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Sounds promising — would be great to know the history on why the other people who tried to make the one graphics api to rule them all failed? Seems like that co

by xt00 6y ago

Sounds promising — would be great to know the history on why the other people who tried to make the one graphics api to rule them all failed? Seems like that could be helpful in the whole “learning from the past thing”.

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
Because hardware vendors don't want one. Lock-in when you are leading your particular niche gives big profits, so companies go for it. That is why Microsoft, Sony, NVIDIA, Apple, Xilinx, etc. create their own platforms and APIs.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  This is somewhat disingenuous. The big advantage to breaking with standards to do your own thing is that you don't have to deal with committee politics or delays. You can iterate quickly on ideas you think are good and test them in the market right now.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  > Because hardware vendors don't want one. Lock-in when you are leading your particular niche gives big profits, so companies go for it. Complete nonsense. All the hardware vendors except Apple support Vulkan and contributed towards it. NVIDIA hasn't created their own graphics API since... ever, actually. They have their own APIs, of course (cuda being an obvious one, but there's also NVAPI), but they don't do graphics. Because hardware vendors have no interest or motivation in making more drivers than they need to, because drivers are hard & expensive. So much so that driver quality is a better lock-in for them. Consoles use exclusives to drive lock-in, not APIs. Consoles have their own APIs, but historically that's always been a performance thing. They want to give game devs the rawest access they can, to make the best looking games they can. Maybe low-level APIs like Vulkan will end up changing that, maybe it won't, but it's not a "lock-in" thing. OS's use APIs to do lock-in, but they don't make hardware (Apple being the exception here, of course).
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Sony and Nintendo definitely make hardware. Microsoft not only does not support Vulkan, ICD drivers aren't allowed in Win32 and UWP sandbox models. NVidia designs their hardware in collaboration with Microsoft, giving first class support to DirectX, and only afterwards they port the features as extensions to Vulkan/OpenGL. Latest two examples, Ray Tracing and MeshShaders.

by xt00 6y ago

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago

Because hardware vendors don't want one. Lock-in when you are leading your particular niche gives big profits, so companies go for it. That is why Microsoft, Sony, NVIDIA, Apple, Xilinx, etc. create their own platforms and APIs.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
This is somewhat disingenuous. The big advantage to breaking with standards to do your own thing is that you don't have to deal with committee politics or delays. You can iterate quickly on ideas you think are good and test them in the market right now.
kllrnohj 6y ago
> Because hardware vendors don't want one. Lock-in when you are leading your particular niche gives big profits, so companies go for it. Complete nonsense. All the hardware vendors except Apple support Vulkan and contributed towards it. NVIDIA hasn't created their own graphics API since... ever, actually. They have their own APIs, of course (cuda being an obvious one, but there's also NVAPI), but they don't do graphics. Because hardware vendors have no interest or motivation in making more drivers than they need to, because drivers are hard & expensive. So much so that driver quality is a better lock-in for them. Consoles use exclusives to drive lock-in, not APIs. Consoles have their own APIs, but historically that's always been a performance thing. They want to give game devs the rawest access they can, to make the best looking games they can. Maybe low-level APIs like Vulkan will end up changing that, maybe it won't, but it's not a "lock-in" thing. OS's use APIs to do lock-in, but they don't make hardware (Apple being the exception here, of course).
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Sony and Nintendo definitely make hardware. Microsoft not only does not support Vulkan, ICD drivers aren't allowed in Win32 and UWP sandbox models. NVidia designs their hardware in collaboration with Microsoft, giving first class support to DirectX, and only afterwards they port the features as extensions to Vulkan/OpenGL. Latest two examples, Ray Tracing and MeshShaders.