New features and improvements include:

• Update Khronos Vulkan Headers to 1.3.246
• Support Navi3x floating point instructions
• Support extensions VK_KHR_map_memory2, VK_EXT_image_sliced_view_of_3d, VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state, VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state3, VK_EXT_shader_module_identifier, VK_EXT_mesh_shader, VK_EXT_pipeline_library_group_handles, VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer

Intel’s open-source OpenGL “Iris” and Vulkan “ANV” Linux drivers are now part of the auto-generated set of drivers set to be built for 64-bit ARM (AArch64) when compiling this code inside Mesa.

Khronos has today released the SYCL 2020 Revision 7 maintenance update with the following updates:

• clarify buffer creation with nullptr;
• align more “concurrent” wording with ISO C++;
• precise that work-items provide weakly parallel forward progress guarantee;
• import forward progress definition from ISO C++ and clarify various aspects on atomicity and synchronization;
• C++17 remplaced by just the C++ core language;
• fix description of max_work_item_sizes and clarify relationship to kernel dimensionality;
• clarify “group” meaning in algorithm descriptions;
• improve readability of group barrier description;
• mention kernel_handler in kernel function definition;
• relax requirement on backend traits being available;
• clarify the “reducer” member types and constants;
• clarify native_specialization_constant when empty;
• allow “empty” shared_ptr for buffer construction;
• add static constexpr `dimensions` member to all range/id-like types;
• clarify blocking behavior of `queue::submit;
• clarifications to device copyable;
• clarify USM allocation of zero size coherent with std::malloc;
• clarify sycl::atomic_ref;
• clarify queue profiling behavior when unsupported;
• clarify the wording for the use of property::queue::in_order;
• reword guarantee about host-to-device fence synchronization;
• add single source single compiler pass (SSCP) to the glossary;
• add half to sycl::plus and sycl::multiplies and fix trait use;
• clarify any_device_has / all_devices_have;
• clarify that objects in global, local, or private address space can also be accessed via the generic address space;
• disallow ++ and—for sycl::vec;
• no assignment for read-only accessors;
• clarifications to sub-group;
• clarify is_group and bool_constant alias relations;
• clarify out-of-bounds behavior for group_broadcast.

Khronos has today released the OpenCL 3.0.14 maintenance update that introduces a new cl_khr_command_buffer_multi_device provisional extension that enables execution of a heterogeneous command-buffers across multiple devices. This release also includes significant improvements to the OpenCL C++ Bindings, a new code generation framework for the OpenCL extension headers, and the usual clarifications and bug fixes. The new specifications can be downloaded from the OpenCL Registry.

Less than a year after its initial launch, the Metaverse Standards Forum announces that it is now incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium. The Forum’s mission continues unchanged—to enable, foster and promote cooperation and coordination over metaverse-related interoperability between standards organizations, companies, and universities. In June 2022, the Forum was launched and driven by the Khronos Group. Today, with over 2,400 members and multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups focused on driving pragmatic interoperability advances, the Metaverse Standards Forum has organized its own governance, finances, and operations.

The new NVIDIA Optical Flow SDK 5.0 now enables Vulkan applications to use the NVIDIA Optical Flow engine when running on NVIDIA Ampere architecture and newer generation GPUs to create a smoother gaming and video experience by inserting interpolated frames between original frames using the computed flow between frame pairs.

BADVISOR is a product of BADBYTE Sagl, an internationally active, owner-managed platform provider. The company was founded 2019 by an experienced team with a long history and experience in Global eCommerce, CRM, digital Marketing and IT technology and offers a wide range of consulting services with a focus on 3D brand experience and brand building. BADBYTE is based in Lugano, Switzerland, and runs operations in Milan, Munich, Barcelona and Surat in India.

BADVISOR – the first All-in-One 3D-Platform for any Business. Redefining online customer engagement on the web by making next generation interactive web 3D technologies easy and accessible to any brand. The All-in-One Web 3D Platform enables brands, creators, designers and agencies to create, manage and publish 3D experiences. Interactive product configurators, immersive product presentations and complex animations or branded virtual environments over the web, VR and Augmented Reality can be set up across all digital channels in a fraction of time and with unprecedented ease. This outstanding digital solution is cloud-based, without any programming effort and with the possibility of extensive individualization and personalization.

LunarG has summarized the results of their annual survey and created a report that shares the key findings and suggested actions to improve the Vulkan SDK and Ecosystem in 2023 and beyond.

Today, the Khronos^® Group, the open consortium responsible for graphics and compute interoperability standards including OpenXR, glTF and more, announces the Khronos Developers Forum, taking place at AWE USA in Santa Clara, CA, May 31 – June 2.

The Khronos Developers Forum is free and open to all AWE attendees. It will consist of a series of presentations, tutorials, and demos that will bring XR developers and business leaders up to speed on the latest capabilities and future developments for glTF and OpenXR. The forum will also host interactive discussions on the XR community’s challenges and needs concerning 3D asset creation, e-commerce, and the drive towards an open metaverse.

The Khronos Developers Forum will host activities on all three days of AWE. Sessions include:

• OpenXR tutorials, including both an introductory overview and an advanced Unity extension tutorial.
• Updates on new extensions and forthcoming glTF capabilities from the 3D Formats and 3D Commerce Working Groups.
• A Metaverse Standards Forum “birds of a feather” meetup exploring the standards landscape and the work underway to promote interoperability and combat fragmentation.
• And more.

To view the full schedule, register for the Khronos Developers Forum, and access an exclusive AWE registration discount code, please visit khronos.org/events/awe-2023.

DoubleMe Inc. is an eXtended reality tech startup and creator of metaverse social platform, TwinWorld (http://twin.world). Our company recently secured a US$25 million Series A funding for Holoport and HoloScene, our cutting-edge real-time personal volumetric capture technology, serving as a bedrock for TwinWorld, whose beta version was released in 2020. Our mission is to “Create a universe that transcends reality and virtuality, and communicates regardless of gender, age, religion, race, and physical ability.” DoubleMe wants to establish an inclusive community with TwinWorld, shattering barriers between the real and virtual worlds. The holistic XR experience will alter your lifestyle, entertainment consumption, and more. The limit? As far as your wildest imaginations. Join us today to create the future’s playground on TwinWorld!

Today, Khronos® is releasing a new multi-vendor Vulkan® extension that aims to radically simplify how applications specify shaders and shader state while maintaining Vulkan’s ethos of being a highly performant “API without secrets.” This extension is VK_EXT_shader_object. It introduces a new VkShaderEXT object type which represents a single compiled shader stage, along with 4 new functions to manipulate and use VkShaderEXT objects. Learn more in this Khronos Blog.

Built specifically for 3D content, gITF is lightweight and easy to process on any device or platform, including mobile phones and web browsers. The gITF textures can allow creators to take a JPEG-sized file and immediately unpack it into a native GPU solution, reducing both the memory required and data transmission times by 5 to 10 times. This can be crucial for delivering content to consumers as quickly as possible in the metaverse.

Ultra Engine plans to use glTF for their main 3D model file format, so that final game models can be easily loaded back into a modeling program for editing whenever needed. glTF supports a lot of useful features and is widely supported, but there are a few missing pieces of information Ultra Engine need to add into it. Fortunately, this JSON-based file format has a mechanism for extensions that adds new features and data to the format. In this blog, the custom extensions added for Ultra Engine are explained.

The Khronos Group announces the creation of the SYCL SC Working Group to create a high-level heterogeneous computing framework for streamlining certification of safety-critical systems in automotive, avionics, medical, and industrial markets. SYCL SC will leverage the proven SYCL 2020 standard for parallel programming of diverse computing devices using standard C++17. Over the past year, the safety-critical community has gathered in the Khronos SYCL Safety-Critical Exploratory Forum to build consensus on use cases and industry requirements to catalyze and guide the design of this new open standard. The SYCL SC Working Group is open to any Khronos member, and Khronos membership is open to any company.

NVK is an open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA hardware that is part of Mesa. During Rebecca McKeever’s first three month’s at Collabora as an intern, she implemented several Vulkan API extensions for NVK, as well as contributed to the upstream Mesa project. She verified that the extensions met the specifications in the Vulkan API using the Vulkan Conformance Test suite (CTS). In this blog, she gives the results.