Vulkan Renderer

[Tiger]

Just a question; is there any chance that GZDoom's video renderer switches over to the Vulkan engine instead of the OpenGL engine in the later future?

http://www.neowin.net/news/khronos-grou ... -to-opengl

[Graf Zahl]

In the later future, certainly, but right now it makes no sense. The system requirements to use Vulkan seem to be higher than anticipated and my current graphics card is one generation too old.
And considering that 20% of GZDoom downloads are still the 1.x branch, it should be clear that adoption of compatible hardware is still far too low. If this happened one of the two existing branches would have to be abandoned, but abandoning 1.x would leave 20% of GZDoom's users behind and abandoning 2.x would force approx. half of its users to the lower version.

I think this can be done when use of 1.x has reduced to less than 5% and adoption of compatible hardware is high enough, but in a retro gaming community that may well take 3 to 5 years.

[Gez]

Exactly, the very fact GZDoom needs to keep an older branch around for older hardware is proof enough that a Vulkan version of the renderer is something that will have to wait for several years -- possibly more than five, IMO.

[Graf Zahl]

I'd also like to see Vulkan mature a bit. That thing is brand spanking new so some initial problems are to be expected.