XPlane 11 Vulcan

[himmelhorse]

Hello all,

Does any body know the time line for Vulcan and what impact it will have on XPlane11 particularly for VR?

Thanks guys

Tony

[mike4]

Personally I don't expect Vulkan before XP12, which is some years away. But we simply don't know when. Have a look here:

https://developer.x-plane.com/2016/03/what-vulkan-means-to-developers/

[soaring_penguin]

Ben did confirm Vulcan in 2018, but there is a lot of work left to be done. It is part of their goal to reach consistent 60frames /sec. No fixed time frame was given.

[himmelhorse]

jh71

Thanks mate. I read the item in mike4s link and whilst interesting did not shed a great deal of light on any release time frame.  Can you confirm that Bens confirmation was for an expected release in 2018 or just a confirmation in 2018 that it was coming?

Also from Bens article, he did state that all the benefits of Vulcan were from the Devs point of view, but one very much gathers that we as simmers were going to be happy too.

But I thank you  guys for your response.  I am still researching VR hence the query.

Cheers

Tony

 

[soaring_penguin]

From the different blog posts and q/a sessions, Vulcan is confirmed for XP11 in 2018. First they want to finish vr in 11.20 (still using OpenGL). The code is being prepared to be able to use the different APIs, so they only have to  write everything 1 time.

[himmelhorse]

jh71.

Great news, Just a little more patience required I guess

Thanks mate

Tony

[jymp]

Hoping Vulkan gives the sim  a more vibrant look, it's a little better now but X-Plane has always had a dull look to it.

[Pascal_LSGC]

12 minutes ago, jymp said:

Hoping Vulkan gives the sim  a more vibrant look, it's a little better now but X-Plane has always had a dull look to it.

Vulkan gives nothing. The transition to Vulkan (Windows and Linux) and Metal (Mac) will open the door to better multicore CPU optimization. It's not about the look, it's about performance.

[Guest]

They aim to implement Vulkan over the course of 2018, but as always these are goals, which may or may not be achieved. (They also planned to deliver native VR support in 2017...). Just don't get upset when things take a bit longer than you hope for and enjoy the sim you have now. If you're looking for visual improvement, Vulkan will indeed mean nothing to you. Take a look at reshade, environment+ or maxxfx instead. 

[alpha12125]

yes the 2018 goals is an aim and dont think of it as set in stone. They have updated some parts of the engine and are making progress but it is early in the game and problems might occur. 

[Susu986]

On 2/8/2018 at 0:06 PM, jymp said:

Hoping Vulkan gives the sim  a more vibrant look, it's a little better now but X-Plane has always had a dull look to it.

Vulkan will do directly the opposite. Right now, PC users can use Reshade to give the sim a more vibrant look (look at FsEnhancer for example). Reshade is not compatible with Vulkan, so it will actually TAKE AWAY the ability to spice up those colors. Hopefully MaxxFX will still work, however it's not as powerful as Reshade - well, still better than nothing.

[mmerelles]

A few comments from Ben that should clarify doubts rised here.

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Ben Supnik says:

December 11, 2017 at 10:35 am

Our porting targets are Vulkan for Windows, Linux and Android, and Metal for iOS and Mac OS X. Apple doesn’t provide a Vulkan stack and based on their investment in their own API, we don’t expect them to.

In terms of APIs and porting:
– On Windows, we can and do use OpenGL with VR now – we can get stereo hw rendering and use OpenGL to render to the compositor.
– On Linux, apparently we have to port Vulkan Metal first – no GL SteamVR integration. I’m taking your word on this, I haven’t investigated for myself.
– On OS SX, we have to port to port to Metal first. While we can talk to the compositor in GL or Metal, we can’t do hardware stereo rendering — not even Apple’s ‘core’ drivers support it. Without stereo rendering, the GL-based framerate is unusably slow on even the fastest hardware.

We have no plans to port to DX12 – there’s no need since we can get Vulkan there.

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Ben Supnik says:

December 10, 2017 at 1:37 pm

Our focus is shifting to shipping VR – Vulkan after VR.

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Ben Supnik says:

December 10, 2017 at 8:27 pm

Yes, but no. We will surely optimize even more after we release – we never stop tuning the code – but we have to get a HUGE amount of work done before we can show Vulkan at all.

Vulkan allows new approaches, particularly in the multi-core area – writing a multi-core GL renderer is possible (see all the AZDO talks) but miserably difficult – the GL threading model is exactly not what you’d want.

Vulkan also _requires_ new approaches. In OpenGL you can just mix and match pieces of your graphics pipelines willy-nilly, and the driver will, mid-frame, go “oh, wait, you want that with onions, not garlic, let me re-cook your meal” and build a whole new pipeline. This is lousy for performance in OpenGL, so Vulkan is fast in that the slow thing doesn’t exist.

We could do a faster Vulkan port by simply implementing OpenGL on top of Vulkan as a shim layer and running X-Plane, emulating all of the goofy things that GL drivers have to do. We are NOT doing that – doing so would result in an X-Plane that runs at a worse speed than it does now — we’d have all the slow-down from GL non-optimal abstractions, and our code wouldn’t have been tuned by a team of 100+ engineers.

Instead we are reshaping X-plane to talk to OpenGL the way a modern card wants to hear – when this is done, Vulkan and Metal will be relatively painless drop-ins. So the work is incrementally released in that X-Plane’s use of GL is becoming “all modern”, but the actual Vulkan switch has to be hit at the end.

These ‘modernizations’ are usually good for FPS in their own right. In 11.10 and 11.20 we’re moving X-Plane’s material model from loose constants to constant buffers (dynamically streamed in 11.10, static in 11.20) and it’s good for fps, as one would expect – it’s an abstraction that’s better for X-Plane and better for the driver. It will be better for Vulkan too.

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Ben Supnik says:

December 10, 2017 at 1:45 pm

It’s on-going, but you don’t get to run Vulkan until we are 100% completed. That will be some time next year.

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