AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) is excited about the imminent release of the ratified Vulkan 1.0 Specification by the Khronos™ Group. We started this journey in June of 2014 ... AMD Vulkan 1.0 Spec Announcement
Seems Nvidia has a Vulkan API driver as well, good to see both GPU vendors moving to quickly support this. http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/vulkan-graphics-api-launches-nvidia-gpus-game-ready EDIT: And Talos Principle now supports Vulkan with the new beta patch as of today. http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/ EDIT: The current driver for AMD is a development driver with no support for DirectX so I wouldn't install it for this one game, for Nvidia it's a older branch but should be a fully functional display driver other than it possibly missing the most recent code improvements and profiles.
Supports 7 and 8.1 The beginning of the end of MS's strategy to force gamers to Windows 10? -- Needs specific drivers https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/radeon-vulkan-beta.aspx
I wonder if this will actually make Linux-based OSes a viable option compared to Windows. The world needs this so much. MS has been done crappy OSes for a while now, I would love to have a real option to abandon Windows. Either way, if we can use this on an older, more functional Windows, that would be great already. Finally would be the freedom that MS denied to us, power users.
Going to take the plunge on The Talos Principle this evening. I don't mind being the guinea pig and sharing some results with the built in benchmark.
They probably largely do not care. DX is nothing compared to what games engines are running, or, are capable of compiling games to. So you got your game running on UE4, with one click of a button, you can compile it to: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/index.html It's not about the API any longer, it's about the game engine and what platforms it can deliver to. Still C++ game code, dewd - and that money goes to M$, one way or another. And, that's just UE4...plenty of other AAA game engines out there, let alone the graphics engines and middleware...
I disagree. While MS will still profit as you say, they would profit more if they could "force" all gamers to Windows 10 because of everything requiring DX12. They tried the same thing with Vista with Halo 2. MS wants people on Windows 10s' ecosystem with the Store and trash that comes with it.
Linux based-OS are a viable option for a while. I've been using mostly Ubuntu 14.04 to play my games, and Steam have a great number of games that runs well on Linux. In my library I have, among others, Bioshock Infinite, CS: GO, Rust, ETS2, FM16, Portal 2... And yes, my GTX750Ti runs pretty fine there, without issues.
Linux's main advantage is that it's not a memory hog like Windows (unless you install KDE and a ****load of extra stuff). Windows 10 takes ~1.5GB in idle whereas GNOME 3 is around ~600 give or take a bit. So with proper Vulkan drivers/games, it should run the same, if not better than Windows.
I do not care much about memory, I have 16GB and let's be honest, the memory nowadays is cheap and it was made to be used, so I do not care much about those 1.5GB that Windows use. I had other motivations to move to Ubuntu (mostly programming), but since I tried to play games there, I'm really happy and probably in the near future the Windows will be gone for good.
Vulkan, an API to increment Linux is coming and Microsoft want you play games in window mode in Microsoft Store.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651720139/ FAQ for Vulkan in Talos Prinicple.
Don't expect faster performance at this point. Drivers and the implementation in their engine aren't mature yet. It will take some time before Vulkan will be faster.
