LunarG has released new Windows, Linux, and macOS SDKs for Vulkan header 1.2.182. These SDKs include support for many new extensions as well as updates to devsim.
New extensions include:
Note that extensions are optional and may not be implemented by the underlying driver/ICD. Applications can now query for the presence of these new features:
VK_EXT_acquire_drm_display
VK_EXT_multi_draw
VK_EXT_physical_device_drm
VK_HUAWEI_subpass_shading (broken, disabled from the Loader and Validation Layers)
VK_NV_ray_tracing_motion_blur (The SPIR-V capability RayTracingMotionBlurNV has been disabled from the validation layers until this capability is defined in SPIR-V)
Saarland University is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in six faculties that cover all major fields of science. Saarland University is known for research in Computer Science, nano technology, medicine, European relations, politics and law. In 2007, the university was recognized as an excellence center for computer science in Germany.
The much-anticipated ray-tracing patch for Doom Eternal has arrived, and it’s a doozy. At the top of the bill is support for ray-traced lighting effects in the FPS game using Khronos’ cross-platform Vulkan API, enabling advanced effects on both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
Adobe has released Substance 3D Stager, a new application for laying out, lighting and rendering 3D scenes aimed at the emerging ‘virtual photography’ market previously staked out by Adobe Dimension. It includes a number of interesting features, including physics-based layout tools, readymade studio lighting rigs, and a Vulkan-based renderer capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The software is available as part of Adobe’s new Substance 3D Collection, alongside Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer and Substance 3D Sampler: the new name for Substance Alchemist.
NVIDIA DLSS support for Vulkan games is now available on Proton, enabling Linux gamers to use the dedicated AI Tensor Cores of their GeForce RTX GPUs to accelerate frame rates in DOOM Eternal, No Man’s Sky, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Support for DLSS-enhanced DirectX titles running via Proton layered over Vulkan will arrive this Fall.
In this blog from Arm, Hans-Kristian Arntzen looks at how to implement deferred shading, a style of rendering which is still quite common. The deferred techniques have evolved over time, but the fundamental remains where a G-buffer is rendered, and lighting is computed based on that G-buffer data. This decouples geometry information from shading. Most of the innovation in the last years in the deferred space has revolved around reformulating the lighting pass, but the fundamentals remain the same.
Codeplay has been awarded a contract by Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to implement the oneAPI DPC++ compiler, an implementation of the SYCL open standard, to support AMD GPU-based, high-performance compute (HPC) supercomputers.
War Thunder now uses the OpenXR standard, which provides better image quality, increasing picture sharpness compared to the previous implementation at the same super sampling settings. For example, a picture at 100% SS in SteamVR is comparable in quality with 140% SS in the previous implementation! Implementation of OpenXR allowed the developer to fix a lot of bugs, for example, the incorrect display from the gunner position or blurred object outlines.
In this interview, European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) President, Chris Yates, and Khronos Group President, Neil Trevett discuss the industry’s interest in the creation of open, royalty-free API standards for controlling embedded cameras and sensors.
As the number of 3D assets used in e-commerce rapidly increases, the need to embed semantic information describing virtual products within real-time 3D formats such as glTF™ becomes ever more urgent. 3D asset files that contain descriptive and administrative metadata such as product descriptions, details on intellectual property rights, creation and modification dates and other detailed authoring history - all in multiple languages - will enable the management of 3D virtual product catalogs, and the sharing of assets between vendors, retailers and end user platforms at industrial scale.
Asynchronous compute is a trend that has proven itself to be an effective optimization technique, but it is somewhat difficult pinning down how to apply it. This idea started its life on last generation console hardware but has since been made available on modern graphics APIs like Vulkan and D3D12. It is now part of a graphics programmer’s toolbox.
In this blog, Arm highlights a new Vulkan Sample that was added to Khronos’ sample repository which demonstrates how to use async compute.
In their recently released update, Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2 is getting Vulkan rendering support by leveraging DXVK to convert Direct3D calls to Vulkan. This update also brings many bug fixes, controller handling enhancements and more.
Panfrost is an open source driver for Arm Mali GPUs and has announced that it now supports OpenGL ES 3.1 on several Arm Mali GPUs. While Panfrost has had limited support for compute shaders on Midgard (Mali T760 and newer) for use in TensorFlow Lite, the latest work extends the support to more GPUs and adds complementary features required by the OpenGL ES 3.1 specification, like indirect draws and no-attachment framebuffers.
Join the Khronos Group’s 3D Commerce Working Group members making a difference in the world of 3D graphics from popular retail and tech companies like Amazon, IKEA, Microsoft, Shopify, Wayfair, and more as they take a deep dive into the ways people experience 3D graphics on the web and in stores. This virtual event highlights the recently announced Viewer Certification Program that was created to lower the barriers to 3D asset creation and implementation. This event shares the vision for a future empowered by 3D across education, medical, design, advertising, art, and more. You’ll learn what Pervasive 3D is, why it’s worth working towards, and what’s next.
Today, The Khronos® Group announces the release of the 3D Commerce Viewer Certification Program. 3D viewers are software engines that enable users to display and interact with 3D models. Viewers are used by retailers, social media sites, and brands to create experiences on ecommerce storefronts, search engines, ad platforms, and in native applications. The Viewer Certification Program enables 3D viewers across the industry to demonstrate that they can accurately and consistently display 3D products, clearing the way for reliable 3D and AR-powered shopping across multiple platforms and devices. Amazon, Babylon.js, CGTrader, Emersya, Epic Games (Unreal Engine), Facebook (Spark AR), Google ( & Scene Viewer), Samsung (Internet Browser on Android), SketchFab, Unity, and UX3D (Gestaltor) have begun the process of certifying their viewers under this new program.
