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I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

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Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#61

Post by hjadal »

alexvitkov wrote: post #30
jokoon wrote: post #14

I think vulkan is great, but its only purpose is to take full advantage of advanced GPU features. It also leads to better performance when using advanced GPU features compared to OpenGL. Generally, I feel OpenGL is the recommended route if you don't really aim for advanced rendering techniques. There are plenty 2D /lowpoly/ps1-graphics games right now, and those don't need to use vulkan. Vulkan is an example of how t…

Vulkan has advantages over OpenGL even if you don't care about visual fidelity. - No global state - You can select which GPU you want to use at runtime - OpenGL error handling is terrible - Validation layers!! - Cool official artwork - Fantastic documentation - You can upload data to the GPU asynchronously from a second thread in a sane way - Fancy GPU features - Mesh shaders, RTX

I will say that validation layers alone are worth it. Damn they are nice, so many bugs in my code has been found by them which saved a lot of time.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#62

Post by [deleted] »

samiv wrote: post #37

This might come off as a surprise to some people but getting good performance with Vulkan (compared to say OpenGL) isn't trivial because: the Vulkan driver is missing that ~20k loc of code that OpenGL driver does for you to set up the rendering pipelines, render targets etc. This is all code that already exists in the OpenGL driver and has been optimized for +20 years by the best people in the industry. So when you s…

[deleted]

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#63

Post by solardev »

MindSpunk wrote: post #60
solardev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused now. I thought by definition it's a browser API that allows them to make Vulkan/OpenGL/DirectX calls, like an abstraction layer. Am I wrong? Edit: wgpu is a reimplementation of the WebGPU api for use with desktop apps outside of browsers. See sibling thread by another poster for an explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40598416

wgpu isn’t a reimplementation of WebGPU, it’s Firefox’s WebGPU implementation. It also conveniently runs outside of a browser and is accessible with a Rust or C API. You can also do the same thing with Dawn, which is Chrome’s implementation of WebGPU.

Thanks for the correction!

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#64

Post by alexvitkov »

solardev wrote: post #39
ncallaway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true. https://wgpu.rs/ I'm literally writing native code running on linux with winit and wgpu right now.

Wait, is that the same as using WebGPU? It says outside of browsers it uses opengl and vulkan and directx.

wgpu is not WebGPU. One is a Web specification, the other is a Rust library.

wgpu is also not a graphics API, it's a library that abstracts the underlying graphics API.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#65

Post by solardev »

alexvitkov wrote: post #64
solardev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is that the same as using WebGPU? It says outside of browsers it uses opengl and vulkan and directx.

wgpu is not WebGPU. One is a Web specification, the other is a Rust library. wgpu is also not a graphics API, it's a library that abstracts the underlying graphics API.

Even more confused now, lol.

(edit: thanks for editing your post. the revised version clears it up!)

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#66

Post by sehugg »

fire_lake wrote: post #53
samiv wrote: post #37

This might come off as a surprise to some people but getting good performance with Vulkan (compared to say OpenGL) isn't trivial because: the Vulkan driver is missing that ~20k loc of code that OpenGL driver does for you to set up the rendering pipelines, render targets etc. This is all code that already exists in the OpenGL driver and has been optimized for +20 years by the best people in the industry. So when you s…

Could someone write an OpenGL to Vulkan layer as a library so that we can target Vulkan but at a higher level of abstraction? Then gradually we can replace that library with routines optimised for the use case?

ANGLE is the (certified compliant) OpenGL ES -> Vulkan/Metal/Direct3D/etc translation layer used by your friendly neighborhood web browser. There are docs about how the Vulkan translation layer works: https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle/+/HEAD/src/lib...

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#67

Post by xedrac »

spicyusername wrote: post #10

Lots of good advice in this article. One that stuck out to me: Don’t implement something unless you need it right now This is a constant battle I fight with more junior programmers, who maybe have a few years of experience, but who are still getting there. They are often obsessed with "best-practices" and whatever fancy new tool is trending, but they have trouble starting with the problem they need to solve and focus…

Yes, over engineering solutions is a constant thorn in my side. The end result is you get a lot of additional complexity for basically no benefit. In my experience, if new requirements do come down the pipeline at some later time, the generic solution you previously built will be completely inadequate and will need to be redone anyway. Solve the problem in front of you, not some unknown future problem.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#68

Post by Keyframe »

jokoon wrote: post #14

I think vulkan is great, but its only purpose is to take full advantage of advanced GPU features. It also leads to better performance when using advanced GPU features compared to OpenGL. Generally, I feel OpenGL is the recommended route if you don't really aim for advanced rendering techniques. There are plenty 2D /lowpoly/ps1-graphics games right now, and those don't need to use vulkan. Vulkan is an example of how t…

I think Vulkan was a mistake. Maybe I should say OpenGL Next should've been a (priority) thing and Vulkan could still happen on the side.. and not this, push towards everything Vulkan. It's not for everybody and not everybody needs it (nor deserves it).

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#69

Post by MindSpunk »

mort96 wrote: post #52
Const-me wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another good option is Direct3D 11. It’s IMO even easier to use than OpenGL but still allows to implement pretty good visuals, see GTA 5 or Baldur’s Gate 3.

Eh that's really only an option if you want to only ever target Microsoft platforms. Which is fine for some people, sure, but in a lot of situations, closing the door on Linux (Steam Deck), macOS, iOS, Android and the non-xbox consoles is a tough sell.

Linux you can get for “free” with DXVK or VKD3D-proton. MacOS is an even more niche platform than Linux as far as gaming is concerned and is not a tough sell to skip considering the total lack of market share in games. iOS and Android generally come in a pair so unless you’re only targeting one you need to support multiple APIs anyway. Xbox requires Xbox specific APIs so you need explicit work there. Every other console uses a bespoke API that will require another backend in your engine (yes Switch technically supports Vulkan but that is not the recommended path from Nintendo, you will likely end up with an NVN backend).

D3D11 gives you both desktop platforms that matter for games, everything else will require multiple backends anyway so if you only care about desktop it’s a fair choice.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#70

Post by alexvitkov »

solardev wrote: post #65
alexvitkov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wgpu is not WebGPU. One is a Web specification, the other is a Rust library. wgpu is also not a graphics API, it's a library that abstracts the underlying graphics API.

Even more confused now, lol. (edit: thanks for editing your post. the revised version clears it up!)

Vulkan, Direct3D, Metal and OpenGL are graphics APIs - the implementation comes with your GPU driver, and they're as close as you can reasonably get to writing code "directly for the GPU". When you call a Vulkan function you're directly calling driver code.

wgpu is a regular library that uses the native APIs above and abstracts them from you. I don't like calling it a graphics API because it implies it's the same as the vendor-provided APIs - it's a completely different beast.

WebGPU and WebGL are Web standards that the browser implements, and you program them via JS. Similarly to wgpu, they're implemented on top of the native graphics APIs.

The relationship between wgpu and WebGPU is that they're basically made by the same people, and in Firefox WebGPU is implemented on top of wgpu.

But saying "WebGPU runs everywhere" is plain wrong - it's a browser-exclusive API, and on top of that, at the point of writing this it doesn't even run on all browsers (71% support according to https://caniuse.com/webgpu)

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