Real Time Raytracing

Curious if there are any plans for the next-gen graphics cards (NVidia RTX 2080 and DirectX 12) real-time raytracing support? As always, I really love your products and keep up the great work.

There will be no DCS on DX12 but DCS on Vulkan.

Check this: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=217784

There is real time raytracing in DCS already, although not for graphics but for things like radar (especially ground mapping radar).

There will be no DCS on DX12 but DCS on Vulkan.

 

 

Check this: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=217784

I know they're working on Vulcan, but many engines work with both APIs. Also, Vulcan is currently not optimized for NVidia cards and runs slower.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/950002/geforce-1000-series/lower-fps-using-vulkan-api-in-doom-/

Be careful for what you wish for.

I think ED has been quite clear that their goal is Vulcan implementation and not DX12. I doubt they have the resources and manpower to develop both.

Vulkan is Superior to DX12 in Many Ways

If DCS is ever going cross platform, it will absolutely need Vulkan. Windows only crap APIs are the worst future proofing you can do for a game engine.

If DCS is ever going cross platform, it will absolutely need Vulkan. Windows only crap APIs are the worst future proofing you can do for a game engine.

Hmm, that's why most AAA games still utilize DirectX 12. You can support both and Vulcan is still not fully developed for NVidia. It may someday be better, but not yet. Let me guess what video card you own.

Hmm, that's why most AAA games still utilize DirectX 12. You can support both and Vulcan is still not fully developed for NVidia. It may someday be better, but not yet. Let me guess what video card you own.

Does Vulcan support Real Time Raytracing at the moment? I haven't heard of it. DirectX 12 does.

Hmm, that's why most AAA games still utilize DirectX 12. You can support both and Vulcan is still not fully developed for NVidia. It may someday be better, but not yet. Let me guess what video card you own.

Why focus on both when you can focus on one, which will continue to improve dramatically since most studios see the writing on the wall regarding interoperability.

Who is Nvidia ?

Why focus on both when you can focus on one, which will continue to improve dramatically since most studios see the writing on the wall regarding interoperability.

I understand the excitement of Vulcan, but in my experience open source projects don't necessarily have the best track record when it comes to support. The vendors will always try to differentiate their products. Just look at OpenGL, it never superseded DirectX.

Does Vulcan support Real Time Raytracing at the moment? I haven't heard of it. DirectX 12 does.

NVidia announced they're working with Chronos Group to put RTX into Vulkan at GTC 2018 back in March.

I understand the excitement of Vulcan, but in my experience open source projects don't necessarily have the best track record when it comes to support. The vendors will always try to differentiate their products. Just look at OpenGL, it never superseded DirectX.

Vulkan is the replacement for opengl, so obviously it hasn't gone anywhere.

The reason why directx was more popular in Windows was because it was a windows exclusive API. With Mac os x and Linux gaining increasing market share, and the explosive growth of mobile devices, directx is clearly a dying API. The sooner it dies the better off everyone will be, except for Microsoft

......... and the explosive growth of mobile devices, directx is clearly a dying API. /QUOTE]

 

 

^This

......... and the explosive growth of mobile devices, directx is clearly a dying API. /QUOTE]

 

 

^This

 

I still haven't seen it yet. Vulkan may very well become the next standard, but adoption has been slow due to hardware support not being as mature. Without extreme care, creating games off of low-level APIs can be disastrous in the wrong developer's hands. I will take a wait and see approach. Right now even DirectX 12 hasn't taken root, but it does offer some intriguing features. Honestly, it will be the next generation of consoles that I believe will determine the direction for the next gen graphics API.

 

I still haven't seen it yet. Vulkan may very well become the next standard, but adoption has been slow due to hardware support not being as mature. Without extreme care, creating games off of low-level APIs can be disastrous in the wrong developer's hands. I will take a wait and see approach. Right now even DirectX 12 hasn't taken root, but it does offer some intriguing features. Honestly, it will be the next generation of consoles that I believe will determine the direction for the next gen graphics API.

 

Vulkan already is the future standard.

 

The Khronos Group began a project to create a next generation graphics API in July 2014 with a kickoff meeting at Valve Corporation.[36] At SIGGRAPH 2014, the project was publicly announced with a call for participants.[9]

 

According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, the trademark for Vulkan was filed on February 19, 2015.[37]

 

Vulkan was formally named and announced at Game Developers Conference 2015, although speculation and rumors centered around a new API existed beforehand and referred to it as "glNext".[38]

 

2015 Edit

In early 2015, LunarG (funded by Valve) developed and showcased a Linux driver for Intel which enabled Vulkan compatibility on the HD 4000 series integrated graphics, despite the open-source Mesa drivers not being fully compatible with OpenGL 4.0 until later that year.[39][40] There is still the possibility[41] of Sandy Bridge support, since it supports compute through Direct3D11.

 

On August 10, 2015, Google announced that future versions of Android would support Vulkan.[42] Android 7.x "Nougat" launched support for Vulkan on August 22, 2016. Android 8.0 "Oreo" has full support, but there are no news on making Vulkan available on Android 6.0.1 "Marshmallow".

 

On December 18, 2015, the Khronos Group announced that the 1.0 version of the Vulkan specification was nearly complete and would be released when conforming drivers were available.[13] The specification and the open-source Vulkan SDK were released on February 16, 2016.[1]

 

2016 Edit

On December 15, 2016, Unity Technologies announced that version 5.6 of their game engine, Unity, would support the Vulkan API.[43]

 

2017 Edit

On February 9, 2017, Croteam announced that it would be adopting the Vulkan API in its games and leveraging it to make their games more cross-platform friendly.[44]

 

On March 19, 2017, Cloud Imperium Games announced that Star Citizen would be using the Vulkan API instead of Direct3D.[45]

 

On July 25, 2017, Crytek released a preview of CryEngine 5.4 which added beta support for Vulkan.[46]

 

 

2018 Edit

On February 26, 2018, Khronos Group announced that the Vulkan API became available to all on macOS and iOS through the MoltenVK library, which enables Vulkan to run on top of Metal.[47]

 

Open-sourcing of MoltenVK Edit

Previously MoltenVK was a proprietary and commercially licensed solution, but Valve made an arrangement with developer Brenwill Workshop Ltd to open-source MoltenVK under the Apache 2.0 license and as a result the library will be available to all. Valve also announced that Dota 2 can as of 26 February 2018 run on macOS using the Vulkan API, which is based on MoltenVK.[48]

 

Vulkan 1.1 Edit

On March 7, 2018, Vulkan 1.1 was released by the Khronos Group.[49] This first major update to the API standardized several extensions, such as multi-view, device groups, cross-process and cross-API sharing, advanced compute functionality, HLSL support, and YCbCr support.[50] At the same time it also brings better compatibility with DirectX 12, explicit multi-GPU support and lays the groundwork for next generation of GPUs.[51] Alongside Vulkan 1.1, SPIR-V also got updated to version 1.3.[50]

 

Software that supports Vulkan Edit

Video games Edit

Main article: List of games with Vulkan support

The Talos Principle – The first game with Vulkan rendering support.[52]

Dota 2 – Vulkan support was released in May 2016.[53]

Doom – Vulkan support was released in July 2016.[54]

vkQuake – A Vulkan Quake port was released in July 2016.[55][56]

Roblox – In March 2017, Vulkan support for Roblox editing in Roblox studio was added but not for Roblox gameplay.

Star Citizen – In March 2017, the Director of Graphics Programming for Cloud Imperium Games, Alistair Brown, announced on the official Star Citizen forums that Cloud Imperium will now only focus on implementing Vulkan into Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Support for DirectX 12 will be dropped as it would require customers to use Windows 10.[45]

Mad Max – In March 2017, the developers added beta support for Vulkan exclusively for the Linux port.[57]

Ballistic Overkill – Vulkan support was released in May 2017.

Quake III Arena Kenny Edition – A Quake 3 engine modification added Vulkan support in May 2017.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation – Vulkan was added in an after release update.

vkDoom3 - a Vulkan port of Doom3 BFG support was released in August 2017.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - Launched in 2017 with only Vulkan support

X4: Foundations - To be launched in 2018 with a Vulkan-only graphics engine

X-Plane 11 - Laminar Research announces in the second half of 2017 their intentions to move from OpenGL to Vulkan, starting the testings in 2018.

Game console emulators Edit

Beetle/Mednafen PSX,[58] Libretro port of Mednafen PlayStation

Dolphin[59]

Libretro port of Mupen64Plus[60]

RPCS3

PPSSPP

Xenia

Game engines Edit

Source 2 – In March 2015, Valve Corporation announced the Source 2 engine, the successor engine to the original Source engine, would support Vulkan.[61][62]

Serious Engine 4 – In February 2016, Croteam announced that they were supporting Vulkan in their Serious Engine.[63]

Unreal Engine 4 – In February 2016, Epic Games announced Unreal Engine 4 support for Vulkan at Samsung's Galaxy S7 Unpacked event.[64][65]

Torque 3D – In April 2016, the developers community announced they will include Vulkan support.[66][67]

id Tech 3 – Vulkan support was added in May 2017.[citation needed]

id Tech 4 – Vulkan support was added in August 2017.[68]

id Tech 6 – In May 2016, id Software announced Doom, running the id Tech 6 engine, would support Vulkan.[69]

Xenko – Vulkan support was added in July 2016.[70]

Unity – The engine has support for Vulkan since version 5.6.[71]

CryEngine – Support for Vulkan was added in the 5.4 release.[72]

Intrinsic – A free and open-source cross-platform game engine that supports Vulkan.[73]

Unigine – In April 2017, Unigine Corp announced that Vulkan support for Unigine is in the roadmap for 2017.[74]

Abyss Engine – In May 2017, Deep Silver FISHLABS released Galaxy on Fire 3 on Android with Vulkan support.[75]

Banshee 3D – A free and open-source cross-platform game engine that supports Vulkan.[76]

Godot – a 2D and 3D, cross-platform, free and open-source game engine. In late February 2018, the developers announced that they will shift their focus from solely using OpenGL ES 3 to target all platforms, to instead using a combination of OpenGL ES 2 and Vulkan.[77]

Rendering engines Edit

UX3D Engine – Vulkan support was added in September 2017.

Development tools Edit

GPU PerfStudio 3.6 supports Vulkan on Linux and Windows.[78]

GTK+ Scene Graph Kit, released on March 2017 as part of GTK+ 3.90, has a Vulkan rendering path.[79]

RenderDoc has support for Vulkan, since it was added on February 10, 2016.[80]

OS components Edit

The Vulkan Window System Integration (WSI) does for Vulkan what EGL does for OpenGL and OpenGL ES.[81] EGL is used by OpenGL and OpenGL ES programs to interface with the native platform windowing system. EGL handles context management, surface binding and rendering synchronization.

 

Compatibility Edit

Initial specifications stated that Vulkan will work on hardware that currently supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x and up.[82] As Vulkan support requires new graphics drivers, this does not necessarily imply that every existing device that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x will have Vulkan drivers available.

 

Vulkan 1.1 with higher efforts is supported by the newer lines in Hardware like Intel Skylake and higher, AMD GCN 3rd and higher, Nvidia Kepler and higher. AMD, Arm, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm supports actual hardware since second half of 2018 Vulkan 1.1 with own drivers. Mesa 18.1 supports with RADV and ANVIL driver AMD and Intel hardware.

 

Android 7.0 Nougat supports Vulkan 1.0.[83] The software was released in August 2016.[84] Vulkan 1.1 will be supported in Android 9.0 (Android P). [85]

 

Vulkan support for iOS and macOS has not been announced by Apple, but an open-source library exists which provides a Vulkan implementation that runs on top of Metal on iOS and macOS devices.[25

so much mis-information.

Vulkan is Faster than DX12, in specific titles there's a performance drop, because the developer themselves did not code the engine to run efficiently on Vulkan.

OpenGL was used more than MS DirectX and 3DFX Glide,

Vulkan has nothing to do w/ Cross platform plans, and more to do with performance and audience.

Vulkan has proven to render high object count scenes VERY well.

Vulkan is also Compatible w/ Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, where as DX12 forces everyone to update to Windows 10.

So if I get this right, my "aging" hardware will have more ooomps with Vulkan.

More frames for free, THAT is a good thing :)

so much mis-information.

 

Vulkan is Faster than DX12, in specific titles there's a performance drop, because the developer themselves did not code the engine to run efficiently on Vulkan.

 

OpenGL was used more than MS DirectX and 3DFX Glide,

 

Vulkan has nothing to do w/ Cross platform plans, and more to do with performance and audience.

 

Vulkan has proven to render high object count scenes VERY well.

 

Vulkan is also Compatible w/ Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, where as DX12 forces everyone to update to Windows 10.

 

 

And Thanks again Skate. Happy to see your signature here. :D

So if I get this right, my "aging" hardware will have more ooomps with Vulkan.

 

 

More frames for free, THAT is a good thing :)

There's no garauntee of a performance increase on any hardware, more so for older hardware, where performance is already low to begin with.

Vulkan is desiged to remove CPU overhead, so isers with CPU bottlenecks would see the biggest increase.

I have to chime in and share my thoughts on the potential of RTX...

The kind of reflections and shadows this hardware has made possible is kind of a flight simmer's wet dream.

Vulkan supposedly is implementing RT capability into the API.

I know we just had a major graphics overhaul and everything but.. I must say the thought of shadows behaving the way they do with RTX in DCS World would be topping on the cake.. seeing sunlight glint off cockpits in the distance and things of that nature just sound amazing.

These are things we've up to this point been told are impossible with today's hardware and suddenly, it's in the realm of possibility.

So while we may not see it in DCS the near future, it seems to me like game developers are already taking interest in this technology. And personally, I couldn't see a better place for it than the flight simming world.

I'm not holding my breath for something anytime soon, but I do have a tinge of hope that ED has their eye on technology's current course, and similar dreams.

From the way the NV CEO was talking, RTX tech could offer performance benefits to deferred rendering techniques as well, although it was only briefly mentioned and I don't want to speculate too much, especially with my limited knowledge of programming and rendering.

I'll leave my thoughts at that. I don't really have expectations, but this particular advance in tech has provided me food for thought. I do have to wonder, what the sim could look like IF the capability were coded.

Another hidden pearl as someone mentioned before would be to use ray tracing for calculation of radar returns as the same laws of physics apply. That would be unprecedented. But I'm not optimistic that it can be done within a year.

Another hidden pearl as someone mentioned before would be to use ray tracing for calculation of radar returns as the same laws of physics apply. That would be unprecedented. But I'm not optimistic that it can be done within a year.

I might be wrong on this, but I think the radar already uses "rays" to simulate radar beams. It's why ED's implementation of radar surpasses every other simulator's rendition.

Is it worth buying a RTX graphics card or should I buy a gtx at a much lower price?

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