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Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

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Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#82

Post by pjmlp »

jsheard wrote: post #3

Who would have thought that Microsoft would end up getting cosier with Khronos standards than Apple. This is after they adopted SPIR-V both as a target in their shader compiler and as an ingest format in DirectX, smoothing over interop with Vulkan in both directions.

Microsoft has already been there before as well, they are adopting SPIR-V only to cut down their fork, and because Google already did part of the work for them.

Apple apparently got very pissed on how Khronos took care of OpenCL.

Then Sony and Nintendo couldn't care less about Khronos, people keep forgetting about game consoles when discussing the portability of Khronos APIs, or ignoring the fact that in reality they aren't really that portable due to the extension spaghetti.

Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#84

Post by josefx »

deafpolygon wrote: post #73
PaulKeeble wrote: post #14

I hope this reduces the CPU overhead a bit on the main thread with some time. Quite a few games that ported from DX11 to 12 and openGL to Vulkan didn't just gain performance from the API swap it required taking advantage of the new higher parallel draw call capabilities. # The main thread is often the limiting factor in minecraft. Minecraft just can't go as fast as the GPU could render the scene and even with quite a…

Maybe they can implement some of the calculations in GPU, as vulkan has feature to support that. This means voxel rendering could be accelerated

Does it actually use voxels? I thought it was just a low poly, "voxel like" art style.

Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#86

Post by creatonez »

codingbot3000 wrote: post #69

Microsoft seems to be doing anything they can to get rid of Minecraft Java users having bought a Mojang license in the past. Either they are conspiring against their users, or they just don't care. The dubious Mojang account migration. Their lack of support for kids who got their accounts phished recently. Migrating to Vulkan breaking old hardware. Sad story, but it was to be expected MS bought Mojang.

I'm not super worried that this transition is cutting off hardware too soon.

- Vulkan requirement raises the baseline to 2016-2017 hardware. 2017 was 9 years ago.

- They're not cutting off OpenGL right away, according to the announcement they will release 26.1 as OpenGL-only, and then at least one more full release where you can choose between the two options. Based on their usual schedule it will probably be at least a year from now before they cut off OpenGL support, if not longer.

- All previous versions of the game are still available to play, including the oldest versions that run on Java 6, x86-32, OpenGL 1.2, Debian 5, Windows XP. Can still do multiplayer sessions on versions released in mid 2010.

- The community can fill in the gaps in multiple ways. Translation layers are available to connect to newer servers with older clients (ViaVersion), as well as with Bedrock clients (GeyserMC). Mods will almost certainly be released to reimplement the rendering engine in OpenGL or GLES. Renewed interest may mean OpenGL 2.0 compatibility mods could come back. Also, Mojang recently liberated Minecraft from variable name obfuscation, so modding will be easier than ever before.

- As a last resort, software rendering for Vulkan has gotten relatively mature, though obviously this means single digit FPS in many scenarios

Java Edition has taken an extremely conservative path, practically nothing else in the gaming industry held on to legacy hardware this long.

Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#87

Post by ieie3366 »

norman784 wrote: post #49
pdpi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company as large as Microsoft has resources to do a lot of things, but you’re not borrowing resources from the Office team to help on this project. The relevant measurement is the resources Mojang has as a studio. And I expect the decision here is that they don’t want to commit to the long term maintenance of three renderer implementations on the Java side. Another concern is that modding is a major part of why Jav…

TBH Mojang should have the resources to do that on his own, Minecraft is the best selling game of all times btw.

Minecraft is extremely mismanaged, the fact that the java version is still the ”main” version after all these years is just crazy

Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#88

Post by jsheard »

josefx wrote: post #84
deafpolygon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they can implement some of the calculations in GPU, as vulkan has feature to support that. This means voxel rendering could be accelerated

Does it actually use voxels? I thought it was just a low poly, "voxel like" art style.

The underlying world representation is chunky voxels, but they get triangulated into meshes for rendering. Unlike say, Teardown, which renders voxels directly.

Minecraft's non-world entities like players and enemies aren't voxels at any level though, those are directly authored as low poly meshes.

Re: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan

#89

Post by m3Lith »

JBits wrote: post #67
quailfarmer wrote: post #63

Damn, this will break Minecraft on my original machine, an Acer C720 Chromebook modded to run Linux. The Intel HD4400 iGPU doesn’t support Vulcan! I always appreciated that MC would run on virtually any hardware, especially as a kid without access to anything nice.

> Once this happens, players will be able to switch between OpenGL rendering and Vulkan rendering I think this means you'll be able to continue using Minecraft with OpenGL.

In the following paragraph:

> Once we’re happy with the performance and stability of Vulkan across devices we will remove the OpenGL implementation.

So not for long.

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