3 ms·
How big of a deal would proper native OpenGL support actually be? My understanding is that OpenGL is more or less deprecated, and any performance heavy graphics
by babypuncher 3y ago
How big of a deal would proper native OpenGL support actually be? My understanding is that OpenGL is more or less deprecated, and any performance heavy graphics applications have long since switched to Vulkan. I would think the performance overhead of a translation layer like Zink would go largely unnoticed when running software old enough to need it on a modern GPU.
- shmerl 3y agoI think there is already an OpenGL implementation over Nouveau (4.5 level)? So that can exists as is, or Zink can be an option. And remaining 4.6 parts are Vulkan related, so may be it can reach 4.6 without Zink too now.
- samus 3y agoOpenGL is deprecated on MacOS only. It remains fully relevant on many platforms, else OpenGL 4.6 would have never happened. Existing heavily optimized legacy applications (especially games) are unlikely to ever switch to Vulkan if no clear advantages can be demonstrated. Zink is very useful and maybe the best option if existing drivers are buggy or not that performant. But the performance impact is usually very apparent.
- kelnos 3y agoNot sure what you mean; OpenGL is still alive and kicking. Apple doesn't like it, but on Linux it's still the dominant way of interacting with the GPU. Vulkan will likely overtake OpenGL at some point, but I think we're quite a ways off from that.
- babypuncher 3y agoI know OpenGL is still used, but it's not used much for performance intensive applications like AAA video games, it's used for things like desktop compositors, largely because the spec hasn't been improved or changed since 2014. Maybe Zink is uniquely inefficient, but my frame of reference for how fast these translation layers can be is DXVK, which in some cases is even faster than native when translating DX11 to Vulkan.