MoltenVK (Vulkan -> Metal translation layer) open sourced!

[uyjulian]

MoltenVK, a Vulkan to Metal translation layer, has been purchased and open sourced by Valve under the Apache License 2.0. This means that the three main desktop platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) have Vulkan support!

If GSdx gets ported to Vulkan, macOS can join in the game too!

Also, if PCSX2 ever gets ported to Android or iOS (other than DaemonPS2), Vulkan support can improve performance!

I personally want to make PCSX2 compile for Windows using CMake, add support for MinGW-w64, and port Play! recompiler to PCSX2. We'll see what happens...

[MacUser]

This is great news. Apparently the translation layer has very low latency, so it won't cause much of a performance hit. 

However, Gregory was always pro-OGL in the past and was quite negative to suggestions of writing a new Vulkan backend, saying there would be no significant performance boost. Maybe this might help change his mind? 

On the other hand, we could be getting access to a PS3 emulator since RPCS3 has been killing it on Vulkan recently.

[gregory]

This is great news. Apparently the translation layer has very low latency, so it won't cause much of a performance hit. 

However, Gregory was always pro-OGL in the past and was quite negative to suggestions of writing a new Vulkan backend, saying there would be no significant performance boost. Maybe this might help change his mind? 

On the other hand, we could be getting access to a PS3 emulator since RPCS3 has been killing it on Vulkan recently.

I'm not pro-OGL I said, and it is still true that creating a Vulkan renderer for speed sake is a bad idea. However for portability point of view, Vulkan is the future for sure.
I'm still hoping for high-level library and an extension to support a kinds of GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock (without this capability Vulkan is useless).

[MacUser]

I'm still hoping for high-level library and an extension to support a kinds of GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock (without this capability Vulkan is useless).

I didn’t see fragment shader interlock mentioned in the new 1.1 version that was just released

https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/....1-web.pdf

Do you know if there are plans to implement in future revisions? Or just hoping?

[gregory]

I didn’t see fragment shader interlock mentioned in the new 1.1 version that was just released

https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/....1-web.pdf

Do you know if there are plans to implement in future revisions? Or just hoping?

I'm not a Khronos member so I don't know. However Dx12 got this feature (called rasterizer ordered view)... Vulkan can do some stuff with renderpass/subpass but it seem only an half-way between glTextureBarrier (used to partially emulate blending and others stuff in GL) and full interlock.

It is a bit sad that Vulkan doesn't seem to support it (maybe because it requires recent GPU and I'm not even sure AMD support it yet).

[dogen]

I'm not a Khronos member so I don't know. However Dx12 got this feature (called rasterizer ordered view)... Vulkan can do some stuff with renderpass/subpass but it seem only an half-way between glTextureBarrier (used to partially emulate blending and others stuff in GL) and full interlock.

It is a bit sad that Vulkan doesn't seem to support it (maybe because it requires recent GPU and I'm not even sure AMD support it yet).

Vega has tier 3 support for rasterizer ordered views. Everything older has none though..

[gregory]

Vega has tier 3 support for rasterizer ordered views. Everything older has none though..

Cool. But it confirms that it is very new. And that marketing should be shoot. Honestly those new API are a nightmare, they claim support for old card but actually you only have the DX11 subset...

[MacUser]

On the other hand, we could be getting access to a PS3 emulator since RPCS3 has been killing it on Vulkan recently.

KD11 over at RPCS3 has already been adding Mac support, but apparently some required functions are not yet implemented. But at least it builds! 

Pull request is here.

[mazhar1981]

maybe a new emu rpcs2 on rpcs3 support base would be great

[uyjulian]

maybe a new emu rpcs2 on rpcs3 support base would be great

Why would you do that? RPCS3 is an emulator for the PS3–a console that has a very different architecture to the PS2.