Portal with RTX reimagines Valve’s classic game with full Vulkan ray tracing. Building on NVIDIA’s previous upgrades to Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, this new release has been created with the NVIDIA RTX Remix tool that enables modders to create ambitious remasters of classic games with NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex and advanced path-tracing that bounces light four times for improved light simulation—even casting through portals! Portal with RTX is freely downloadable from Steam for all Portal owners.

The recently released VK_EXT_surface_maintenance1 and VK_EXT_swapchain_maintenance1 extensions resolve a number of longstanding issues with Vulkan’s WSI extensions. These extensions will be ratified as KHR.

Most importantly, it is now possible for applications to know when resources associated with a present operation can be destroyed, e.g. the semaphores provided in VkPresentInfoKHR::pWaitSemaphores. This is done by providing a fence in VkSwapchainPresentFenceInfoEXT that is chained to VkPresentInfoKHR. Once the fence is signaled, the application can destroy said semaphores. Additionally, with the outstanding present operations processed according to these fences, the application is able to safely destroy swapchains (retired or otherwise).

Vulkanised is delighted to be back in person! The largest event dedicated to 3D developers using the Vulkan API will take place in the beautiful city of Munich in Germany on Feb 7-9, 2023. Vulkanised is a unique technical event that brings the Vulkan developer community together to exchange ideas, solve problems and help steer the future development of the Vulkan API and ecosystem. Over the three days of the event developers will learn from leading Vulkan experts and gain real-world insights into the latest Vulkan developments, extensions, applications, techniques, technologies and tools.

Early bird registration is now open until January 20th. Register now and save!

Khronos Group President, Neil Trevett, gave a keynote speech at inVISION on November 29th focusing on vision standards & the new Kamaros embedded camera API standard. The video from the keynote is now available (free registration required).

With RapidCompact’s recent release of version 6, they’ve added impressive new features and several improvements for handling 3D models. Among the changes is support for the glTF iridescence extension. Read their blog for the complete list of changes with this new release.

PoCL 3.1 provides compatibility with the LLVM/Clang 15.0 release, switches to using lowercase device names for the platform setup via the “POCL_DEVICES” environment variable, there has been a major rework to the custom device driver, much improved SPIR-V support, continued work towards implementing a Vulkan driver, and a basic OpenCL cl_khr_command_buffer implementation.

NVIDIA RTX™ IO is a suite of technologies that enables rapid GPU-based asset decompression and loading. NVIDIA’s GDeflate GPU decompression format delivers IO-saturating performance on modern NVMe devices. GDeflate is used in Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, and now NVIDIA is contributing the technology for consideration by the Vulkan working group at Khronos. Two new NVIDIA Vulkan extensions to accelerate RTX IO are were released in the Vulkan 1.3.233 update and are supported in the latest NVIDIA drivers on both Linux and Windows. VK_NV_memory_decompression handles decompressing assets on GPU, and VK_NV_copy_memory_indirect handles copying decompressed data to Vulkan buffers/images.

Two open-source Nintendo emulator projects recently posted updates on their success in shipping on macOS using the open source MoltenVK ‘Vulkan over Metal’ runtime library:

• Ryujinx Switch Emulator Uses MoltenVK to Ship on Mac
  “All in all, we’re pleased with what we’ve managed to accomplish. A barrier that many, including ourselves, originally thought unbreakable has been cracked wide open, and the best part is: this is just the beginning. With not only our own efforts to improve the core emulation, but upcoming updates to Metal 3 and the constantly improving MoltenVK, the experience is only going to get better”
• Dolphin GameCube and the Wii Emulator Compares Metal Native Backend and MoltenVK
  “We will be relying on MoltenVK to be the benchmark that we compare our native Metal backend against going forward. And it should perform that role excellently, as it is bringing our well tested Vulkan backend to macOS through a very well supported translation layer from a team that has earned our trust. So, while our new native Metal backend is faster, MoltenVK is here to stay. Together, they will help us deliver the most consistently reliable and performant experience that we can give to our macOS users”

The new VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer extension will change how engines approach descriptors going forward. Descriptor sets are now backed by VkBuffer objects where you memcpy in descriptors. In the following blog, Hans-Kristian Arntzen, gives us an overview of the new extension including the history, reasoning, and how to implement.

At Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, we develop and certify cars for the U.S. and the world in six locations. Our work ranges from EV battery research to hybrid powertrain calibration and certification, from telematics to autonomous driving software, and from advanced exterior design to UX. It’s not just about cars, it’s also about creating the latest and greatest software, cutting-edge technology, and groundbreaking innovation.

First introduced in 2014 by the Khronos Group®, SYCL™ is a C++ based heterogeneous parallel programming framework for accelerating high performance computing (HPC), machine learning, embedded computing, and compute-intensive desktop applications on a wide range of processor architectures, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and tensor accelerators. SYCL 2020 launched in February 2021 to bring a new level of expressiveness and simplicity to developers programming heterogeneous parallel processors using modern C++, and further accelerating the deployment of SYCL on multiple platforms, including the use of diverse acceleration API backends in addition to OpenCL™.

Khronos has officially adopted ‘Kamaros’ (pronounced Kam-ă-ross) as the name for the Embedded Camera System API and the associated working group. Jointly promoted by Khronos and the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA), the Kamaros API Working Group is developing an open, royalty-free standard for controlling camera system runtimes in embedded, mobile, industrial, XR, automotive, and scientific markets.

The Khronos 3D Formats Working Group is constantly assessing emerging requirements of the glTF ecosystem and asking how the group can make the most impactful progress. Over the past 18 months, one issue has consistently bubbled to the top of these discussions: interactivity.

The urgency of developing new interactivity and behaviors capabilities for glTF has been fueled in part by the evolution towards the open metaverse. It’s clear that glTF can and should have an important role to play in this ecosystem, but we have some important functionality gaps to close first. We’ve spent the past few months cooperatively refining proposals for how we might build interactivity into glTF 3D assets. This blog will outline our current approach and reasoning, as well as invite the community to weigh in.

Join the Khronos 3D Formats Working Group and the glTF community at our virtual meetups. During each session our expert presenters will share use cases, best practices, tooling updates, and live demos, plus answer your questions live.

glTF Virtual Meetup #1 on Tuesday, November 8, 2022

• Integrating glTF into Qt3D, Vulkan and Embedded Applications - Mike Krus, KDAB
• Overcoming the Challenges in e-Commerce Content Creation - Jatinder Kukreja, SuperDNA 3D Lab
• 3D in Fashion - Baking Non-standard Unity Materials into glTF - Julien Berta, Smartpixels
• Ask the Experts - Q&A session with our panel of speakers and glTF experts

glTF Virtual Meetup #2 on Tuesday, November 15, 2022

• Blender glTF I/O : Support for glTF PBR Material Extensions - Julien Duroure, Blender Foundation
• Creating a Bridge Between Unity and three.js - Felix Herbst, prefrontal cortex
• Ask the Experts - Q&A session with our panel of speakers and glTF experts

glTF Virtual Meetup #3 on Tuesday, December 6, 2022

• Getting CGI Content Ready for Real-time with glTF - Max Limper, DGG
• Staging glTF to the Metaverse - Norbert Nopper, UX3D
• Volumetric glTF - Tim Porter, Mod Tech Labs
• Ask the Experts - Q&A session with our panel of speakers and glTF experts

Visit our events page for more information and registration: https://www.khronos.org/events/

The success of Khronos is dependent on the dedication and active contributions of its members. The Khronie Awards are presented to individuals who have made significant contributions in advancing the work of Khronos Working Groups towards their goals. The Khronies were presented at the Plenary Council meeting during the Phoenix Face to Face in October of 2022. Khronos is delighted to recognize the following members for their incredible hard work:

• Brent Insko, OpenXR
• Faith Ekstrand, Vulkan
• Brent Scannell, glTF
• Kurt Akeley, OpenGL
• Lisie Aartsen, Khronos Group
• Ann Thorsnes, Khronos Group