6 ms·

Sony and Nintendo have both announced Vulkan support on their next console iterations.

by zanny 10y ago

pjmlp 10y ago
Where?
maccard 10y ago
Sony historically supported OpenGL too, and approximately 0 games ever shipped with it.
- vardump 10y ago
  Vulkan could very well be a different story, it doesn't have OpenGL's shortcomings.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    The PS4 API is already much better than Vulkan.
    - vardump 10y ago
      Except in portability.
      - cobalt 10y ago
        given how tailored games are already anyway, as well as wanting to be as low level as possible, that wont really matter
        vardump 10y ago
        Vulkan is pretty close to "as low level as possible". If it's available, it'll certainly be a tempting target for those who have lower budget and those who need to port it faster.
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      Can you describe how, specifically?
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Here is a NDA free presentation I can point to. http://develop.scee.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ParisGC2013Final.pdf http://develop.scee.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ParisGC20... Starts on slide 32 for the graphics part.
        pcwalton 10y ago
        As I suspected, all of the features that I can see described here are in Vulkan. In particular, the first couple of slides pretty much identically resemble Vulkan's "elevator pitch". The presentation is from 2014, so when they claim "better than DirectX", they're referring to pre-DX12. It certainly doesn't back up your claim that it's "much better" than Vulkan.
        pandaman 10y ago
        What is the SRT equivalent in Vulkan if you don't mind me asking? What about DispatchDraw?
        Overv 10y ago
        Descriptor layouts are the equivalent of SRT in Vulkan. It is unclear to me what exactly DispatchDraw is for, because back-face and offscreen culling are standard features of any graphics pipeline.
        pandaman 10y ago
        >Descriptor layouts are the equivalent of SRT in Vulkan. I am not sure how. I do not use Vulkan, I use GNM. I asked this because implementing SRT does not seem possible in a platform independent API. So I checked the docs again and the descriptor layout is the same thing I remember - a set of bindings you manage through a bunch of API calls. On the other hand SRT is a plain c-structure. You pass a pointer to structure to a shader as a parameter. Exactly as same as you pass a structure to a function in C/C++. You don't need APIs to create sturctures, you can store them in a file, you can write them from another shader etc. etc. > It is unclear to me what exactly DispatchDraw is for, because back-face and offscreen culling are standard features of any graphics pipeline. It's pretty clear what is it for if you actually wrote real-time graphics. JFYI - it's "index shader" essentially. Having control over indices you can implement much faster culling.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      > The PS4 API is already much better than Vulkan. It's like saying that assembly is better than higher level languages. So propose writing everything in assembly as the next step? Everything has its trade-offs.
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        We don't really have enough experience to compare GPU assembly vs. SPIR-V. For pjmlp's claim that the PS4 API is "much better" than Vulkan to hold up, as far as I can tell you'd have to show that the codegen (i.e. passes after IR-level optimizations) of the driver's SPIR-V compiler can't match what game developers regularly do. I'm doubtful (instruction scheduling, for example, is too much to keep in your head to regularly beat a compiler), and especially so without data.
        shmerl 10y ago
        I'm also doubtful that developers can regularly beat optimizing compiler by a big margin. It's theoretically possible, but I'd expect it to be far from trivial, and as result require substantial effort every time it's needed. Hacker folklore: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
        maccard 10y ago
        I disagree. I regularly stomp all over the optimizing compiler, and it's not a massive amount of effort. It doesn't come for free though, and requires some upfront planning. The best way to think of it, IMHO is rather than thinking of "beating the compiler", think about working _with_ the compiler to help it do it's job. I don't always agree with what he says, but Mike Acton has some good words and examples of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpD4BBtA1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpD4BBtA1Y - a youtube talk where he talks about working with the compiler. The slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/cellperformance/gdc15-code-clinic http://www.slideshare.net/cellperformance/gdc15-code-clinic In particular take a look at slide 69 and the few following it for an example of things the compiler can't figure out (for various reasons) that we can help it along with.
    - SeanDav 10y ago
      How well does the PS4 API work on Windows, Linux and Android? That is kind of the point of Vulcan.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Sony doesn't support OpenGL on PS4. Vulkan is a different story. It will depend on their mood. Their desire to deal a blow to MS might outweigh their lock-in habits.

Sony and Nintendo have both announced Vulkan support on their next console iterations.

by zanny 10y ago

Sony and Nintendo have both announced Vulkan support on their next console iterations.

pjmlp 10y ago

Where?

maccard 10y ago

Sony historically supported OpenGL too, and approximately 0 games ever shipped with it.

vardump 10y ago
Vulkan could very well be a different story, it doesn't have OpenGL's shortcomings.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The PS4 API is already much better than Vulkan.
  - vardump 10y ago
    Except in portability.
    - cobalt 10y ago
      given how tailored games are already anyway, as well as wanting to be as low level as possible, that wont really matter
      - vardump 10y ago
        Vulkan is pretty close to "as low level as possible". If it's available, it'll certainly be a tempting target for those who have lower budget and those who need to port it faster.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    Can you describe how, specifically?
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Here is a NDA free presentation I can point to. http://develop.scee.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ParisGC2013Final.pdf http://develop.scee.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ParisGC20... Starts on slide 32 for the graphics part.
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        As I suspected, all of the features that I can see described here are in Vulkan. In particular, the first couple of slides pretty much identically resemble Vulkan's "elevator pitch". The presentation is from 2014, so when they claim "better than DirectX", they're referring to pre-DX12. It certainly doesn't back up your claim that it's "much better" than Vulkan.
        pandaman 10y ago
        What is the SRT equivalent in Vulkan if you don't mind me asking? What about DispatchDraw?
        Overv 10y ago
        Descriptor layouts are the equivalent of SRT in Vulkan. It is unclear to me what exactly DispatchDraw is for, because back-face and offscreen culling are standard features of any graphics pipeline.
        pandaman 10y ago
        >Descriptor layouts are the equivalent of SRT in Vulkan. I am not sure how. I do not use Vulkan, I use GNM. I asked this because implementing SRT does not seem possible in a platform independent API. So I checked the docs again and the descriptor layout is the same thing I remember - a set of bindings you manage through a bunch of API calls. On the other hand SRT is a plain c-structure. You pass a pointer to structure to a shader as a parameter. Exactly as same as you pass a structure to a function in C/C++. You don't need APIs to create sturctures, you can store them in a file, you can write them from another shader etc. etc. > It is unclear to me what exactly DispatchDraw is for, because back-face and offscreen culling are standard features of any graphics pipeline. It's pretty clear what is it for if you actually wrote real-time graphics. JFYI - it's "index shader" essentially. Having control over indices you can implement much faster culling.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    > The PS4 API is already much better than Vulkan. It's like saying that assembly is better than higher level languages. So propose writing everything in assembly as the next step? Everything has its trade-offs.
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      We don't really have enough experience to compare GPU assembly vs. SPIR-V. For pjmlp's claim that the PS4 API is "much better" than Vulkan to hold up, as far as I can tell you'd have to show that the codegen (i.e. passes after IR-level optimizations) of the driver's SPIR-V compiler can't match what game developers regularly do. I'm doubtful (instruction scheduling, for example, is too much to keep in your head to regularly beat a compiler), and especially so without data.
      - shmerl 10y ago
        I'm also doubtful that developers can regularly beat optimizing compiler by a big margin. It's theoretically possible, but I'd expect it to be far from trivial, and as result require substantial effort every time it's needed. Hacker folklore: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
        maccard 10y ago
        I disagree. I regularly stomp all over the optimizing compiler, and it's not a massive amount of effort. It doesn't come for free though, and requires some upfront planning. The best way to think of it, IMHO is rather than thinking of "beating the compiler", think about working _with_ the compiler to help it do it's job. I don't always agree with what he says, but Mike Acton has some good words and examples of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpD4BBtA1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpD4BBtA1Y - a youtube talk where he talks about working with the compiler. The slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/cellperformance/gdc15-code-clinic http://www.slideshare.net/cellperformance/gdc15-code-clinic In particular take a look at slide 69 and the few following it for an example of things the compiler can't figure out (for various reasons) that we can help it along with.
  - SeanDav 10y ago
    How well does the PS4 API work on Windows, Linux and Android? That is kind of the point of Vulcan.
shmerl 10y ago
Sony doesn't support OpenGL on PS4. Vulkan is a different story. It will depend on their mood. Their desire to deal a blow to MS might outweigh their lock-in habits.