https://www.saschawillems.de/tags/vulkan/ Recent content in vulkan on Sascha Willems Hugo -- gohugo.io de-de webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/09/04/vulkan-hardware-database-quick-filters/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/09/04/vulkan-hardware-database-quick-filters/ tbd Link Text Link Text https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/08/23/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.13-with-additional-feature-flags-released/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/08/23/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.13-with-additional-feature-flags-released/ Better late the never Vulkan launched with a small set of format feature flags for images and buffers. These flags can be used to check if an image or buffer supports a given usage scenario. E.g. sampling from an image or using a buffer as the source for a transfer operation. But as the api surface grew, so did the list of format feature flags, making it necessary to not only use a larger data type for those (64 unsigned bits instead of 32) but to also add a new way of querying those flags. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/06/13/new-vulkan-samples-for-using-descriptor-heaps/ Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/06/13/new-vulkan-samples-for-using-descriptor-heaps/ New way of passing data to shaders In Vulkan, data has historically been passed to shaders using descriptors. Managing them can become quite complicated. There are ways to avoid that, such as using buffer device address (obviously for buffers only) or descriptor indexing (aka “bindless”). But until recently, there was no unified way to avoid the complexity around descriptors. This changed a few months ago when VK_EXT_descriptor_heap was introduced. That extension completely overhauls Vulkan’s existing descriptor API, letting you handle descriptors as raw memory. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/03/13/improving-performance-of-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:00:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/03/13/improving-performance-of-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Tackling performance issues Looking at server statistics, the Vulkan database alone is serving up to 3 million requests per month. A number I would’ve never imagined when I first created this back in 2016. It’s quickly approaching 50k reports and one drawback of such a huge trove of data in combination with that many requests: Performance issues. The database server often can’t handle the traffic and when several people run expensive queries, the database might even run into timeouts. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/02/17/vulkanised-2026-talk-on-vulkan-for-hobbyists/ Tue, 17 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/02/17/vulkanised-2026-talk-on-vulkan-for-hobbyists/ Vulkanised is the largest event dedicated to developers using the Vulkan graphics API. It’s an event packed with brilliant talks and I once again had the honour of being among some of the smartest people in real time graphics programming. At this year’s event I gave a remote talk on Vulkan - Now and then for hobbyists. My goal with this was to look at the decade since Vulkan launched from the eyes of a hobby developer. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/02/01/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.11-released/ Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/02/01/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.11-released/ Version 4.11 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). This version is based on Vulkan Headers 1.4.340 and adds support for the following new extension features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2: VK_EXT_descriptor_heap VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d VK_EXT_shader_long_vector VK_EXT_shader_subgroup_partitioned VK_KHR_internally_synchronized_queues VK_NV_push_constant_bank VK_NV_compute_occupancy_priority https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/01/03/new-how-to-vulkan-in-2026-tutorial/ Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:50:47 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2026/01/03/new-how-to-vulkan-in-2026-tutorial/ (Almost) 10 years of Vulkan Vulkan went public almost 10 years ago. That’s a lot of time for a fast-moving area like realtime computer graphics. Vulkan 1.0 had to make concessions in order to support a broad range of devices available back then. That basically meant OpenGL ES 3.2 as a baseline, with additional features available for discrete desktop GPUs. Things have changed a lot since then. Vulkan is now at version 1. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/12/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.10-released/ Sun, 07 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/12/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.10-released/ New client application Version 4.10 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). Update to Qt6 Just like the OpenCL hardware capability viewer I recently updated, the Vulkan hardware capability viewer also uses the Qt framework for it’s platform-independent user interface. The app has been on Qt5 for quite some time, but for open source users, Qt5 has been EoL since the end of 2023. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/09/13/vulkan-hardware-database-availability/ Sat, 13 Sep 2025 17:29:20 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/09/13/vulkan-hardware-database-availability/ Causes for the limited database availability Some of you might have noticed issues with accessing the Vulkan Hardware Database since end of July. This was caused by a targeted denial-of-service (DoS) attack in combination with ever-increasing rampant AI bot crawling. Note the spike in July That lead my hosting company to take precautionary measures to avoid negative effects to their own services. One such measure was to block access from certain countries, esp. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/08/15/fundamental-vulkan-samples-rework/ Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/08/15/fundamental-vulkan-samples-rework/ Fundamental Vulkan Samples rework (Sync, command buffers and more) Some history It’s been almost ten years since I started working on my open source C++ Vulkan samples. Never would I have imagined what the coming years would look like. Back then I only knew a bit of OpenGL and very little DirectX. And I wasn’t that proficient in C++ either, my main programming language back then was Delphi (which has become a small niche as of today). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/27/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.02-released/ Fri, 27 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/27/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.02-released/ New client application A bit delayed, but version 4.02 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version is based on Vulkan Headers 1.4.320 and adds support for the following new extension features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2: VK_ARM_tensors VK_ARM_data_graph VK_ARM_format_pack VK_EXT_shader_float8 VK_EXT_zero_initialize_device_memory VK_KHR_present_id2 VK_KHR_present_wait2 VK_KHR_video_decode_vp9 VK_KHR_unified_image_layouts VK_KHR_maintenance9 VK_KHR_robustness2 VK_VALVE_fragment_density_map_layered Native Linux ARM64 builds (AArch64) Thanks to a contribution by q4a, the Vulkan Hardware Capability viewer now also natively supports Linux on ARM64 (aka AArch64). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/23/shaders-for-vulkan-samples-now-also-available-in-hlsl/ Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:59:41 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/23/shaders-for-vulkan-samples-now-also-available-in-hlsl/ One of Vulkan’s biggest additions (compared to OpenGL) was the introduction of the SPIR-V intermediate representation for shaders. This makes it possible to use different shader language front-ends for writing your shaders, with the only requirement being to be able to compile that language to valid SPIR-V with Vulkan semantics. Unlike OpenGL (except for GL_ARB_gl_spirv) this no longer confines you to use GLSL for writing Vulkan shaders. And while GLSL is still the primary language for my C++ Vulkan samples, SPIR-V opens up options for different shader languages. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/03/shaders-for-vulkan-samples-now-also-available-in-slang/ Tue, 03 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/06/03/shaders-for-vulkan-samples-now-also-available-in-slang/ A new shading language enters the ring Unlike other 3D graphics apis, Vulkan did decouple human readable shaders from the api using SPIR-V as an intermediate representation. This makes it possible to use different shader language front-ends for writing your shaders, with the only requirement being to be able to compile that shading language to valid SPIR-V with Vulkan semantics. This opens up Vulkan for shading languages other than glsl and made it possible to also add hlsl to most of my samples (back in 2020). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/04/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.01-released/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/04/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-4.01-released/ New client application A bit delayed, but version 4.01 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version is based on Vulkan Headers 1.4.313 and adds support for the following new extension features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2: VK_ARM_pipeline_opacity_micromap VK_EXT_fragment_density_map_offset VK_KHR_depth_clamp_zero_one VK_KHR_maintenance8 VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16 VK_KHR_video_maintenance2 VK_NV_cluster_acceleration_structure VK_NV_cooperative_vector VK_NV_partitioned_acceleration_structure VK_NV_present_metering VK_NV_ray_tracing_linear_swept_spheres Updated build environments One of the reasons it took me so long to update this release were required updates to the build environments. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/04/05/improved-filtering-added-to-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Sat, 05 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/04/05/improved-filtering-added-to-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Reworking global filters In the last posting I already hinted at reworking how filtering works for the Vulkan Hardware Database. Almost 40,000 reports across multiple platforms is a lot of data, and being able to properly and easily filter that is crucial for a database. Up until now the only global filter option was the api version, so you could e.g. filter all views in the database to show only data based on devices supporting at least that api version. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/01/12/cleaning-up-vulkan-hardware-database-android-reports/ Sun, 12 Jan 2025 12:50:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2025/01/12/cleaning-up-vulkan-hardware-database-android-reports/ Vulkan device properties on Android Compared to desktop environments like Windows and Linux, Vulkan on Android is a very different situation. Aside from the obvious hardware specific differences between full desktop GPUs and integrated mobile GPUs there are issues that also complicate data retrieval for my Vulkan Hardware Database. One such issue is device naming and how GPUs and mobile devices corelate. On desktop a given GPU like a RTX 4070 from NVIDIA always reports the same Vulkan properties for a given driver version, no matter who produced that graphics card. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/12/06/vulkan-1.4-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ Fri, 06 Dec 2024 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/12/06/vulkan-1.4-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ Vulkan 1.4 has arrived Just a few days ago Vulkan 1.4 was released to the public. This is another important step forward for the api and adds some interesting new functionality. See this blog from Khronos for more details. The Vulkan documentation site is a good starting point too if you wanna learn about what’s included in that version and also why it’s included. If you’re looking for some code, the Khronos Vulkan Samples show some of the new features that were already available as an extensions, e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/07/28/extension-detail-pages-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Sun, 28 Jul 2024 14:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/07/28/extension-detail-pages-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ New pages for extension details One thing that I always kinda thought was missing from the database was an easy way to pass extension details around. Esp. coverage numbers for platforms. A common question I see in the Vulkan communities I’m active in is “how good is support for this extension”. And usually the answer is “go to the extension list at https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org and filter yourself”. And while that is a way to get an answer to that question, not having an easy way to simply pass around a link that answers this questions has been bugging me for some time now. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/04/01/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.40-released/ Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/04/01/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.40-released/ New client application Version 3.40 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the Google Play Android version should land soon. New extensions This version is based on Vulkan Headers 1.3.280 and adds support for the following new extension features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2: VK_EXT_map_memory_placed VK_NV_shader_atomic_float16_vector VK_NV_raw_access_chains VK_NV_ray_tracing_validation Other changes Made some minor adjustments to the JSON output that should hopefully fix some wrongly reported format feature flags JSON’s number type is limited to double, and some drivers reported numbers larger than that, resulting in wrong values stored to the database To avoid this, those flags are now stored as string, avoiding any problems with conversion Updated the LunarG Profiles library https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/03/09/gpu-hardware-databases-hit-50000-reports/ Sat, 09 Mar 2024 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/03/09/gpu-hardware-databases-hit-50000-reports/ 50,000 reports (and counting) When I started the OpenGL online hardware database in 2011 along with a client application written in Delphi (which is pretty niche nowadays), it was meant as a replacement for a defunct database of OpenGL devices made by someone else. 13 years later my community driven GPU databases now also support OpenGL ES, OpenCL and Vulkan. Judging by the numbers and the feedback I get, the databases are widely used by developers that work the open APIs from Khronos. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/02/25/improving-filtering-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Sun, 25 Feb 2024 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/02/25/improving-filtering-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Improving filtering Eight years after launching the Vulkan database to the public, it’s approaching 30,000 uploaded reports from more than 3,300 different devices across Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS and iOS. With that much data available, good filtering capabilities are crucial. One part where the filtering capabilities of the database were severely lacking have been device coverage based listings. Device coverage is a percentage value that states how many distinct devices (not reports) support a given feature. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/01/24/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.33-released/ Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2024/01/24/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.33-released/ New client application Version 3.33 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the Google Play Android version is also pending and should be live soon. New extensions As the last release has been a while ago, this version did a rather large jump to Vulkan Headers 1.3.276 and adds support for a lot of new extension features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2: https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/10/14/new-vulkan-documentation-site/ Sat, 14 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/10/14/new-vulkan-documentation-site/ Vulkan Documentation has a new home With something as complex as the Vulkan API, good documentation is crucial for developer adoption. And while Vulkan had pretty good documentation from the get-go, with esp. the spec getting lots of praise, there was a lot of room for improvement. The spec e.g. has become so large that lower-end devices have problems loading it up in the browser, other interesting documentation is scattered around different places and related documentation (e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/09/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.32-released/ Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/09/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.32-released/ New client application Version 3.32 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the Google Plays Android version is also pending and should be live soon. New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.264 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix VK_EXT_frame_boundary VK_EXT_depth_bias_control VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments VK_NV_descriptor_pool_overallocation VK_MSFT_layered_driver VK_QCOM_image_processing2 VK_QCOM_filter_cubic_weights VK_QCOM_ycbcr_degamma VK_QCOM_filter_cubic_clamp VK_QNX_external_memory_screen_buffer Other changes Supported image layouts for the VK_EXT_host_image_copy are now properly displayed using their Vulkan enums. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/07/22/automatic-dark-theme-toggle-for-all-gpu-databases/ Sat, 22 Jul 2023 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/07/22/automatic-dark-theme-toggle-for-all-gpu-databases/ Dark mode theme A few months ago I added a dark/light theme toggle to the launchpad and all databases (Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenCL). After getting mostly positive feedback I decided to replace this manual toggle with an automatic toggle that selects the dark or light theme based on your operating system. So if you’re running your Windows with a dark theme, the databases will now automatically switch to a dark mode too. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/03/17/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.29-released/ Fri, 17 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/03/17/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.29-released/ New client application Version 3.29 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the slightly outdated Google Playstore is also pending and should be live soon. New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.243 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_ARM_shader_core_properties VK_EXT_image_sliced_view_of_3d VK_EXT_pipeline_library_group_handles VK_QCOM_multiview_per_view_render_areas Other changes The new version also includes a usability improvement for filtering data. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/03/04/new-surface-data-listings-for-the-vulkan-database/ Sat, 04 Mar 2023 13:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/03/04/new-surface-data-listings-for-the-vulkan-database/ New global surface data listings Being able to filter for all data available from submitted reports is an important aspect of the database, so I’m constantly adding new global listings that also let you check coverage numbers. The surface part of the database was missing two important listings: One for the surface transform modes and one for the surface composite alpha modes. They have been added to the database and quickly let you find out global and per-platform coverage numbers: https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/02/08/compute-chapter-for-vulkan-tutorial/ Wed, 08 Feb 2023 18:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2023/02/08/compute-chapter-for-vulkan-tutorial/ Vulkan Tutorial For a lot of developers wanting to learn Vulkan, the tutorial at www.vulkan-tutorial.com is the first learning resource they’ll encounter. It teaches most of the basics required to get started with Vulkan, but up until now only for the graphics part. But Vulkan does more than graphics, with compute shader support being mandatory and as such available on all devices and platforms that support Vulkan. New compute chapter And being well aware on how important the tutorial is as a learning resource, we have a small group of people inside Khronos that takes care of keeping the tutorial up-to-date and in line with api changes. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/11/26/reworked-compare-functionality-for-all-gpu-databases/ Sat, 26 Nov 2022 12:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/11/26/reworked-compare-functionality-for-all-gpu-databases/ Comparing devices - Current state A core feature of all my GPU databases (Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL and OpenGL ES) is the possibility to compare reports. This lets you quickly see how the implementations differ, e.g. regarding extension support or api limits. For this you check the reports (or devices) to compare from the currently visible list: And after pressing “compare” you’ll get a side-by-side comparison of the selected reports: But the current implementation has an annoying limitation that has been bothering users (and me) for years now: You can only ever select reports (to compare) from the currently visible list of reports. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/11/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.27-released/ Sat, 19 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/11/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.27-released/ New client application Version 3.27 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.230 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer (proposal) VK_ARM_shader_core_builtins VK_NV_copy_memory_indirect VK_NV_memory_decompression VK_NV_ray_tracing_invocation_reorder https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/09/30/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.26-released/ Fri, 30 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/09/30/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.26-released/ New client application Version 3.26 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.230 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_opacity_micromap VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state3 VK_EXT_device_fault VK_EXT_device_address_binding_report VK_EXT_pipeline_protected_access VK_EXT_legacy_dithering VK_EXT_mutable_descriptor_type VK_EXT_rasterization_order_attachment_access VK_NV_present_barrier VK_NV_optical_flow Changes and bugfixes Updated Vulkan profiles library to the latest version Added detection for Windows 11 (was showing up as Windows 10 in older versions) Fixed a bug with large values for maxTimelineSemaphoreValueDifference Database I also did some minor tweaks and bugfixes to the database: https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/04/29/vulkan-hardware-database-gets-global-api-level-selection/ Fri, 29 Apr 2022 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/04/29/vulkan-hardware-database-gets-global-api-level-selection/ Some background More than 6 years ago (time flies!) I released the Vulkan Hardware Database and Capability Viewer along with the first public release of Vulkan 1.0. Traffic on the database has been rising steadily and is approaching 1,000,000 hits per month. 2021 more than 3,000 reports have been uploaded to the database, a number that also has been steadily increasing since launch. This makes it my mostly used database (compared to OpenGL and OpenGL ES) and judging by the feedback it seems to be a widely and often used feature among Vulkan developers. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/03/12/vulkan-profiles-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ Sat, 12 Mar 2022 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/03/12/vulkan-profiles-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ Vulkan profiles Along with Vulkan 1.3, Khronos also introduced Vulkan Profiles into the Vulkan ecosystem: “The new Vulkan profile mechanism enables the precise specification and management of sets of API capabilities. Each profile specifies a core version of Vulkan plus a set of required extensions, with supported limits, features, and formats. Profiles provide a way to precisely communicate functionality requirements and device capabilities between participants in the Vulkan ecosystem to streamline the development and deployment of portable applications. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/01/28/vulkan-1.3-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ Fri, 28 Jan 2022 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2022/01/28/vulkan-1.3-support-for-the-vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database/ New Vulkan version Vulkan 1.3 has just gone public, adding some recent features into the core to establish a new baseline for the api. You can find more information in this blog from Khronos and additional resources in this one. There’ll also be a special Vulkanized webinar on February 1st that’s dedicated to the new version. As with previous releases I added support for the new core version to the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer and the database day-one. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/12/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.05-released/ Sun, 05 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/12/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.05-released/ Release Version 3.05 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.200 (from 1.2.195), adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_ARM_rasterization_order_attachment_access VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering VK_EXT_border_color_swizzle VK_EXT_image_view_min_lod VK_EXT_depth_clip_control Bugfixes This version als includes a few fixes: Proxy settings are now properly applied Proxy type has been changed to http (from socks) to increas compatibility Updating reports with missing extensions is now proplery working https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/10/23/vulkanised-texture-compression-talk/ Sat, 23 Oct 2021 16:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/10/23/vulkanised-texture-compression-talk/ I recently gave a talk on texture compression in Vulkan using Basis Universal and the KTX 2.0 format during this years Vulkanised online event. The short (15 minutes) talk contains some information on texture compression general, using texture compression in Vulkan and why a universal supercompressed format like Basis Universal is important. The presentation and a video recording of all the presentations from day 2, including mine, are now available: https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/10/13/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.04-released/ Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/10/13/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.04-released/ Release Version 3.04 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.195 (from 1.2.189), adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_KHR_maintenance4 VK_EXT_rgba10x6_formats VK_KHR_shader_integer_dot_product VK_EXT_primitive_topology_list_restart VK_EXT_pageable_device_local_memory VK_KHR_shader_integer_dot_product Support for PowerVR texture compression image format support This version also finally adds support for the PowerVR texture compression formats provided by the VK_IMG_format_pvrtc. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/08/01/vulkan-hardware-database-updates/ Sun, 01 Aug 2021 15:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/08/01/vulkan-hardware-database-updates/ Intro The Vulkan Hardware Database just got another large update, bringing some substantial new features, quality-of-life improvements and bugfixes. A large part of the code has been reworked to make it easier to maintain and expand, and also more secure. Reworked format support views The biggest change in functionality are the reworked format support views. Instead of a single view that would only tell coverage for “is a format supported linear/optimal tiling or buffers”, the listings have been split into separate listings for linear tiling, optimal tiling and buffer format support and now list device coverage by format and flag. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/07/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.02-released/ Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/07/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.02-released/ Release Version 3.02 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.184 (from 1.2.175), adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_physical_device_drm VK_EXT_multi_draw VK_EXT_global_priority_query VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow VK_HUAWEI_subpass_shading VK_NV_ray_tracing_motion_blur VK_NV_external_memory_rdma VK_EXT_provoking_vertex VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state2 Queue family presentation support on Linux This version also fixes a long-standing issue with presentation support on Linux always getting reported as false. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/04/24/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.01-released/ Sat, 24 Apr 2021 16:00:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/04/24/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-3.01-released/ Release Version 3.01 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.175, adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_ycbcr_2plane_444_formats VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state VK_EXT_color_write_enable VK_KHR_synchronization2 VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory VK_KHR_workgroup_memory_explicit_layout VK_NV_inherited_viewport_scissor Queue family flags for Video encode and decode This version also adds support for the video decode and encode queue family flags that have been introduced with the provisional Vulkan Video acceleration extensions. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/02/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-now-available-on-ios/ Fri, 19 Feb 2021 07:40:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/02/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-now-available-on-ios/ New target platform - iOS Thanks to a contribution by the fine folks at LunarG, the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now also available on Apple’s iOS based devices. Adding the fifth supported platform, which means that the app is now available on almost every device supporting Vulkan. I have also unlocked the iOS for the database so you can now filter and search through Vulkan data for all iOS devices present in the database. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/01/10/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database-update-3.0/ Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2021/01/10/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-and-database-update-3.0/ Intro 2021 starts with a huge update for both the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer application and the accompanying Vulkan Hardware Database, bringing some long-awaited features along with many smaller changes, additions and improvements. Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.0 Update mechanism One of the most requested features was a proper update mechanism, that would allow users to update reports with stuff added in newer versions. This version finally adds such an update mechanism. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/12/06/vulkan-hardware-database-extension-feature-additions/ Sun, 06 Dec 2020 15:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/12/06/vulkan-hardware-database-extension-feature-additions/ New extension data features The Vulkan hardware database just got another big feature update, adding some long outstanding functionality mostly related to extension features and properties.The Vulkan hardware capability viewer got support for those some time ago, and the database already displays these for single reports. But up until now there were no listings on those extension related information. This meant it was not possible to filter devices based on that data. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/12/06/vulkan-hardware-database-extension-feature-additions/ Sun, 06 Dec 2020 10:30:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/12/06/vulkan-hardware-database-extension-feature-additions/ New extension data features The Vulkan hardware database just got another big feature update, adding some long outstanding functionality mostly related to extension features and properties.The Vulkan hardware capability viewer got support for those some time ago, and the database already displays these for single reports. But up until now there were no listings on those extension related information. This meant it was not possible to filter devices based on that data. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/11/27/vulkan-samples-and-hardware-capability-viewer-updated-to-final-ray-tracing-extensions/ Fri, 27 Nov 2020 20:15:46 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/11/27/vulkan-samples-and-hardware-capability-viewer-updated-to-final-ray-tracing-extensions/ Vulkan ray tracing extensions final specifications have been released The finalized specifications for the cross-vendor hardware accelerated ray tracing extensions have finally been released, after being available as a provisional extension for some time now. So Vulkan now has official cross-vendor, cross-os support for accessing hardware accelerated ray tracing features. A great overview can be found on the Khronos blog, along with a great article on how ray tracing works. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/10/11/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-mac-osx-support-device-simulation-json/ Sun, 11 Oct 2020 11:45:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/10/11/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-mac-osx-support-device-simulation-json/ New target platform - Mac OSX With the recent updates from the Vulkan® Portability™ initiative and the addition of the relevant extensions in release 2.21, Mac OSX has become an even more important target for Vulkan applications. So I decided to officially add support for Mac OSX to the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer. This only required a few changes to the application’s source code (mostly related to surface extensions) and a new target for the Travis CI setup to build the binaries. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/10/03/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.21-with-support-for-vulkan-portability-released/ Sat, 03 Oct 2020 10:20:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/10/03/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.21-with-support-for-vulkan-portability-released/ Release Version 2.21 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.154, adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_KHR_portability_subset VK_EXT_4444_formats Vulkan Portability Most notable is the addition of VK_KHR_portability_subset to support the Vulkan® Portability™ initiative (github). This extension allows non-conformant Vulkan implementations to be built on top of other graphics api like Metal or DirectX, and allows identification of features missing for a fully-conformant Vulkan implementation. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/08/02/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.2-released/ Sun, 02 Aug 2020 09:15:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/08/02/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.2-released/ Release Version 2.2 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.148, adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_fragment_density_map2 VK_EXT_shader_atomic_float VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state VK_EXT_private_data VK_EXT_image_robustness Wayland support Also new with this version is a dedicated build for Wayland. The Linux versions have always been built for X11, but thanks to external contributions, the application now also has a native Wayland version available at the download page. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/06/06/new-vulkan-gltf-examples/ Sat, 06 Jun 2020 15:21:13 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/06/06/new-vulkan-gltf-examples/ Moving to glTF When I started writing my first Vulkan samples glTF was still in it’s infancy, esp. in terms of tooling. So I went with more common formats and went with the Open Asset importer library (Assimp) for loading these. But things rapidly changed with glTF 2.0, which is now pretty much and industry standard and supported by many DCC tools. And since both Vulkan and glTF are both Khronos standards this is a perfect match. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/03/28/vulkan-debug-utilities-sample-and-tutorial/ Sat, 28 Mar 2020 14:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/03/28/vulkan-debug-utilities-sample-and-tutorial/ I have contributed a new sample to the official Khronos Vulkan Samples repository that shows usage of the VK_EXT_debug_utils for adding debugging information to your Vulkan application. This extension combines the old VK_EXT_debug_marker and VK_EXT_debug_report into a new extension that also implements some changes and additions based on developer feedback for the old extensions. For example it’s now possible to debug instance creation and destruction with this new extension. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/01/11/vulkan-hardware-database-feature-update/ Sat, 11 Jan 2020 08:00:00 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2020/01/11/vulkan-hardware-database-feature-update/ Intro The Vulkan hardware database just got one of it’s biggest updates, bringing with it some fundamental changes, lots of optimizations and some quality-of-life improvements. The main reason behind this update were requests from inside the Khronos group, asking for feature coverage based reporting. What does Feature coverage mean? Up until now if you were looking for a specific extension and the devices (or reports) that supported it, the database would only tell you that a device would support the extension, with the driver version being reported just being the latest known version. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/12/02/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.03-released/ Mon, 02 Dec 2019 09:30:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/12/02/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.03-released/ Version 2.03 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.1.129, adding support for new extensions introduced with this header: VK_KHR_performance_query VK_KHR_separate_depth_stencil_layouts VK_KHR_buffer_device_address Aside from new support for these new extensions, this release also includes some small bugfixes related to surface extensions and adds a mapping for VK_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU. This is of interest for those that are using software Vulkan implementations like Swiftshader or gfxportability. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/30/khronos-vulkan-unified-samples-repository-is-here/ Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:06:14 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/30/khronos-vulkan-unified-samples-repository-is-here/ It’s finally here. Khronos just made the Unified Vulkan Samples repository publicly available. For more details see the official press release. About The goal of this project is a central source for high-quality Vulkan samples, with contributions both from Khronos members as well as external contributors like me. It also comes with an extensive framework that takes care of platform-related stuff like window and input handling and offers functionality for loading assets like glTF models, shaders, etc. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.02-released/ Tue, 08 Oct 2019 17:30:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/08/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.02-released/ Version 2.02 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.1.124, adding support for all new extensions introduced with this header: VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore VK_KHR_shader_clock The reasons behind this new release just 3 days after the last one is the new new VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore extension, one that people have been anticipating for long. And as there are already drivers supporting this out in the wild, e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.01-released/ Sat, 05 Oct 2019 09:25:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.01-released/ Version 2.01 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.1.123, adding support for all new extensions introduced with this header: VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_extended_types The main reason for this update is another one though, as it also fixes a bug for extension properties with array values not being properly saved to json and thus not being stored in the database. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.01-released/ Sat, 05 Oct 2019 09:25:00 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/10/05/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.01-released/ Version 2.01 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.1.123, adding support for all new extensions introduced with this header: VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_extended_types The main reason for this update is another one though, as it also fixes a bug for extension properties with array values not being properly saved to json and thus not being stored in the database. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/08/30/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.00-released/ Fri, 30 Aug 2019 17:00:50 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/08/30/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-2.00-released/ Version 2.00 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). The major version bump is caused by a big change in how the code for reading device extension properties and features is generated. You can find a detailled rundown on how this works below. You can download the new version from vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. Appimage for Linux Deploying Qt applications on Linux is not as easy as on Windows, esp. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/06/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.93-released/ Fri, 07 Jun 2019 21:16:53 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/06/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.93-released/ Version 1.93 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds support for reading additional features and properties for the following extensions: VK_EXT_fragment_shader_interlock VK_NV_shader_sm_builtins VK_KHR_depth_stencil_resolve properties VK_EXT_buffer_device_address features VK_EXT_pci_bus_info features In addition there were also a few changes to the Android version of the app: The app is now using the arm64-v8a architecture, as this is a requirement for distributing Android apps in Google’s playstore beginngin this August. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/27/vulkan-examples-for-ray-traced-shadows-and-reflections-using-vk_nv_ray_tracing/ Sat, 27 Apr 2019 20:40:09 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/27/vulkan-examples-for-ray-traced-shadows-and-reflections-using-vk_nv_ray_tracing/ After adding a basic Nvidia RTX ray tracing example last week, I spent some more time with Vulkan and the VK_NV_ray_tracing extension. The result are two new, more advanced examples that I just uploaded to my Vulkan C++ example repository. As with the basic example I tried to keep them as straight forward as possible with all the relevant code parts put into one source file, so that following and building upon is as easy as possible. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/21/new-vulkan-example-on-raytracing-using-vk_nv_ray_tracing/ Sun, 21 Apr 2019 16:19:22 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/21/new-vulkan-example-on-raytracing-using-vk_nv_ray_tracing/ With all the new Turing extensions that NVIDIA has released alongside it’s new GPU architecture, I decided to replace my GTX 980 with a RTX 2060, mainly for the purpose of doing RTX ray-tracing related Vulkan stuff and also checking out things like mesh and task shaders. Getting my first RTX accelerated ray tracing example up and running was pretty easy, thanks to tutorials like the one from NVIDIA and iOrange. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/20/turing-shader-extensions-and-visual-studio-2019-support-for-spir-v-extension/ Sat, 20 Apr 2019 09:55:22 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/20/turing-shader-extensions-and-visual-studio-2019-support-for-spir-v-extension/ I have released an updated version of the SPIR-V Extension to the Visual Studio Marketplate. If you already have this installed in Visual Studio, you can update it from the extension window. Version 0.6 adds support for Visual Studio 19 and nvidia’s new turing shader extension, allowing you to generate SPIR-V from the IDE for ray tracing (generation, hit, miss, etc.), mesh and task shaders. Supported shader extensions: .vert (Vertex shader) . https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/13/device-based-views-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ Sat, 13 Apr 2019 18:25:42 +0200 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/04/13/device-based-views-for-the-vulkan-hardware-database/ I have just pushed the first big fundamental update to the Vulkan hardware database since it went live in february 2016. With more than 5,000 reports uploaded it already contains lots of valuable data, but I felt that the visualization was lacking. When creating the Vulkan hardware database, I took the same approach as with the OpenGL and OpenGL ES database, making the web front-end more or less as pretty view of the database setup. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/29/flipping-the-vulkan-viewport/ Fri, 29 Mar 2019 20:02:24 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/29/flipping-the-vulkan-viewport/ Introduction This short tutorial deals with Vulkan’s viewport setup, which differs from the one in OpenGL and other APIs. I’ll try to explain what it takes to get your (OpenGL) scene rendered properly, and how e.g. VK_KHR_MAINTENANCE1 can help you deal with differences across the APIs, something that’s esp. helpful if you try to add Vulkan as a backend to you renderer without wanting to alter your actual scene data. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/23/adding-support-for-gltf-meshes-without-indices/ Sat, 23 Mar 2019 11:26:43 +0100 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/23/adding-support-for-gltf-meshes-without-indices/ I have pushed an update to my Vulkan glTF PBR 2.0 application that adds support for rendering primitives without indices. Up until now, all primitives of a glTFs scene had to come with indices to be rendered by the application, which is usually the case for more complex scenes. After getting a request for this, and checking with the glTF 2.0 spec, primitives without indices are actually a valid glTF 2. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/08/getting-a-vulkan-application-up-and-running-on-a-low-spec-device-with-buggy-drivers/ Fri, 08 Mar 2019 15:22:53 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2019/03/08/getting-a-vulkan-application-up-and-running-on-a-low-spec-device-with-buggy-drivers/ Introduction Ever since starting to work on my C++ Vulkan glTF PBR application, I was bugged by the fact that it just wouldn’t work on my everyday phone, just crashing at a certain point with an error code that actually should never be thrown by that certain function. After a few unsuccessful attempts at finding the cause for this, I finally found the root of the problem and was actually able to get this up and running. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/12/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.92-released/ Fri, 07 Dec 2018 21:28:52 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/12/07/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.92-released/ Version 1.92 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds support for reading additional features and properties for the following extensions: VK_KHR_shader_float16_int8 VK_KHR_shader_float_controls VK_EXT_fragment_density_map You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/11/17/updates-to-the-vulkan-hardware-database-and-the-hardware-capability-viewer/ Sat, 17 Nov 2018 08:44:39 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/11/17/updates-to-the-vulkan-hardware-database-and-the-hardware-capability-viewer/ I have released a small update of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer to 1.91 for Windows and Linux. It adds support for reading the features of the recently added VK_EXT_transform_feedback extension and replaces the experimental VK_NVX_raytracing extension with VK_NV_ray_tracing. You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. New features for the online Hardware Database The online hardware database at https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org also got a few new features and now also has dedicated listings and pages for properties and features that are specific to extension. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/10/06/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.9-released/ Sat, 06 Oct 2018 15:44:15 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/10/06/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.9-released/ Version 1.9 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds support for reading additional features and properties for the following extensions: VK_KHR_driver_properties VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64 VK_NVX_raytracing VK_NV_mesh_shader VK_NV_shading_rate_image VK_NV_compute_shader_derivatives VK_AMD_shader_core_properties You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/09/15/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.8-released/ Sat, 15 Sep 2018 09:04:44 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/09/15/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.8-released/ Version 1.8 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). As with 1.8 this version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds support for new extensions: VK_EXT_inline_uniform_block VK_KHR_vulkan_memory_model VK_EXT_vertex_attribute_divisor The UI has also been slightly updated. Instead of listing extension features and properties on a separate tab, these are now included in the extensions tab: You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/09/05/vulkan-conditional-rendering/ Wed, 05 Sep 2018 18:59:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/09/05/vulkan-conditional-rendering/ Introduction Note: Source code that demonstrates this feature can be found in this new example at my open source C++ Vulkan examples repository. With the new VK_EXT_conditional_rendering extension, Vulkan gains the possibility to execute certain rendering and dispatch commands conditionally, based on values stored in a dedicated buffer. So instead of having to rebuild command buffers if the visibility of objects change, it’s now to possible to just change a single buffer value to control if the rendering commands for that object are executed without the need to touch any command buffers. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/08/15/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.7-released/ Wed, 15 Aug 2018 18:23:06 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/08/15/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.7-released/ Version 1.7 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). As with 1.7 this version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds support for new extensions: VK_EXT_conditional_rendering VK_KHR_8bit_storage You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/07/19/vulkan-input-attachments-and-sub-passes/ Thu, 19 Jul 2018 17:47:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/07/19/vulkan-input-attachments-and-sub-passes/ Introduction I have added a new example to my open source C++ Vulkan examples that demonstrates the use of input attachments and subpasses within a single render pass. Input attachments are image views that can be used for pixel local load operations inside a fragment shader. This basically means that framebuffer attachments written in one subpass can be read from at the exact same pixel (that they have been written) in subsequent subpasses. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/06/08/multiview-rendering-in-vulkan-using-vk_khr_multiview/ Fri, 08 Jun 2018 17:54:50 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/06/08/multiview-rendering-in-vulkan-using-vk_khr_multiview/ I have added a new example to my open source C++ Vulkan examples that demonstrates the use of multiview rendering. Multiview enables rendering to multiple views simultaneously instead of having to use multiple passes. Esp. with stereoscopic rendering (e.g. for VR related applications) there’s usually little change between two views, like different matrices, and having to do multiple passes for such small differences is inefficient. With multiview an implementation can now render different views simultaneously in a single pass and the Vulkan extension even adds hints for the implementation to even further improve performance (see correlation mask down below). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/04/26/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.6-released/ Thu, 26 Apr 2018 04:44:41 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/04/26/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.6-released/ Version 1.7 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). As with 1.6 this version fully supports Vulkan 1.1 and adds a few new features: Support for the new VK_KHR_push_descriptor extension Support for YCBCR formats You can download the new version from https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/03/08/vulkan-1.1-is-here/ Thu, 08 Mar 2018 12:44:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/03/08/vulkan-1.1-is-here/ A bit later than initially planned Vulkan 1.1 was released to the public yesterday, as usual with day-one driver support by most of the IHVs. Vulkan 1.1 promoted several extension to the core and also adds interesting new functionality like vendor independent subgroup operations. You can get all the details at the Khronos Vulkan landing page. Note that all my open source examples, demos and applications will work fine with Vulkan 1. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/03/04/conservative-rasterization-in-vulkan-using-vk_ext_conservative_rasterization/ Sun, 04 Mar 2018 08:20:19 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/03/04/conservative-rasterization-in-vulkan-using-vk_ext_conservative_rasterization/ I have added a new example to my open source C++ Vulkan examples that demonstrates the basic use of conservative rasterization using the VK_EXT_conservative_rasterization extension. This has been missing from Vulkan some time now (while other APIs already offer this feature) but has recently been added and is already support by at least NVIDIA. Conservative rasterization changes the way fragments are generated, and enabling over estimation generates fragments for every pixel touched instead of only pixels that are fully covered. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/02/26/how-to-video-debugging-a-non-visible-model-in-vulkan-using-renderdoc/ Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:04:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/02/26/how-to-video-debugging-a-non-visible-model-in-vulkan-using-renderdoc/ One of the most common Vulkan related that I’m seeing a lot is about rendering stuff that somehow ends up being not visible on the screen, even though technically everything looks okay (no validation layer errors, correct buffer uploads, etc.). Luckily there are debugging tools tools like RenderDoc that can help locating and fixing such problems. But not everyone knows about such tools or how to use them for debugging these kind of problems. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/02/11/vulkan-gltf-2.0-c-phyiscal-based-rendering/ Sun, 11 Feb 2018 14:08:25 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2018/02/11/vulkan-gltf-2.0-c-phyiscal-based-rendering/ I have released the first working version of a separate (from the examples) Vulkan physical based rendering example that uses the glTF 2.0 model file format. The repository can be found at https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan-glTF-PBR. glTF is a royalty free format specification by the Khronos Group and is a new format for 3D models gaining lots of traction. With version 2.0 it also added several PBR extensions and definitions. I decided to make this a stand-alone project instead of “just” another example in my Vulkan C++ example repository to make it easier getting into the code. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/12/30/new-vulkan-example-cascaded-shadow-mapping/ Sat, 30 Dec 2017 19:22:17 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/12/30/new-vulkan-example-cascaded-shadow-mapping/ In what is most probably my last Vulkan example for 2017 I have added a cascaded shadow mapping example to my open source Vulkan C++ example repository: One big problem of traditional shadow mapping, esp. with large outdoor scenes is the resolution you get as one single shadow map has to cover the whole camera spectrum. With cascaded shadow maps the frustum is split up into multiple frustums (along scene depth) with each getting it’s own, full-resolution, depth map. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/10/30/combined-vulkan-and-opengl-es-listing-for-android/ Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:26:13 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/10/30/combined-vulkan-and-opengl-es-listing-for-android/ Upon popular request I finally got around combining android device data from my Vulkan and OpenGL ES hardware databases into a convenient table. This should be handy if you plan on supporting both apis on Vulkan or if you just need to check for general device support. The new page can be reached via https://android.gpuinfo.org/ It combines all android device reports from the Vulkan database with all reports from the OpenGL ES database and also uses google’s official device list for translating device IDs (stored with Vulkan and OpenGL ES reports) into actual retail names. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/09/16/headless-vulkan-examples/ Sat, 16 Sep 2017 13:26:10 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/09/16/headless-vulkan-examples/ I have just added two minimal, mostly self-contained cross-platform headless Vulkan examples to my open source C++ Vulkan repository. Unlike the other examples in my repository these two don’t require a surface (created from a window) and as such can be run on systems with no window compositor. The intention behind the two examples is to show how Vulkan can be used for running graphics and compute tasks without the need for an actual user interface to be present i. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/08/19/the-vulkan-device-simulation-layer/ Sat, 19 Aug 2017 17:11:31 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/08/19/the-vulkan-device-simulation-layer/ LunarG recently made the new Vulkan Device Simulation layer public. This is a Vulkan instance level layer that injects physical device properties, limits and features based on a json input file, simulating different features than the actual Vulkan device you are running on. The idea behind this is to help developers check if their Vulkan applications can handle devices with missing features and tighter limits without having to actually run on a such a device. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/07/01/ios-and-macos-support-added-to-the-vulkan-examples/ Sat, 01 Jul 2017 10:22:24 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/07/01/ios-and-macos-support-added-to-the-vulkan-examples/ Thanks to a contribution from Bill Hollings, one of the developers from MoltenVK , my open source C++ Vulkan examples now also support Apple’s iOS and macOS platforms. MoltenVK is a commercial Vulkan implementation that runs on top of Apple’s Metal api with a free trial available. Details on how to build and run the examples for those platforms can be found in this readme. Note that not all examples will work on iOS or macOS due to the differences in supported features like geometry or tessellation shaders not being available in Metal. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/05/28/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.4-released/ Sun, 28 May 2017 10:47:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/05/28/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.4-released/ A new version of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). This is the biggest update since I released this tool, including lots of new features that also brought along a few changes to the online database. I also decided to drop the “beta” tag now that more than 1,300 reports have been uploaded, making this the first non-beta release of the Vulkan Hardware Capability viewer. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/04/22/physically-based-rendering-and-moving-hdr-assets-out-of-the-repository/ Sat, 22 Apr 2017 13:42:37 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/04/22/physically-based-rendering-and-moving-hdr-assets-out-of-the-repository/ The last days (and weeks) I’ve been working on a Vulkan example implementing physically based rendering with image based lighting (you can find a nice article with lots of details over at Trent Reed’s blog) and just pushed it to my public github repository. While working on this demo I realized that putting all the binary assets (models and esp. textures) in the repository might not have been a great idea. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/03/30/visual-studio-2017-support-for-spir-v-extension/ Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:11:45 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/03/30/visual-studio-2017-support-for-spir-v-extension/ I have released an updated version of the SPIR-V Extension for Visual Studio with support for VS 2017, VS 2015 is also still supported. The extension adds context menu entries to glsl shader files for compiling them to SPIR-V (Vulkan and OpenGL). You can find details about it over here. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/03/25/updated-vulkan-example-binaries/ Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:52:59 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2017/03/25/updated-vulkan-example-binaries/ Took a bit longer than expected, but I finally got around releasing updated binaries for my open source C++ Vulkan examples. Compared to the last updated (in 2016) there are numerous changes and lots of new examples added. One major addition is touch support on Android. So if you just want to run Vulkan examples (to e.g. test your device) you can grab these pre-built binaries instead of compiling from vulkan. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/12/28/updated-android-vkquake-binaries/ Wed, 28 Dec 2016 19:04:51 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/12/28/updated-android-vkquake-binaries/ For those that want to test out my Android port of of Axel Gneiting’s vkQuake, I have released updates binaries at http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/vkquake.php Please note that the .apk does not contain any game files, so you need to get the .pak files from the shareware or registered version in order to play this. See the page above for details on this. This release is based on vkQuake’s latest version and is pretty much feature complete. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/11/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.2-released/ Sat, 19 Nov 2016 16:22:05 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/11/19/vulkan-hardware-capability-viewer-1.2-released/ I have released an update to the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer. The new version (1.2) adds support for os-specific surface capabilities that are added to the reports and online database. This adds a new category to the tool and reports at the online database (for example this one) containing: Surface properties (extents, usage flags, transforms, etc.) Surface Formats (incl. color spaces) Present modes You can download the new version from https://vulkan. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/09/06/updated-vulkan-example-binaries-and-vkquake-for-android/ Tue, 06 Sep 2016 18:58:32 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/09/06/updated-vulkan-example-binaries-and-vkquake-for-android/ Finally found some time to update the binaries for my open source ++ Vulkan examples. Since the last binaries have been a few months old these contain lots of changes and new examples. So if you just want to run Vulkan examples (to e.g. test your device) you can grab these pre-built binaries instead of compiling from vulkan.gpuinfo.org : Windows Note : The windows binaries require the media pack (see below) to be present for loading shaders, meshes and textures. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/30/spir-v-extension-for-visual-studio/ Tue, 30 Aug 2016 17:43:19 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/30/spir-v-extension-for-visual-studio/ Source (C#) and download (VSIX for VS2015) can be found at https://github.com/SaschaWillems/SPIRV-VSExtension With the launch of Vulkan, SPIR-V has been introduced as it’s binary shader format, replacing text based shader formats in favor of an intermediate representation. To make life a bit easier I have just released a Visual Studio (2015) extension that adds SPIR-V related commands to the context menu of shader files (and folders containing shader files): https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/13/vulkan-tutorial-on-rendering-a-fullscreen-quad-without-buffers/ Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:30:35 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/13/vulkan-tutorial-on-rendering-a-fullscreen-quad-without-buffers/ Rendering a fullscreen quad* the easy way (*) Which is actually just a huge triangle Having to render a fullscreen quad (or something that fills the whole screen) is a common task in 3D real time graphics, as many effects rely on rendering a texture over the whole screen with proper uv coordinates in the [0..1] range. This applies to post processing (glow, blur, ssao), deferred shading or procedurally generated output. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/12/porting-vulkanquake-to-android/ Fri, 12 Aug 2016 11:27:44 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/12/porting-vulkanquake-to-android/ Axel Gneiting from iD software recently ported Quake to Vulkan (based on the QuakeSpasm OpenGL port) and released the sources at github with support for windows and Linux. With Vulkan also being available on Android, I decided to use the knowledge gained while porting my Vulkan examples and Demos over to Android and add it to his Vulkan Quake port. I have tested with the registered and full .pak files of the original Quake and both are fully playable. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/06/new-vulkan-example-indirect-drawing/ Sat, 06 Aug 2016 11:27:23 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/06/new-vulkan-example-indirect-drawing/ I have added another example to my open source C++ Vulkan examples. The new one is about indirect drawing (including multi draw if supported). Contrary to their non-direct counterparts, the indirect drawing commands in Vulkan take their draw calls from a buffer that is ideally stored in device local memory. So instead of running single draw commands that get their index base, index count and instancing numbers passed by the host upon getting called, the indirect commands are backed by a buffer that stores an arbitrary number of draw commands. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/07/17/new-vulkan-example-deferred-shading-and-shadows/ Sun, 17 Jul 2016 17:11:16 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/07/17/new-vulkan-example-deferred-shading-and-shadows/ Based on the recently updated deferred shading example, I have added a new example to my open source C++ Vulkan samples. This example adds dynamic shadows from multiple light sources, showcasing a few technologies that can be used to make rendering of multiple shadows more efficient. To achieve this, the example uses a layered depth attachment with one layer per light source that is sampled in the final scene composition. Traditionally one would do multiple passes to render the depth maps for the scene’s light source, and to avoid this the example also uses shader instancing by doing multiple invocations in the geometry shader. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/07/03/updated-vulkan-deferred-shading-example-video/ Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:46:10 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/07/03/updated-vulkan-deferred-shading-example-video/ Over the past few weeks and months I’ve been constantly working on my Vulkan examples, enhancing existing demos, adding new ones, fixing bugs reported and merging pull requests (thx to anyone that has contributed!). I even found some time to work on a Vulkn deferred shading playground using Crytek’s famous Sponza model. You can find the repository for it here. This Sunday I decided to visually upgrade the deferred shading example included in my samples repository. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/05/28/tutorial-on-using-vulkans-vk_ext_debug_marker-with-renderdoc/ Sat, 28 May 2016 17:16:56 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/05/28/tutorial-on-using-vulkans-vk_ext_debug_marker-with-renderdoc/ Warning VK_EXT_debug_marker is deprecated and has been replaced by VK_EXT_debug_utils. Please refer to this tutorial and sample instead. Intro The Vulkan validation layers included with the LunarG SDK are a must for debugging applications at run-time, and every Vulkan developer should get used to them as soon as possible. They are crucial for getting applications validated against the specification and ensure portability across different implementations. But what they can’t catch are logical errors, so even with all validation layers enabled and all errors eliminated you still may not see what you where expecting and need an additional layer of debugging your rendering step-by-step. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/04/11/khronos-chapter-munich-vulkan-slides/ Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:39:46 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/04/11/khronos-chapter-munich-vulkan-slides/ I’ve been speaking about my Vulkan launch day contributions and my experiences moving from OpenGL to Vulkan at the Khronos Munich Chapter Grand Opening last friday at the AMD offices. This was a great event, and finally getting to know some of the people in real was an awesome personal experience. So at this point I’d like to thank all the people that helped make this event happen and all these that attended, had a real blast talking and discussing about Vulkan! https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/03/28/vulkan-examples-update/ Mon, 28 Mar 2016 10:43:12 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/03/28/vulkan-examples-update/ The last few weeks since the Vulkan launch (one month ago) have been pretty busy. I’ve been adding new examples to to my github repository (almost at 30), fixed some bugs (thanks to everyone that has contributed!) and finally added Android support to all examples (removing the few separate Vulkan Android samples). I also provide pre-built binaries for Windows, Linux and Android (only ARM right now) if you just want to try out the examples at vulkan. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/02/18/vulkan-is-here/ Thu, 18 Feb 2016 11:37:24 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/02/18/vulkan-is-here/ Khronos finally launched Vulkan 1.0! After 18 months of hard works and a huge industry-wide collaboration, this is a huge success. And this is not only an API-launch, but a hard launch with drivers for Vulkan from NVidia, AMD, Intel, etc. on mulitple platforms. My launch contributions Some time ago I was invited to be a part of the Vulkan Advisory Panel board. So I actually got a head-start and also released some Vulkan related stuff to the public on launch day. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/12/19/vulkan-specification-complete-release-imminent/ Sat, 19 Dec 2015 08:50:20 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/12/19/vulkan-specification-complete-release-imminent/ Great news! The Khronos Vulkan Working Group just announced that the specification is complete (and has entered the legal review process) and the release is imminent. Though the initial time frame of 2015 was missed (by a bit), this should mean that Vulkan will be ready for launch in early 2016. This will include SDKs for all supported platforms, production ready drivers from several IHV, resources, tools, demos, examples and much more. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/12/14/vulkan-related-works/ Mon, 14 Dec 2015 21:55:21 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/12/14/vulkan-related-works/ In case you don’t follow me on twitter or aren’t watching my github repositories, I’ve been working on Vulkan related stuff over the last few months. And with Vulkan’s release approaching it’s time for a short summary on what I plan on release upon or shortly after launch of the new graphics and compute API. Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer As with OpenGL and OpenGL ES I’ll also do a Vulkan Hardware Capability viewer (github). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/08/13/vulkan-from-the-pov-of-a-hobby-3d-developer/ Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:17:25 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2015/08/13/vulkan-from-the-pov-of-a-hobby-3d-developer/ As there have been lots of new information on Vulkan, Khronos’ new graphics and compute API I decided to do a little write up of the new API from a hobby 3D developer’s point of view. Although I’ve been writing games, demos and applications with OpenGL for roughly 15 years now I still consider myself a hobby developer in terms of 3D graphics. My job is not depending on pushing pixels, maxing out draw calls or swizzling shader commands, and most of my work on 3D (primarily OpenGL) is done during my spare time (mostly late at night).