in development Vulkan API Discussion

Then I have nothing to add as I already expressed my complaints. Please keep us updated on your progress as much as you can, have a nice day.

I'm going to laugh my ass off when Vulkan drops and it makes no significant difference on our end. The wails and gnashing of teeth shall shake the forums!!! Hahaha you guys are always so funny

It makes some dev processes easier and makes gpu draw calls somewhat more efficient. It will not magically give you more magahurtz or make your discounted 950 gpu 3x more powerful.

I'm going to laugh my ass off when Vulkan drops and it makes no significant difference on our end. The wails and gnashing of teeth shall shake the forums!!! Hahaha you guys are always so funny

I play a few games with vulkan and it’s much smoother FPS but I don’t see much increase in FPS but it does run cooler and smoother no hitching or lock ups.

Oh yeah, performance stabilisation is entirely possible =) But some of these guys talk like they think it's going to upend the ecosystem and it.s just not. That's not how this stuff works lol Like I said before, went through this when Arma went to 64-bit. It made it more consistent, but nobody got a big boost out of it =)

Well vulkan is guaranteed to be better, how much better? Dont know but nvidia grafx cards can prolly expect less gains than an amd card, which is perfect since i ordered an rx 5700xt.

It makes some dev processes easier and makes gpu draw calls somewhat more efficient. It will not magically give you more magahurtz or make your discounted 950 gpu 3x more powerful.

Imagine thinking that the most vocal guys in the community are the poors. Hundreds upon hundreds shout for ED to fix their game because they CAN'T get it to run properly in VR REGARDLESS of the hardware used.

Well vulkan is guaranteed to be better, how much better? Dont know but nvidia grafx cards can prolly expect less gains than an amd card, which is perfect since i ordered an rx 5700xt.

There is no guarantee , only good chances.

I think that's why ED is keeping it low under radar.

Imagine thinking that the most vocal guys in the community are the poors. Hundreds upon hundreds shout for ED to fix their game because they CAN'T get it to run properly in VR REGARDLESS of the hardware used.

It's almost like it's hot off the press (infamously taxing, in a game already known for being taxing) tech being rigged up on the fly in a game that wasn't originally designed for it, or dare I say it, even existed when said game was originally created. My original comment had nothing to do with VR, but good job taking it out of context anyway!

The F-16 isn't the only thing we are working on, there are a great many things being worked on, including the future direction of the sim as a whole, but when there is news, we will be happy to share, right now, on this topic, there is simply nothing to share.

I just checked after about 1,5 years. Still same status. Aight, gonna check back in like early 2020 then :huh::huh:

Vulkan vs. what we have now?

What would be the difference between Vulkan and what we have now?

it's reasonable to assume better performance, since vulkan allows multithreading parts of the pipeline, where direct-x does not.

this will not make all of dcs run multi-threaded, but if done well it can spread out a little bit of the rendering load.

also vulkan offers some rendering techniques to give better performance when rendering dual viewports (as with vr), so one can hope for some improvments in this regard.

also since the switch to vulkan implies many changes under the hood, one can hope to see other improvments (visuals, features, performance), but those would not be vulkan specific.

There's already a thread on Vulkan & DCS:

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

Some sims that have migrated have seen good performance gains. But they are much simpler than DCS. So the answer is "it depends" largely on how well its implemented. In theory it could be substantially better, but that remains to be seen in practice. I think the main advantages would be offloading some of the core workload, things like strategic level AI/GCI and a few other things that don't have to be precisely "realtime" off onto other cores will allow the overall game to get better. But the unfortunate reality of flight sims is that you have to have to very tight and temporaly precise code.

The goal is to offload the primary core.

Basically if you notice points of low performance where the GPU is being under utilized, that's from the CPU not keeping the GPU fed. Most of the performance improvement should be in higher lows, unless you're entirely GPU limited. Its certainly a more prominent issue in VR.

Afaik Vulkan does not change DCS when it comes to threading. That is something ED has to work on in addition to implementing Vulkan. If i understand it correctly, the graphics API is not of primary concern when it comes to multithreading or the application scheduler.

The big issue with the Edge engine is of course how to make hundreds and hundreds of ai units and their actions/projectiles work together seamlessly when spread over multiple threads. And this type of stuff is apparently so difficult that to this day no generic way on the hardware level exists that unburdens game developers.

So i see adding Vulkan as one of the necessary steps to keep DCS relevant and Edge staying up to date, but that will mainly help a bit on the rendering side, probably not so much for the bigger issues of the job scheduler and multithreading. And that is something every dev has to implemnt for each engine and game, whether its DX 11 or Vulkan.

Afaik Vulkan does not change DCS when it comes to threading. That is something ED has to work on in addition to implementing Vulkan. If i understand it correctly, the graphics API is not of primary concern when it comes to multithreading or the application scheduler.

 

 

The big issue with the Edge engine is of course how to make hundreds and hundreds of ai units and their actions/projectiles work together seamlessly when spread over multiple threads. And this type of stuff is apparently so difficult that to this day no generic way on the hardware level exists that unburdens game developers.

 

 

So i see adding Vulkan as one of the necessary steps to keep DCS relevant and Edge staying up to date, but that will mainly help a bit on the rendering side, probably not so much for the bigger issues of the job scheduler and multithreading. And that is something every dev has to implemnt for each engine and game, whether its DX 11 or Vulkan.

My “belief” is that it’s not the game logic, but the graphics that really require the grunt.

When I normally fly, I use an old pc as my “server”, then join in multiplayer as a client.

Despite have a shed load of aircraft, ships, armoured vehicles and statics, my “server” typically uses less than 4GB of ram and around 50% of a single core to run DCS.

The implications being that my flight PC is able to devote nearly all its resources to graphics and local logic, and I still don’t get great frame rates.

If Vulkan can only spread out across cpu cores some of the graphics load, I do see that being a major benefit.

Afaik Vulkan does not change DCS when it comes to threading. That is something ED has to work on in addition to implementing Vulkan. If i understand it correctly, the graphics API is not of primary concern when it comes to multithreading or the application scheduler.

 

 

The big issue with the Edge engine is of course how to make hundreds and hundreds of ai units and their actions/projectiles work together seamlessly when spread over multiple threads. And this type of stuff is apparently so difficult that to this day no generic way on the hardware level exists that unburdens game developers.

 

 

So i see adding Vulkan as one of the necessary steps to keep DCS relevant and Edge staying up to date, but that will mainly help a bit on the rendering side, probably not so much for the bigger issues of the job scheduler and multithreading. And that is something every dev has to implemnt for each engine and game, whether its DX 11 or Vulkan.

My “belief” is that it’s not the game logic, but the graphics that really require the grunt.

When I normally fly, I use an old pc as my “server”, then join in multiplayer as a client.

Despite have a shed load of aircraft, ships, armoured vehicles and statics, my “server” typically uses less than 4GB of ram and around 50% of a single core to run DCS.

 

The implications being that my flight PC is able to devote nearly all its resources to graphics and local logic, and I still don’t get great frame rates.

If Vulkan can only spread out across cpu cores some of the graphics load, I do see that being a major benefit.

Read up on Vulkan and the API Features,

Vulkan is Low Overhead API, Not relying on the CPU to Process Commands Before Sending them to the GPU, thus removing a bottleneck from the workflow.

GPU Commands of the GFX Engine are sent directly to the GPU to process.

Vulkan also allows Parallel GPU Task Processing (So Does DX12), which allows more than one GPU Command to be processed by the GPU at the same time instead of waiting for one task to complete before moving to the next. Thus removing wait time for tasks.

DX11 is a high Overhead API w/ Multi-Threading GPU Support added late in it's life as a bypass until DX12 was done, but it's incredibly inefficient.

The more work the CPU has to process, the more backed up it gets, the more backed up it gets, the less work the GPU does, the more time it sits to idle.

The more objects it has to drawcall, the more effects and shaders it has to apply, the lower the GPU Usage and FPS.

This is a DX11 API Problem, Not a DCS Problem. the DX11 API Thread is Separate from DCS.

There are Several DX11 vs DX12 vs Vulkan Videos on YT.

Another Big reason to use Vulkan over DX12 is O/S Compatibility, Vulkan runs on Windows 7+, DX12 is only Supported on Windows 10 (using all the new features, MS recently released DX12 for Windows 7/8 Patches, but they limit DX12 to DX_11 Compatibility Modes. (Hence removing any benefit of running DX12 in the First Place.)

There's already a thread on Vulkan & DCS:

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

//MERGED

Another Big reason to use Vulkan over DX12 is O/S Compatibility, Vulkan runs on Windows 7+, DX12 is only Supported on Windows 10 ...

So, ED plans to release the Vulkan based DCS version before the end of support for Windows 7? :smilewink:

To be fair SkateZilla wrote 7+, but I worked on it for four hours and I had to post it.:D

Oops, I really forgot about Windows 8/8.1.

Anyway, Vulkan support before January 2023 confirmend. :D

 

To be fair SkateZilla wrote 7+, but I worked on it for four hours and I had to post it.:D

Who cares about Win7.....Linux support confirmed!!!! :P :smilewink:

Just because Microsoft plans to end support, doesn't mean people are going to immediately stop using it.