in development Vulkan API Discussion

[Dragon1-1]

Vulkan shouldn't actually appear different, or at least not initially. They just used a bit different postprocessing and perhaps a few FX that didn't make it into an update yet. Vulkan is all behind the scenes.

[Berniyh]

23 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Let me rephrase, there are no indications or confirmations that they will run side by side in the consumer release state.

Having them run side by side in a development environment is a different story.

True, but it would make sense to have them run side-by-side at the consumer level as well, just like ST vs. MT. The hardware and software configuration variability is just so much larger at the consumer level, so surely a lot of additional bugs will appear. Better to have the old API for comparison purposes available as well as as a backup plan for those that experience severe problems with Vulkan.

[Glide]

Big worlds in UE 5.

 

[Zebra1-1]

4 hours ago, Glide said:

Big worlds in UE 5.

 

 

? DCS does not use UE. 

[Glide]

1 hour ago, Zebra1-1 said:

? DCS does not use UE. 

Yes, but it's a brilliant talk about scaling and multithreading.

[Zebra1-1]

45 minutes ago, Glide said:

Yes, but it's a brilliant talk about scaling and multithreading.

Agreed.

Just not sure how relevant it could be to DCS's EDGE engine. But I know nothing about development or how any of that works. Would be nice to know though.

[Bucic]

I hope with the serious modernisation separation of some of the settings comes between the cockpit and outside. Especially for shadows!

[SkateZilla]

11 hours ago, Bucic said:

I hope with the serious modernisation separation of some of the settings comes between the cockpit and outside. Especially for shadows!

Or a lighting engine that does Atmophere light correctly, if done correctly, you dont need 2 separate lighting engines for different views.

[Gunslinger52]

What's the latest rumours on a date for the introduction of Vulkan?  

Will this make running DCS on Linux any better, or no change unless they actually released a Linux version of DCS?

 

[speed-of-heat]

There is no commitment to a date for Vulkan, and it won't make running in Linux functionally any easier as it will still be a windows binary

[kerlcat]

ED team’s seriously and publicly development on Vulcan started around 2019, right? And the current release version of 2.9.7 is to the edge of 3.0. Hard to believe Vulcan engine won’t be released with 3.0 in a few months. It’s my purely speculation or say…a strong wish.

But better to lower expectation on performance boost as ED warned, even it did come with 3.0. At least Vulcan has way better potential for performance and visual improvement. 

 

Edited August 29 by kerlcat

[SkateZilla]

42 minutes ago, kerlcat said:

ED team’s seriously and publicly development on Vulcan started around 2019, right? And the current release version of 2.9.7 is to the edge of 3.0. Hard to believe Vulcan engine won’t be released with 3.0 in a few months. It’s my purely speculation or say…a strong wish.

But better to lower expectation on performance boost as ED warned, even it did come with 3.0. At least Vulcan has way better potential for performance and visual improvement. 

 

 

EDGE 2.0 took upwards of 6+ years, and that was before multi-threading and other expanded system environments, DX9 to DX11 likely wasnt fully from scratch either, 
Vulkan is a completely different programming API than M.S. Dx, so everything is likely from scratch.

[kerlcat]

2 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

EDGE 2.0 took upwards of 6+ years, and that was before multi-threading and other expanded system environments, DX9 to DX11 likely wasnt fully from scratch either, 
Vulkan is a completely different programming API than M.S. Dx, so everything is likely from scratch.

Thanks for sharing. Understand nothing comes easy. Looking forward what will be the big thing in coming 3.0 w/ or w/o Vulcan.

[Berniyh]

6 hours ago, Gunslinger52 said:

Will this make running DCS on Linux any better, or no change unless they actually released a Linux version of DCS?

Maybe, yes. But DXVK is actually working quite well, so I'd expect about the same improvement as on Windows, performance-wise.

Afaik, the only Linux-specific issues related to rendering is that the textures in some maps and cockpits don't work, but I doubt that that will be fixed by an API change. Unless they change the texture (format?) as well during that change.

A Linux version I wouldn't expect in the near future, with the rendering API update and all the other major stuff they're changing, they've got enough work. The only thing we Linux users can hope for is that they look out for incompatibilities when running it with Proton/Wine, which seems to be more or less what they are doing now (as they're kind of supporting the SteamDeck).

[Bucic]

10 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Or a lighting engine that does Atmophere light correctly, if done correctly, you dont need 2 separate lighting engines for different views.

Is there a dedicated thread for that?

[DigitalEngine]

I'm hoping Vulkan will make DCS World "reasonably compatible" with Linux, and that ED has this ideal in mind, as I'm another one who will is ditching Windows. I'm fairly much done with MS and Gates and their BS.

[Berniyh]

1 hour ago, DigitalEngine said:

I'm hoping Vulkan will make DCS World "reasonably compatible" with Linux, and that ED has this ideal in mind, as I'm another one who will is ditching Windows. I'm fairly much done with MS and Gates and their BS.

It is already reasonably compatible. Reasonably as in "there are a few problems", but for the most part of it it runs very nicely.

It's described here how to get it running. The guide is for the Steam Deck, but it'll work similarly for plain Linux, if you setup Steam etc.:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/SteamDeck/

 

If you want to have a look what problems people may have seen, have a look at Proton DB and the DCS issue on the proton issue tracker:

https://www.protondb.com/app/223750

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1722

 

I'm not sure if there is a thread dedicated to DCS on Linux via Proton currently. iirc the old Linux thread was closed by a mod a couple of years ago.

[SkateZilla]

Changing to Vulkan doesnt change the fact that the core of DCS itself still runs on Microsoft's Libraries.

[Berniyh]

2 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Changing to Vulkan doesnt change the fact that the core of DCS itself still runs on Microsoft's Libraries.

Sure, but in the past it was often the rendering that was problematic and those problems are the type that pretty much everybody can spot, if there are graphical glitches, textures missing etc. Thankfully that has massively improved over the last 5 years, so rendering these days is rarely an issue. And if there isn't a translation layer like DXVK in between anymore (when the Vulkan API will be used by DCS), it might have further a positive impact, we'll see.

Libraries can be a problem, but usually there's relatively easy workarounds, like those described in the Steam Deck guide linked above, because for Wine/Proton, you can drop in native Windows dlls to be used. You can even install whole packages like the .Net stuff to be used by programs/games to achieve compatibility.

The most problematic kind of stuff right now when running Games on Linux is kernel-level anti cheat systems. If you're game has one of those, it's likely that it'll be borked completely, because those dig so deep into Windows that it'll be next to impossible to run that on another kernel. Personally, I'd argue that you shouldn't touch anything that comes with those with a ten-foot pole, but I do get that some of those games are really popular and that cheating in online games can be a huge issue. Thankfully, afaik, DCS doesn't use stuff like that.

[Gunslinger52]

Will Stand Alone DCS run just as well as the Steam version?  I always seen to see people talking about the Stream version with reference to Proton

[SkateZilla]

17 minutes ago, Gunslinger52 said:

Will Stand Alone DCS run just as well as the Steam version?  I always seen to see people talking about the Stream version with reference to Proton

Outside of the Marketplace back end,
Steam's distribution is the exact same files.

[Berniyh]

8 hours ago, Gunslinger52 said:

Will Stand Alone DCS run just as well as the Steam version?  I always seen to see people talking about the Stream version with reference to Proton

Proton is designed for use with Steam, so that's definitely the easiest variant to run DCS on Linux. However, it is possible to use Proton outside of Steam, it's just a bit more effort. So in principle, it should be possible. And, since Proton is basically Wine with some special extensions and scripting magic, it should be doable with plain Wine (+ extensions like DXVK).

As an alternative to Steam, there is the free and open source game manager Lutris, which also provides Lutris recipe for DCS Standalone:

https://lutris.net/games/install/15006/view

However, I haven't tried that, because I have always used DCS via Steam, so I cannot comment on whether that works or not.

[speed-of-heat]

Sorry guys, this is not the how to enable Dcs to run on Linux thread... Do you want to take it to a separate discussion thread that people will be able to discover.

[Berniyh]

27 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

Sorry guys, this is not the how to enable Dcs to run on Linux thread... Do you want to take it to a separate discussion thread that people will be able to discover.

Agreed, let's get back to Vulkan.

[Zebra1-1]

Keep in mind that the first release with Vulkan won't bring much, if any, of a performance improvement. Per Wags, the initial release is to get Vulkan out in the open and shift development/maintenance in that direction. Performance improvements will follow and happen over time as it gets polished.