Stardock CEO Explains Why DX12 And Vulkan Adoption Rates Are Low, Need Proper Documentation

DirectX 12 and Vulkan are supposed to be the wave of the future for PC gaming- that's what we've been told. But while the two APIs continue to be engaged in a fierce battle for supremacy, uptake on them by most developers has been... slow, to put it bluntly.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Interesting

[Bigpappy]

With Scorpio, you should see developers from EA, Ubi and Bathesda using it with games this E3.

[Godmars290]

If MS, as a game publisher, have been doing similar to they have with Xbox brand as PC, namely expecting 3rd parties to use DX 12 rather than make titles, then that goes some way in explaining why it hasn't become as common as it has.

[freshslicepizza]

@Godmars290

the ps4 and xbox one are both multiple core game systems, so they are both trying to advance in how games are created. microsoft is now trying to take it a step further, it just takes time for the industry to move forward. dx12 makes a lot more sense.

[Ju]

Further to where exactly?

[TheCommentator]

Godmars, can you explain how devs would use DX12 and not make games? Also, how does this explain why DX12 hasn't become popular? You're message is confusing.

Ju asked, further to where? Advanced physics and lighting renderers that run on dedicated HW.

FYI, native DX12 engines are becoming more common in retail releases now because devs have had enough time to make their games from the ground up with DX12 in mind. This year we're going to see a lot more 3rd party games make use of the API. Transitions from one API to the next don't happen overnight. MS gave the tools to devs 2 years ago, which is about the average production time for a video game.

[rainslacker]

Why are you guys talking about consoles? This is about PC's.

Xbox, the original and the soon to come Scorpio, will use DX12, or DX12.x depending on where they need to keep compatibility with DX11.

PS4 will use Sony's API, which is a OGL variant, that has had Vulkan features long before Vulkan was a thing, but still maintains it's own custom rendering pipeline.

DX12 and Vulkan haven't become "popular" yet, because like all changes to these API's, the hardware is well behind the release of the release of the API's. The lowest common denominator will always exist, and since the vast majority of PC gamers still use DX11 or older cards, there is no rush to push DX12 or a full Vulkan set, because most users won't actually be able to take advantage of it. That's why most games only use partial sets of DX12 or Vulkan, which are compatible with older hardware, or are fast enough through software implementation.

I'm not sure why this stardock guy thinks that they need better documentation. DX12 is well documented, nd Vulkan is open source, so everything is out there to see.

[badz149]

I think it's because nVidia is not fully on-board yet. It's common knowledge at the moment that nVidia cards are not gaining as much performance in DX12 compared to AMD's and Vulkan is AMD's. But nVidia has the bigger marketshare and it seems like their buyers aren't that eager for DX12

[Dabigsiebowski]

Oh wow yay. Thank you for describing why Nvidia has always and will always be like Intel...a ripoff to the consumers... Sure they have the "Fastest" product but it's stuff like this that should make more people turn a blind eye to them. What you described is just a small tiny tip on the iceberg to why the fail so hard yet sell so much it's almost sickening.

Thank god for AMD and I will always and I mean always buy from them. Most fanboys will tell you they are garbage but you see them with their head in the sand when you hear about the 3.5 970 or how much Intel purposely and refuses to fix a compiler that has been broken for years now. It's caused major setbacks in a number of projects. How many Skylake PC's out there are freezing and Intel is refusing to do a thing about it.

AMD on the other hand is always pushing the forefront in area where Intel and Nvidia refuse to touch. They deserve the respect that the other two shouldn't have.

[feraldrgn]

Remember when DX12 was supposed to be the Xbox One secret sauce?
Took them another console to get it working right.

[Fishy Fingers]

Nope? Perhaps because it was never about consoles/Xbox. I/anyone who bothered to read more than N4Gs headlines/comment section knows that.

Even PC threads cant avoid the immature console BS...

[slavish0]

Yep m$ has dx12 & Sony 16bitFP

[Ju]

Dx12 on the Scorpio just makes it easier to port to PC and back. But the HW commandbuffer in the Scorpio is the real deal - which the PCs don't have. And, well, vs lower draw calls in libgx and indeed FP16 ;)

[TheCommentator]

XB1 has the same DX12 HW as Scorpio (but Scorpio has other HW that XB1 doesn't), it's just that the proper engines to run DX12 code that are finally arriving with Scorpio. Turn 10 even stated that making games for Scorpio will make them look better on XB1 too. I prefer if you don't believe... it'll make it that much funnier when XB1 games have parity with their PS4 counterparts.

[hafitz]

The simple answer is because of multiplatform development. Easier to port on dx11.

[Ju]

That's not it. Multithreaded SW design is still a challenge in most instances. Especially if it comes to a render pipeline where one is used to issue sequential draw calls, and a clearly sequential render stages. This needs to be redesigned on an architectural level before one can just run away and write code. This is the real challenge - and then how the new APIs help/fit into this architecture.

[bolimekurac]

lazy devs is what we have now