Microsoft DX12 GDC 2015

[frozentundra123456]

OK, I have a basic question. Vulcan is supposedly Mantle or derived from mantle. Is it hardware agnostic now? That was always my big complaint with mantle (that it could only run on GCN), and unless an API can run on nVidia, AMD, and Intel, it will always be secondary to DX.

I see it as fine if Vulcan can run under all hardware platforms within windows, and offers an alternative to DX.

While I agree that MS is not as supportive as I would like towards PC gaming, that does not automatically make them some evil giant that is destroying PC gaming either. DX with all it flaws has made PC gaming possible today as we know it. Open source is great, but even if Vulcan and its GL derivatives are "open source", I cant see them being successful without a powerful company like Valve behind them, and then you come back to the same "monopoly" issues as some have now with MS. And as I said in another post, Valve seems even more dangerous to me, because if they supported Vulcan and it became the dominant gaming OS, they would control both the game distribution and the OS. But this is all far in the future, and you also will have the problem of legacy games (all current games, actually, and a lot of future games) that will require DX or have to be ported.

 

[Noctifer616]

OK, I have a basic question. Vulcan is supposedly Mantle or derived from mantle. Is it hardware agnostic now?

Mantle is also hardware agnostic, but neither Intel or NVidia have access to the SDK so they can't make drivers for it. Vulkan is another story.

 

[destrekor]

Mantle is also hardware agnostic, but neither Intel or NVidia have access to the SDK so they can't make drivers for it. Vulkan is another story.

Not quite. Mantle was very much developed for GCN architecture only.

Those are the parts of the API that had to be thrown out or modified in Vulkan in order for it to become hardware agnostic. Maybe with the SDK some of those parts could have been ignored, emulated in a way, or create a translation in the driver. Much of this would have likely reduced performance and introduce more CPU overhead, I suspect. I could be wrong.

 

[Noctifer616]

Not quite. Mantle was very much developed for GCN architecture only.

Those are the parts of the API that had to be thrown out or modified in Vulkan in order for it to become hardware agnostic. Maybe with the SDK some of those parts could have been ignored, emulated in a way, or create a translation in the driver. Much of this would have likely reduced performance and introduce more CPU overhead, I suspect. I could be wrong.

Well, we can't know for sure since no one tried and since the SDK will never become public we will probably never know. All we know is that AMD said it is possible to run Mantle on other hardware and Intel has asked AMD for the SDK.

 

[bystander36]

Well, we can't know for sure since no one tried and since the SDK will never become public we will probably never know. All we know is that AMD said it is possible to run Mantle on other hardware and Intel has asked AMD for the SDK.

I'm pretty sure it was DICE who said it could be ran on other hardware, but that might have meant they'd simply avoid the GCN specific calls, or make work arounds for it.

 

[3DVagabond]

The way your last sentence sounds to me is like you are ready to worship Vulkan like it's Christ himself.

Flame worthy stuff.

What exactly has MS done that has hurt games on the PC with DirectX? Nothing that's what. So the rhetoric is getting pretty old to keep reading. "not locked to microsoft's whims" what does that even mean?

MSFT worked real hard to establish Windows as the #1 gaming platform on the PC. That's when their best work was done. Not so much since then.

With windows as the central platform there's more games available on the PC than ever. I'm not saying Vulkan is garbage or that it shouldn't exist. There are many uses for it outside Windows too, but I'm having a hard time understanding why someone can sit there and type something that paints DirectX as a bane on PC gaming while Vulkan will somehow save it from evil. I feel that a developer can choose what to use, whatever works best for them. I do not think DX or MS in general is going to bury gaming on the PC.

I think ~6 years without a major upgrade to DX shows what happens when MSFT holds PC gaming in their hands with no outside threat. There having to be competing API's threatening their dominance before they act. I think it's time for others to have more involvement. Specifically the Devs and IHV's.

 

[Despoiler]

I'm pretty sure it was DICE who said it could be ran on other hardware, but that might have meant they'd simply avoid the GCN specific calls, or make work arounds for it.

Thought it was Oxide. I still haven't been able to find the video where they confirmed that Mantle's HAL is capable of using an Nvidia card at a rudimentary level. Either way Dice or Oxide the video is out there. It makes sense too because ultimately Nvidia and AMD support DX and the DX features are what Mantle was built to spec for.

 

[xthetenth]

DirectX 12 games will run on Windows- Vulkan games will run on Windows, Android and probably iOS too. If I were a game dev I know exactly which API I would be choosing.

If I were a game dev I probably would be doing far more significant changes between a game for full on computers and mobile than the difference between two APIs if both are supported by the engine I'm using (they probably will be).

 

[destrekor]

If I were a game dev I probably would be doing far more significant changes between a game for full on computers and mobile than the difference between two APIs if both are supported by the engine I'm using (they probably will be).

Such ports will require significant work, absolutely.

Where less work would be necessary would be supporting Mac and Linux alongside Windows. Supporting any game and/or engine between desktop and mobile systems will require far more work, but if everything is on the same architectural platform, things are easier.

Porting between Windows 10 (on ARM) and iOS and Android should be much easier, or at least between iOS and Android. I suspect Windows on ARM should be easier to work with. A benefit would also be potentially less work, if any, to make the game compatible with the "universal app" portion of Windows. I suspect we'll see more of that, although I'd be curious if Windows 10 will support Vulkan in the metro/universal app world.
Much like Windows, Mac, and Linux use x86 and the same GPUs, all of the mobile platforms (for the most part) use ARM and basically the same GPU tech.