation is complex for both DX and GL, as it involves a myriad of factors such as the version being targeted, whether the loop bounds are statically known by the compiler, and whether they vary per SIMD-channel. Furthermore, GL supports device restart on hung shaders, and this is tested for in many common test suites.
So, your post is almost entirely incorrect. Charitably, we can chalk it to innocent ignorance rather than a vested interest in spreading misinformation about platform-independed APIs.
No, the state keeps you from driving on public roads if you did that. You are still perfectly free to drive your own car on private property.
Notice how he said he can no longer play offline single player?
The statement is "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX 12" - specifically 12, and not DirectX in general. On Windows your options for Mantle-like APIs are currently Vulkan and DirectX 12, i.e. the platform-limited alternative to Vulkan is DirectX 12, and the cross-platform alternative to DirectX 12 is Vulkan. I hope that helps you feel a bit better about the headline.
It is an open API (though not free, you have to pay membership dues) that can be implemented on basically any platform people wish. As of right now, only nVidia and Intel have implemented it and only on Windows and Linux as far as I know, nVidia may have it in their drivers for other platforms. Apple has expressed no interest and most other OSes rely on the graphic drivers to provide APIs. AMD will eventually probably get a driver out, they were one of the driving forces behind Vulkan, however they suck at drivers so it always seems to take them a long time.
This should make it easier for developers to write and optimize games for SteamOS
It's difficult to get solid numbers on Steam Machine sales. But they don't appear to be setting the world on fire:
Alienware Steam Machine ASM100-6980BLK Desktop Console (Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD) NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU 3.1 Stars. #3,293 in Computers & Accessories #237 in Computers & Accessories > Desktops
The Steam Hardware & Software Survey: January 2016 doesn't offer much to feed on:
Windows 95%
Win 10 64 Bit 33% and Trending upward.
OSX 4% No change.
Linux 1% No change.
Ubuntu 0.4%. Mint 0.2%
There are solutions on all platforms for that.
You're able to chroot and jail in linux since I can remember.
The shit is, how do you give your jailed game access to your graphic card, if the same one has to be used by your host/hypervisor?
> it should drop the things on the floor, like Windows tends to
Different AC here, but no, that is not true on more recent shader models.
You have been corrected by a number of individuals here on every major point you raised, and you keep saying more bullshit. You should really stop talking about this subject. You don't know what you are talking about.