Vulkan Support
closed
tupper
Vulkan support will allow for a lot fewer CPU bound issues. Vulkan offers lower overhead, more direct control over the GPU, and lower CPU usage.
Unity 5.6 has Vulkan support natively.
Log In
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
closed
As the person who opened this post, I'm going to close it. I didn't really know enough when I made this post (damn you, Dunning-Kruger). I no longer think swapping to Vulkan is a good idea.
Using Vulkan would offer very few benefits for a huge amount of work, including (but not limited to) the requirement of re-uploading every single bit of content that has ever existed on VRChat.
Aev
1001
Vulkan doesn't work with VR on mobile, this is expected to be added in Unity 2019.3, please don't switch to Vulkan, it is unfinished and in some cases slower than OpenGL, not to mention the problems with SteamVR
tammeeeǃ
1001: ah. you are referring to the Quest build.
I didn't mention it in my post but I was referring to the Windows build in my post. In the last phrase of your post you mention SteamVR problems. What kind of problems are you aware of regarding the combination of Windows, SteamVR, Unity and Vulkan?
1001
tammeeeǃ: Vulkan API is not currently supported for Oculus development on Unity and is known to crash the steamvr compositor amongst other problems
owlboy
1001: I'm not sure anyone is saying to ditch DirectX on Windows. - Just support Vulkan as a mode. And by supporting that mode it would mean the client is closer to supporting more platforms.
MehStrongBadMeh
owlboy: Unfortunately, supporting two modes on Windows would cause a lot of logistical problems. Users would have to essentially include DirectX and Vulkan versions of most shaders. As you can expect that most users won't include both versions we could have a situation where some worlds and avatars are only DirectX compatible and others are only Vulkan compatible.
owlboy
MehStrongBadMeh: But mac/PC/Linux asset bundles are cross platform right? If so, supporting Vulkan in your world/avatar in this possible context would mean you support more platforms than just an alternate option on windows if those clients existed. Right?
MehStrongBadMeh
owlboy: If Mac and Linux builds existed. Then it is theoretically possible to make the bundle cross platform, if using Vulkan or OpenGL. The issue of still allowing DirectX to be an option on Windows is that I am pretty certain it is impossible to switch Graphics API without restarting the application. Therefore a Windows user running VRChat in DirectX mode would not be able to see Vulkan-only content without switching to Vulkan and restarting VRChat (and repeating the process for DIrectX-only content). Forcing WIndows, Mac, and Linux builds to all use Vulkan would circumvent such a mess.
owlboy
MehStrongBadMeh: I see. I was assuming Vulkan only would not be a thing in this context, and would have very little reason for existing.
tammeeeǃ
Bump.
This could break some shaders that are tagged to be dx11 and opengles only I think. Still would be appreciated.
Implementation proposal for Windows builds from a rando who doesn't know much: build unity with the vulkan render but keep dx11 as default and allow use of vulkan through command line argument. Then in the next SDK release enforce vulkan shader support somehow or at least warn about it. After community testing and telemetry and crash report collection make it more accessible.
I believe this could definitely help performance in CPU limited situations caused by a high drawcall count since the vulkan render should be able to achieve higher throughput here.
Venclaire
Don't know if bumping exists, but this would be great to have in VRChat now with how complex avatars are getting.
This could also be a good idea if they plan to support the Oculus Quest.
MotoFckr9k
Vulkan support would make VRChat much more future proof.
VRChat could be ported to different operating systems and even more efficient cpu-architectures, if Unity was to support them in the future.
Wendy-chan
Vulkan is popping in a lot of future development teams for games and intel is pushing the use of Vulkan because it's "a significantly better API" or something, sure I vote this is a need.
Maybe it's just updating the game to a better version of unity LUL
Lhun
Lhun
This would be as acceptable as dx12 honestly. However, to not break shaders and such you would need to do a re-import pass on everyone's content as well as a find-replace for things you know don't work. Also make the engine an optional launch.
Tayou
that would be awesome, I already proposed linux support, wich would obviously be easyer to implement with vulkan. (all though I know, that the SteamVR unity api just runs on windows right now, while the unreal engine api has linux support,... but that will be added... hopefully)
Load More
→