Support Vulkan graphics API

[TheJJ]

Required Skills: Vulkan, C++

Difficulty: Hard

Of course we want to support the new shit out there: https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

The Vulkan implementation should use the existing low-level renderer interface and provide an alternative to our existing OpenGL backend. The OpenGL code can be used as a guideline for the Vulkan stuff. Most things will be similar but we obviously want to take advantage of advanced Vulkan features wherever we can :)

Further Reading

• openage renderer documentation
• Vulkan Tutorial
• Vulkan Specs & Resources from Khronos

[franciscod]

and drop sdl on the way there, or maintain both graphics backends?

[inakoll]

Is SDL used in openage to do software rendering? Anyway if you are considering to drop SDL you might want to have a look at SFML.

[franciscod]

I don't know if all we do with graphics is direct OpenGL or we use SDL methods (ignoring initializing the window and stuff)

[TheJJ]

SDL just provides the glx window and input. We really shouldn't drop it as Valve is breathing in SDL's neck and SDL will surely get vulkan support very soon.

We render all things with regular opengl to the context sdl creates for us. With vulkan, we'd just have a different context.

[franciscod]

mfw valve hires every openage contributor because of vulkan support

(best viewed with this)

[TheJJ]

Btw the preparations for this are happening in #287. We can do runtime switching between OpenGL and Vulkan then.

[TheJJ]

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/ the specification is finally released :dancers: https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/refguide/Vulkan-1.0-web.pdf https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/apispec.html

[VelorumS]

I need the drivers now.