Vulkan vs DirectX12

l2avism

It seems like with Mantle shelved we are left with Vulkan and DirectX12 fighting to the death to be your 3d graphics API of choice.
Both are very similar in how they work. Both kind of do the same thing.
Vulkan has a cooler logo though and will work on linux.





Oh snap, I forgot to include Metal for OSX


Which do you hope will win out? Which will you use?

Quizzical

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

rojoArcueid

Voted Vulkan for the same reason Quizzical gave. I would like a good DX alternative for linux so i dont have to use Windows anymore.

zaberfangx

Vulkan as it's going to more then just PC only, can open the market for more games or programs that can use more of the new api. But as for DX 12 locked to windows and only windows and there microsoft only items.

But comes down to, I like Vulkan to do good still to soon to say until it's out, but is bad for only windows OS to be out there only, but sooner or later microsoft will cross a line and people have to stay on windows if there no other OS out there to move over.

Quizzical

Torval said:

I have pretty big doubts about Vulkan going anywhere. The problem with cross platform isn't only the API, but the platform itself and what it supports. I don't think this is a big deal for Mac because their ecosystem is consistent. I think this will always be a dealbreaker for Linux because it's so incredibly fragmented and inconsistent.

So the developer wouldn't only need to build and compile for 3 different platforms, but within Linux itself they would need to come up with a strategy that works across multiple packaging systems. They would need to account for multiple sound architectures and desktop environments.

Maybe Vulkan can overcome that, but I'm skeptical.

Just because a game uses Vulkan doesn't mean it has to support every Linux distribution there is.  You could make a game with Vulkan and only support Windows.  Or only support Windows and Mac.  Or only support Windows, Mac, and one or two Linux distributions.

Asm0deus

I'm tired of dx and the MS stranglehold so it would be nice for vulkan to take off.

zaberfangx

DMKano said:

Dx12 - no major game studio is even looking at Vulcan at this point in any serious capacity. 

There many that are supporting for Vulcan even from Blizzard to EA there looking at Vulcan for what ever reason who knows. But you can be right at this point of time not even out yet.

Quizzical

DMKano said:

Dx12 - no major game studio is even looking at Vulcan at this point in any serious capacity. 

How do you know?  Unless you mean that studios who will use it in the future can't just yet because the specification isn't finalized and drivers to support it aren't out yet.  But that wouldn't be much of a reason why it won't catch on eventually.

I'd be extremely shocked if Valve doesn't take an awfully close look at Vulkan.  The prospects for Steam OS are much brighter if Vulkan catches on than if it gets ignored.

Hrimnir

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

jesteralways

Linux? pfftt...i remember when i bought brand new nvidia 8500GT, linux was not even starting after i added graphics card. And for months linux did not have any official update to detect newer graphics card, all i had were workarounds posted on some linux forums by a user. Windows FTW!!!

Quizzical

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

The poll question asked which do you hope will win out, not which do you expect will win out.

As for "which will you use", I expect that a lot of gamers will use both in at least one game.

Cleffy

I hope the fastest, most powerful, and easiest to deliver a good player experience wins. Right now the development environment used in conjunction with DirectX 12 is very mature and stable. Its easier to develop a windows based game using DirectX12 and distribute it.
The thing I would worry about with Vulkan is hardware support. As we know AMD is backing the project, and it includes a continuation of mantle. It also scales to more cores better. This is bad news for nVidia and Intel. The API no longer handicaps AMD based hardware which will show a sizable performance advantage.

As for Linux fragmentation issues, I don't think that will be a problem. Most linux users tend to be technically savvy. I would also imagine that the individual distros would put up requirements and if they support certain features. You obviously are not going to be paying games off a dedicated linux server.

Athisar

Since mobile platforms will move from OpenGL to Vulkan, and everything other than Windows will use Vulkan, it's unlikely DirectX has a long term future. In the near future, PC game developers are used to using DX and so it of course won't be going anywhere.

Athisar

Quizzical said:

DMKano said:

Dx12 - no major game studio is even looking at Vulcan at this point in any serious capacity. 

How do you know?  Unless you mean that studios who will use it in the future can't just yet because the specification isn't finalized and drivers to support it aren't out yet.  But that wouldn't be much of a reason why it won't catch on eventually.

I'd be extremely shocked if Valve doesn't take an awfully close look at Vulkan.  The prospects for Steam OS are much brighter if Vulkan catches on than if it gets ignored.

Valve has already announced that their engine supports Vulkan. And Google has announced that Android will fully support Vulkan. Of course none of these people matter -- apparently.

l2avism

Torval said:

Athisar said:

Since mobile platforms will move from OpenGL to Vulkan, and everything other than Windows will use Vulkan, it's unlikely DirectX has a long term future. In the near future, PC game developers are used to using DX and so it of course won't be going anywhere.

You mean since Android is moving from OpenGL to Vulkan. Windows obviously isn't and apparently Apple isn't either: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/207767-apple-brings-its-metal-api-to-os-x-10-11-kicks-vulkan-to-the-curb.

You can run Vulkan on windows dude. You download new drivers and voila, running vulkan.

Torval said:

Quizzical said:

Torval said:

I have pretty big doubts about Vulkan going anywhere. The problem with cross platform isn't only the API, but the platform itself and what it supports. I don't think this is a big deal for Mac because their ecosystem is consistent. I think this will always be a dealbreaker for Linux because it's so incredibly fragmented and inconsistent.

So the developer wouldn't only need to build and compile for 3 different platforms, but within Linux itself they would need to come up with a strategy that works across multiple packaging systems. They would need to account for multiple sound architectures and desktop environments.

Maybe Vulkan can overcome that, but I'm skeptical.

Just because a game uses Vulkan doesn't mean it has to support every Linux distribution there is.  You could make a game with Vulkan and only support Windows.  Or only support Windows and Mac.  Or only support Windows, Mac, and one or two Linux distributions.

You are right it doesn't have to imply multi-platform development, but since you mentioned not being tied to a platform I felt that the advantage was implied.

If someone is just developing for Windows why wouldn't they use a mature stable tool chain like Direct X especially now that Visual Studio development tools have a cheaper lower barrier to entry and use than ever before? What could possibly attract a studio to ditch their entire graphics and sound API for an immature one that provides little to no benefit for Nvidia and Intel?

It's not that I don't appreciate the idea behind Vulkan but I don't see the motivation to adopt it. I'm not seeing the benefits over Direct X. My reasoning is that unless the advantage is ridiculously clear I don't see adoption going over.

Since when could you not develop for vulkan in Visual Studio? (hint, you can)
Vulkan is not a sound API (neither is directX anymore). They typically use something like FMOD for sound.

The obvious advantage is that you can write your Vulkan renderer in C++ on windows in Visual Studio and compile it and run it on windows, then simply copy the source code over to linux and compile it in codeblocks and run it on linux, then copy it over to your mac and compile it in Xcode and run it on mac. You wouldn't have to change your source code because unlike OpenGL, Vulkan comes with a cross platform window shim (in openGL you used win32+wgl in windows to make the fullscreen window and capture input, in linux it was x11.org+xgl, in mac you have to write some objective c because the mac api's are all objective C!!! - or just use SDL on all 3 ).

TLDR... programmer here to keep you all in check :pleased: 

l2avism

DMKano said:

Dx12 - no major game studio is even looking at Vulcan at this point in any serious capacity. 

Valve has a vulkan renderer in their source 2 engine, but not a directX12 renderer.
Also, unreal engine has Vulkan support under development.

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Actually, every DirectX feature starts it life out as an OpenGL vendor extension.
For example, OpenGL4.4 has extensions that make it behave in a way that achieves the performance of vulkan/DX12. Why? Because Nvidia and AMD can make an extension in about a week where it normally takes 1-2 years for a new version of DX to come out.

Athisar

l2avism said:

DMKano said:

Dx12 - no major game studio is even looking at Vulcan at this point in any serious capacity. 

Valve has a vulkan renderer in their source 2 engine, but not a directX12 renderer.
Also, unreal engine has Vulkan support under development.

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Actually, every DirectX feature starts it life out as an OpenGL vendor extension.
For example, OpenGL4.4 has extensions that make it behave in a way that achieves the performance of vulkan/DX12. Why? Because Nvidia and AMD can make an extension in about a week where it normally takes 1-2 years for a new version of DX to come out.

There's also no doubt that all the major engines will support Vulkan, as will nvidia, AMD and Intel in drivers, on both Windows and Linux platforms (I'm not sure where this idea comes from that Windows can't use Vulkan). Obviously Valve is hoping that SteamOS and its platform will dominate in the longterm, and if it does, there's no debate about which ends up most used.

laserit

I hope to use both and I hope that neither wins out.

Healthy competition is always a good thing.

Hrimnir

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

The poll question asked which do you hope will win out, not which do you expect will win out.

As for "which will you use", I expect that a lot of gamers will use both in at least one game.

You're right, i see it now down at the very bottom.

To answer the poll then, i don't really hope either will win out.  If Vulkan wins out over DX12 it puts us in a similar position as we are now.  What i HOPE would happen is that its more like the early days where there were multiple APIs (Glide, D3D, OpenGL, etc)

Nitth

Going back to the original "api wars" opengl looked like the superior choice in terms of performance and cross platform development but somehow Microsoft won out.

Its probably going to happen again.
Microsoft partners (aka game studios) are going to run dx12 because its in the best interest of industry relations.

Quizzical

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

The poll question asked which do you hope will win out, not which do you expect will win out.

As for "which will you use", I expect that a lot of gamers will use both in at least one game.

You're right, i see it now down at the very bottom.

To answer the poll then, i don't really hope either will win out.  If Vulkan wins out over DX12 it puts us in a similar position as we are now.  What i HOPE would happen is that its more like the early days where there were multiple APIs (Glide, D3D, OpenGL, etc)

I'd rather see proprietary APIs go away and just have an industry standard API that runs well on everything.  I hate seeing games that have major features that only run on Nvidia but not AMD or vice versa.  I'd much rather it be, pick the OS you want, pick the hardware you want, play whatever games you want, and it all just works.

I am not trying to kill off Windows.  Vulkan runs on Windows, too, just like OpenGL does.  I'd be much less keen on both of them if they didn't run on Windows.

Ikonis

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

The poll question asked which do you hope will win out, not which do you expect will win out.

As for "which will you use", I expect that a lot of gamers will use both in at least one game.

You're right, i see it now down at the very bottom.

To answer the poll then, i don't really hope either will win out.  If Vulkan wins out over DX12 it puts us in a similar position as we are now.  What i HOPE would happen is that its more like the early days where there were multiple APIs (Glide, D3D, OpenGL, etc)

I'd rather see proprietary APIs go away and just have an industry standard API that runs well on everything.  I hate seeing games that have major features that only run on Nvidia but not AMD or vice versa.  I'd much rather it be, pick the OS you want, pick the hardware you want, play whatever games you want, and it all just works.

I am not trying to kill off Windows.  Vulkan runs on Windows, too, just like OpenGL does.  I'd be much less keen on both of them if they didn't run on Windows.

If Valve would have gone the route of making a cross platform api on par with DX instead of the stupid SteamOS no one wanted, I bet it would become very popular quickly.

Quizzical

Nitth said:

Going back to the original "api wars" opengl looked like the superior choice in terms of performance and cross platform development but somehow Microsoft won out.

Its probably going to happen again.
Microsoft partners (aka game studios) are going to run dx12 because its in the best interest of industry relations.

How many years did DirectX get programmable shaders before OpenGL did, again?  How about geometry shaders?  DirectX won because, for about a decade, if you wanted to use cutting edge features, you could do it with DirectX immediately, or wait a few years to eventually get access to do the same with OpenGL.  Today, that era is pretty much over, with Vulkan at worst months behind and about to catch up very shortly.

Now, OpenGL did get a lot of features added via extensions before they were added to the core API.  But that's just it:  I don't want to use extensions if I don't absolutely have to.  I don't want to write separate code paths for every combination of which extensions are supported and which aren't.  I want to write code once and it runs on everything.

I'm okay with extensions that are pretty much universally supported, but can't be added to the core API for political reasons (anisotropic filtering is like that in OpenGL).  But I don't want to use a vendor-specific extension that only runs on one vendor.  I don't want to use an Nvidia extension for Nvidia GPUs and an entirely different code path for an AMD extension for AMD GPUs.  I want to write my code once and be done with it.

Athisar

Torval said:

The problem is that open APIs and standards are somewhat of a lie. There are always corporations pushing an agenda behind them, always. This has happened with web standards, openGL (which has been a major factor for it historically lagging behind), Android, and most any other technology.

Companies use this "open platform" as a means to weaken their competition and gain an advantage and foothold to displace them. It's rarely done in the best interest of the user or consumer and almost always in the best interest in the revenue of the corporation(s) pushing the agenda. I just don't believe this will be any better for the consumer than what we have and could be like how the internet and browsers are now, near complete rubbish.

This is a pretty blanket statement. Can you give specific examples to back this up?

OpenGL was 'behind' because Microsoft had a complete monopoly in PC gaming in the 90s and chose to push its own proprietary platform. To say that open standards have agendas behind them, when proprietary APIs are purely about corporate profit, to me is somewhat peculiar.

Quizzical

Ikonis said:

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

Hrimnir said:

Quizzical said:

I hope to see Vulkan win out.  Play the games you want on whatever OS you want, rather than being tied to Windows.  I'm planning on porting my own game from OpenGL to Vulkan after bindings for it are available in Java.

The era of DirectX driving graphics forward and OpenGL coming along and adding the same features years later seems to have ended several years ago.  But inertia is a powerful thing in software development, and I expect DirectX to be most common for PCs for some years to come.

Sadly I agree with you.  What we hope for and what will probably happen are two different things of course.  As you said, DirectX will likely be the more common thing for the foreseeable future.

The poll question asked which do you hope will win out, not which do you expect will win out.

As for "which will you use", I expect that a lot of gamers will use both in at least one game.

You're right, i see it now down at the very bottom.

To answer the poll then, i don't really hope either will win out.  If Vulkan wins out over DX12 it puts us in a similar position as we are now.  What i HOPE would happen is that its more like the early days where there were multiple APIs (Glide, D3D, OpenGL, etc)

I'd rather see proprietary APIs go away and just have an industry standard API that runs well on everything.  I hate seeing games that have major features that only run on Nvidia but not AMD or vice versa.  I'd much rather it be, pick the OS you want, pick the hardware you want, play whatever games you want, and it all just works.

I am not trying to kill off Windows.  Vulkan runs on Windows, too, just like OpenGL does.  I'd be much less keen on both of them if they didn't run on Windows.

If Valve would have gone the route of making a cross platform api on par with DX instead of the stupid SteamOS no one wanted, I bet it would become very popular quickly.

You're confusing operating systems with graphics APIs.  Steam OS is an OS, as the name implies.  Analogously, Windows is an OS.  Meanwhile, DirectX (or more properly, Direct3D) is a graphics API, like how OpenGL and Vulkan are graphics APIs.  If Valve had created a graphics API, it's unlikely that it would be better than Vulkan, and also unlikely that they'd get graphics vendors to support it well.

Quizzical

Torval said:

Quizzical said:

I'd rather see proprietary APIs go away and just have an industry standard API that runs well on everything.  I hate seeing games that have major features that only run on Nvidia but not AMD or vice versa.  I'd much rather it be, pick the OS you want, pick the hardware you want, play whatever games you want, and it all just works.

I am not trying to kill off Windows.  Vulkan runs on Windows, too, just like OpenGL does.  I'd be much less keen on both of them if they didn't run on Windows.

The problem is that open APIs and standards are somewhat of a lie. There are always corporations pushing an agenda behind them, always. This has happened with web standards, openGL (which has been a major factor for it historically lagging behind), Android, and most any other technology.

Companies use this "open platform" as a means to weaken their competition and gain an advantage and foothold to displace them. It's rarely done in the best interest of the user or consumer and almost always in the best interest in the revenue of the corporation(s) pushing the agenda. I just don't believe this will be any better for the consumer than what we have and could be like how the internet and browsers are now, near complete rubbish.

This is why I want an industry standard API that runs well on everything, not an industry standard API that is a broken mess of vendors fighting with each other.  Ten years ago, OpenGL had a whole lot of the latter.  DirectX was clearly better, which is why it was widely adopted.  That's unlikely to be the case with Vulkan.

Just because Microsoft pushes something exclusive to Windows doesn't mean it will dominate the market.  If Microsoft made a new programming language that combined the performance of Perl with the convenience of C, people would generally ignore it except to laugh at it.  Microsoft has made programming languages, but that doesn't mean that nothing else works well on Windows.  And it doesn't stop people from running C++, Java, Python, and various other languages not created by Microsoft on Windows.