I don't think it's going to be a runaway success, more of a "Rome wasn't built in a day" situation. It could create a a viable PC gaming alternative for the living room. I don't think initially this will be as compelling an option for most people compared to the consoles, but if they keep applying pressure with it, year after year, it could really disrupt things (which would be good for everyone). Pushing Linux gaming in an environment that has been dominantly Windows for decades is no small task. I think Steamboxes have a ton of potential, but it's likely going to take a long time to hit it.
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Valve throws it's weight behind Vulkan.
- Thread starter cageymaru
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It may be the lead development platform, but it is not any longer the lead target platform. All major technology companies (including Microsoft) are now developing mobile-first, and gaming companies are already or will soon be following.
+1 to Hornet for this post
That can't be stressed enough. Just because some hardcore gamer doesn't care about DOTA 2, doesn't mean it is irrelevant. Last count was 42.9 million installs and 10.9 million monthly active users, making it one of the most successful video games of all time. Right up there with Mario, Minecraft and Wii Sports.
They're actually a pile of shit.
I never really understood the hard-on for MS. All of their software is mediocre but people mistake popularity for quality.
I mean, McDonald's burgers are top-notch too. Would you dare to argue with 17 trillion served?
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One is hardly the same as the either.
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Porting a game because it is a money minting machine makes sense. Valve are just greedy assholes. They need to just shut the f up and go back to be simpletons trying to make money off anything. Next you know you will be charged for writing a review on steam or they will have coca cola ads running in their horrible steam interface.
"Why is Valve so focused on the macro level of making billions when they can focus on one game and make a few million"
Just to play devil's advocate thats what every HL3 tantrum reads like. We all want it, but Newell has said a hundred times that making SP games is wasted effort and not compelling for them anymore given the insane popularity of Multiplayer. I disagree with him somewhat in that he may not be factoring the obscene PR value of a HL3 though, which is worth more than the sales revenue from copies sold.
Anyway let's wait until November before we count first party Valve games out. If there isn't at least an L4D3 announcement for the SteamOS launch then I'll really think Valve is bipolar in terms of claiming they want to get a platform off the ground but not doing everything they possibly can.
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Semantics
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Ever deal with their customer support it's like we killed their dog.
Ahh Glide and Diablo 2. I bought a Voodoo 4 4500 AGP when I bought D2. It was my foray into this glorious hobby. I needed something with hardware T&L. The card was actually recommended by the support guy at blizzard. When I had the overlay map toggled, the game fell on its face. One call to support, a recommendation, and I was living the high life. Rest is history
Ashbringer
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Well developers are saying the reason AMD cards respond better to DX12/Vulkan is because of Async Compute. It's like the difference between a In-Line CPU vs a Out-of-Order CPU. Pretty big.
Also Anandtech released benchmarks of Fable Legends which is an exclusive DX12 game.
cinnamonandgravy
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and as of 2014, angry birds has been downloaded over 2 billion times, and have 200 million people playing every month.
must be the best game ever
Hornet
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and as of 2014, angry birds has been downloaded over 2 billion times, and have 200 million people playing every month.
must be the best game ever
What makes a good game is subjective depending on each individual's interest, but I don't think it that has anything to do with the subject of API. What makes an API successful doesn't depend on what each individual think about the quality of a particular game, but it has more to do with the adoption of said API.
DOTA 2 is a huge multiplayer game, an genre that makes up a huge portion of the gaming industry. If Valve can take that success over to an open standard API and show the kind of advantage it has for such a multiplayer game, the industry will pay attention. There are many companies out there that develops multiplayer games who are aiming for things like reaching out to as many people as possible, lowering the development cost as much as they can, etc. If Vulcan can be proven to be easy to develop for, and can reach out to multiple platforms without additional cost for example, that will be what it needs to attract other developers.
twonunpackmule
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This has been the exact thing I've been saying. Anyone thinking it's going to be an overnight success is fooling themselves. However, Valve has the resources and the has shown to understand the market pretty well. They are filling out a void that is wanting to be filled. MS is obviously trying to direct their course towards this too. Valve just needs to make sure they work out their OS to the point of perfection. I want an OS that is incredibly simple and doesn't open up multiple windows to run a game. But, if I need robust power user functions, it should be able to supply it in the backend.
twonunpackmule
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There really needs to be a successful engine built off it. Basically, a Unreal 4, or Unity to really drive the adoption. Once that's in place, I can't imagine people not wanting to adopt it.
5150Joker
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I agree with the notion that mobile games and perhaps DOTA will get people to pay attention to Vulkan. However, in DOTAs case, it won't happen on the steambox but rather Windows. Gamers are also very lazy, they won't bother installing SteamOS over Windows for a few frames per second.
As an ex Windows user that has pretty much switched entirely over to Linux I think this is a great concept. The only thing I use my Windows machine for these days is BF4, everything else, including gaming as most of my favourite games have native Linux ports, I do on my Linux PC.
Freedom of choice in relation to gaming needs is defiantly a positive step in the right direction IMO.
Freedom of choice in relation to gaming needs is defiantly a positive step in the right direction IMO.
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My take is that vulkan is the reason valve is doing steambox. When you have a api where products can be released on multi-platforms with minimal effort, you will see less and less games that are exclusives to either pc or consoles. And when you have two platforms that has the same games, ability to run mods, buy a system that can be upgraded to keep up without buy a new console, and open to a shit ton of peripherals... Steambox has a lot of potential. Let me ask console gamers this. Which would you buy? A ps4 that will be replaced with a new ps in a few years, or a ps4 that can be upgraded as time goes on? This is also what I love about amd a series platform. If you can get a decent running steambox on an a10-8xxx apu, with the ability of adding a video card if needed down the road, that's would be ideal for a switch from console to pc. With the steamos interface, I see this being marketed to consolers pretty heavily. If you can get a cut of the console market without any or minimal effort with releasing games for pc and steamos, there is a substantial potential for growth. Plus the fact that licencing for releasing games on the pc is a lot cheaper, this will be a more viable solution for developers.
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In which case, they'll still be glad it's on Vulkan because they can play with their Linux buddies too.
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And to voice my two cents (because fuck it) - bring on Vulkan! I don't want Windows 10. Technically, there's no reason that Windows 7 can't run DX12. So I would love to see Vulkan rise up and be the prominent graphics API.
Finally watched the video of the conference. Super impressive. It makes it apparent that DX12 is basically a non-portable, closed edition of Vulkan that only runs on one version of one platform.
The guy from NVIDIA's Vulkan driver team showing a demo on Windows and then showing the *same* code running on Android was very cool. The code has Java-like portability but with all the benefits of a bare metal API. The footprint of GPU drivers is way smaller so IHV's can iterate faster and expose new features faster. No more need for "day one" game drivers from Nvidia/AMD since all that optimization is shifted to the game developer. With so many contributing to Vulkan I reckon it'll also be able to iterate new features faster than whatever MS's team can do for DX12.1+.
Really looking like this revolution is shaping up well, especially when factoring DX12 will really need 1-3 years before a critical mass of pure DX12 titles. There's going to remain a big enough pool of customers hanging back on Windows 7 that developers will have to think twice about pure DX12, and either go DX11 for one more development cycle or go Vulkan and hit everything.
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Very good commentary. And I agree. I really hope that Vulcan takes off.
75 million as of a month ago is a pretty large customer base. Plus Windows 7 will be sunset in 4 years forcing a great deal more onto the 10 platform. It's business me boy and no matter how much you think that Linux or staying with 7 is viable eventually the majority of consumers (that would use DX12, *see those who are still using XP) will be on the platform supporting DX12.
SteamOS is a massive failure. No other Linux variety has taken hold after decades. Windows will dominate and continue to for the foreseeable future. Developers will go to where the money is and most likely that will be DX12, . Vulkan isn't the first API to challenge.
You also forgot one of the most important factors - Xbox runs on "DX12" allowing reach to a captive audience on top of the PC crowd. Unless Vulkan can easily be ported to PS4, which please inform me if it can, add at least 10 million absolute costumers to that base.
I'm not saying I support this by any means, it's just the way it is. We can all cheer for the market disruptors, they just do not often succeed.
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Not sure if trolling or serious. I am not sure you know the point of steamos. It's not going to be heavily marketed towards pc gamers, and steambox and controllers have Not been released yet. Why would pc gamers greatly adopt something that already runs on their pc, but with less functionality and still in beta? Also I am sure that vulkan will be on windows. If it is, there is no point in developing for both vulkan and dx12 especially if you have to pay license fees to distribute dx12 games. And also, with the ability to be used on the ps4, that will give developers more insentive reason to not support Xbox. If I can release a game with no real effort for ps4, pc, and steambox while it take more effort, which cost money, and have to pay more To release on Xbox because of licensing... Why would I have any thing to do with Xbox?
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Only a few years ago gaming on Linux was literally unheard of with the exception of a few enthusiast ported titles. Now the number of titles on steam under Linux is up over 1000 titles and growing all the time, and it won't be long before the number of titles available for Linux is right up there with the number of titles available for OSX - I wouldn't be at all surprised if Linux eventually surpasses OSX as a gaming platform.
On top of that the Linux user base is growing all the time as distro's become more fully featured, easier to install and driver support grows - Nvidia drivers have jumped ahead in leaps and bounds, no doubt in part due to Valve's push towards Linux gaming.
Five years ago I gave Linux a go and gave up as the transistion from Windows to Linux was just too big a step, two years ago I decided to give Linux another shot and I now run Linux Mint 17.2 pretty much full time and love it - Literally the only time I fire up my Windows PC is to have a game of Battlefield 4, everything, and I mean everything else is done under Linux - And the best thing is I don't have to worry about viruses and malware simply through surfing the web any more!
Didn't read through all the replies here. But while it is always nice to have options, the problem with the comment there is that Vulkan (like OpenGL) is not competing against DirectX. You still need sound, you still need input... OpenGL books and tutorials used to always point you to use DirectX for everything except for the graphics and leave that part to OpenGL. The problem is that in doing so you area left with something that can't be ported outside of Windows as you are still using that for everything else. Here you will have a similar issue. So you use Vulkan for graphics. What about everything else? Do you code your own API for sound, input and everything else or do you find a different cross platform API for those that will give you the same level of flexibility.
So looking at that by itself, I don't know if I would say that you shouldn't use DX12 as your back end, but like was the case for awhile you have another option for replacing Direct3D
So looking at that by itself, I don't know if I would say that you shouldn't use DX12 as your back end, but like was the case for awhile you have another option for replacing Direct3D
Xbox isn't that big. Of course it matters somewhat, but I reckon there are still many more Windows 7 gamers than Xbox gamers.
PS4 hardware is certainly capable, and WCCFtech hinted as much in the article that the PS4 might see Vulkan support in the future. Of course the decision lies with Sony, but I don't see a reason for them to reject Vulkan.
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Considering both ps4 and xbone share the same architect as pc, I don't see why not.
Support discontinuing for Windows 7 in 2020 isn't going to force people onto Windows 10 anymore than all those XP users were "forced" to go Windows 7 or 8. That said, a lot can change in five years, and not necessarily in Microsoft's favor. A paradigm shift in cross-platform graphics API is a little bigger than simply "a few people switching to Linux".
Newsflash: SteamOS hasn't launched yet. Because by that logic, Xbox One and PS4 were also massive failures before they launched. It's development is simply happening more transparently than when developers were given early access to Xbox One & PS4 devkits under NDA. You're right that devs will go where the money is, which is why Vulkan makes more sense. If you're a developer, do you choose an API that supports Windows 10 (75-100mil) and Xbox One (14mil), or one that supports not only Windows 10 (75-100mil), but adds Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, MacOSX (hundreds of millions collectively) plus potentially PS4 (26+ million), and Android (BILLIONS)?
You're also right that Vulkan isn't the first API to challenge DirectX, but it is the first with this much industry muscle and enthusiasm behind it, involving heavyweights too big and too numerous for Microsoft to simply bully or pay off again:
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"DX12 on Xbox" = marketing bulletpoint, the same way "Windows 10 on Xbox" means nothing in practical terms. Because how does Halo 5, Forza6 or any other Xbox exclusive being DX12 benefit PC if we can't play them? No, in-home streaming doesn't count since it still requires an Xbox. MS can't have it both ways, trying to sing "We're all one platform now!" rainbow kumbaya while quietly continuing the business-as-usual practice of keeping titles off of PC.
14 million consoles is a drop in the bucket compared to the collective devices Vulkan can potentially power: BILLIONS between Mobile, PC/x86 and potentially PS4 worldwide. DX12 will need a fuck of a lot more than 14 million Xboxen to hang its hat on. Windows 10 uptake has also stalled as awareness has grown over the privacy issues.
I actually can see MS come crawling back to PC with Halo 5, Forza 6 and other Xbox exclusives when they get desperate, but in typical fashion, they'll be doing it too late. The time for the killer app to push Windows 10 and its App Store was _now_. A cartoon F2P is most certainly not that killer app.
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5150Joker
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Microsoft has ironically been the one to hurt PC gaming by creating the Xbox IMO. Games like Halo were kept off the PC and many others were gimped because of the Xbox 360 and now Xbox One. Their sad attempt at unifying the platform involves playing console games on the PC under the Xbox Live umbrella...NO THANKS! Hopefully Vulkan + alternative OSs do take off so I can drop Windows 10 if not for gaming then for the sake of privacy.
Semantics
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You don't see a reason?
1 sony already invested heavily into their developer tool set
2 It's a console with already close to metal considerations built into the api, very little perform gain to be had if any.
3 sony would never want to give up control of their consoles software
Angry birds is great and all but i don't care about pushing the graphical limits of mobile games with shitty mobile controls. Also windows 10 already has 75 million installs bro...
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The call is on the developers. They could force ps4 to use vulkan by massively adopting the api.
I'm sure "angry birds" seemed relevant here, but if you think that's the cutting edge of 3D graphics advancement happening in mobile, you haven't been paying attention. Its coming along pretty rapidly as mobile processors continually get more powerful. That's why ARM is so heavily involved in pushing Vulkan. Hell, ARM's director of graphics research is one of the chairs of Khronos. Intel's involved for the same reasons.
And bro you do realize Vulkan will also run on Windows 10, yes? In addition to 7 and 8 and everything else mentioned. Why should developers limit themselves to one closed API for only one version Windows, when Vulkan will let them hit everything?
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D
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That's actually a REALLY impressive list of companies behind this. They pretty much cover all aspects of technology there. (Microsoft is on the list too.) Very interested to see what happens with this.
I gotcha, but consider that having to do a ton of custom coding for every different device is a big part of what held back OGL. Too. Much. Trouble. Vulkan removes that problem - copy/paste code from one platform to another and it just runs. Something to consider, because developers will.
If you review the actual history, DirectX prevailed mostly due to Microsoft strongarm tactics. To quote one of the key DirectX engineers that helped create the API at Microsoft in '97 (but stated this retrospectively in 2013):
This time Microsoft doesn't have much leverage. Instead of a couple lowly IHV's, this time its more like 100 companies including every major consumer electronics heavyweight that have expressed interest in going a different route. Best MS will be able to do is pathetically start auto-installing Windows 10 onto non-domained Windows 7 machines after stealth-changing the EULA - they've already staged the installation files on Windows 7 PC's that never asked for 10, so not exactly an impossible leap to consider.
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Semantics
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It's not terribly impressive it's quite expected Vulkan will become quite dominate just not in games, look everywhere openGL is and think well Vulkan could be used there and that pops up alot of software but relatively few games. It's not as if Vulkan huge departure from the horrible shader handling of OpenGL means much considering OpenGL was backed by AMD, Nvidia and Intel all who would have a hand in improving performance if they really wanted to. It's not as if Direct3d is used much outside of games.