Back in March 2019 it was announced that Xplane Plane-Maker and Airfoil Maker ran in Vulkan on Mac, Windows and Linux with both NVIDIA and AMD drivers. Since that initial update, it has been announced that the full sim now runs natively on Vulkan. Flying with Vulkan is now possible on AMD, NVidia, and Intel drivers. VR is currently not support on Vulkan, but it’s coming!

NVIDIA Tech Blog: Learn more about machine learning acceleration in Vulkan with cooperative matrices by NVIDIA experts. If the Cooperative Matrix Vulkan extension is interesting to you, you can try it out right now! It is shipping for Turing-based GPUs in NVIDIA driver versions 419.09 (Windows) and 418.31.03 (Linux). Links to all the relevant specifications are here.

Flax Engine moves towards cross-platform gaming. Adding Vulkan rendering backend implementation into the engine resulting in greater efficiency, performance, and stability. We see a huge potential of Vulkan API as it opens ways to new areas for Flax to expand including Linux and Android support.

DXVK, the Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine, has reached v1.0. This version includes a number of new features and fixes. A detailed overview of the changes is written up at Gaming On Linux as well as a list of improvements and bug fixes can be found on the GitHub tagged release.

In a recent update, Diligent Engine now gives applications direct control of state transitions in Vulkan API and DirectX12. Diligent Engine includes support for Vulkan and OpenGL 4.2 on Win32 and Linux, as well as OpenGL ES 3.0 on iOS and OpenGL 4.1 on macOS.

Artifact is now available with launch-day support for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Artifact is a competitive digital card game. The game is targeting Dota 2 players as well as card gaming enthusiasts. Vulkan support on macOS is done through MoltenVK.

LunarG now delivers native Ubuntu Linux packages for all the elements in the Vulkan SDK in addition to the Linux SDK tarball. Follow the Ubuntu Packages link on the LunarXchange SDK web page to gain access to the native Ubuntu Linux packages. These packages will install pre-built SDK binaries on a system running Ubuntu Linux and contain all the LunarG Vulkan SDK components at the latest available version. For Ubuntu Linux users, this is the most convenient way to get the Linux SDK content since you will not need to build any binaries yourself. Headers, libraries, and tools are included and prebuilt. Read the LunarG blog for more details.

Valve released the Beta of a new and improved version of Steam Play to all Linux users. The Beta version includes a modified distribution of Wine, called Proton, to provide compatibility with Windows game titles. Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support. DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact. There are a lot of details in this announcement, be sure to read the entry over on the Steam Community website.

LunarG has released new Vulkan SDKs for Windows, Linux, and macOS based on the 1.1.82 header. Read on for an overview of new features in the release and links to the release notes and the SDKs.

Please read the Release Notes for Linux, Release Notes for Windows, or Release Notes for macOS for additional information or go to LunarXchange to download this new SDK.

LunarG has released new Vulkan SDKs for Windows, Linux, and macOS based on the 1.1.77 header. Changes and additions to Vulkan SDK 1.1.77 include: Linux SDK is now packaged as a tar.gz file instead of a .run file; Many bug fixes, increased validation coverage and accuracy improvements, and feature additions and new extensions for this SDK release: VK_KHR_get_display_properties2 and
VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count.

GL-Z is an OpenGL and Vulkan information utility for Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi and Tinker Board. GL-Z 0.4.0, based on GeeXLab, has been released with the following new features: OpenGL memory usage for GeForce and Radeon GPUs on Windows and Linux; Vulkan API information for each Vulkan-capable device and more.

Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images. Built on efficient, high-performance Radeon Rays technology, Radeon ProRender’s complete, scalable ray tracing engine uses open industry standards to harness GPU and CPU performance for swift, impressive results. One of those open industry standards is OpenCL 1.2. AMD’s requirements state: “Hardware agnostic – if your computer can run OpenCL 1.2, it can run Radeon ProRender.” Download the Windows or Linux version directly or learn more about Radeon Pro.

Paulo Miguel Dias updated his Padoka PPA (Personal Package Archive) for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 operating systems to the latest Mesa 17.0.0-git, bringing us OpenGL 4.5 support for Intel Haswell GPUs.

Chakra GNU/Linux maintainer Neofytos Kolokotronis announced the availability of the latest software versions in the main repositories. Support for the latest Vulkan API is the largest addition along with updates to LibreOffice 5.2.1, Wine 1.9.18, Rust 1.11.0, FontConfig 2.11.94, systemd 231 init system, and Mesa 12.0.1 3D Graphics Library.

Phoronix has been busy running benchmarks with OpenGL and Vulkan atop Ubuntu 16.04 Linux for both AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards.