Sascha Willems

I recently gave a talk on texture compression in Vulkan using Basis Universal and the KTX 2.0 format during this years Vulkanised online event. The short (15 minutes) talk contains some information on texture compression general, using texture compression in Vulkan and why a universal supercompressed format like Basis Universal is important. The presentation and a video recording of all the presentations from day 2, including mine, are now available: [Read More]

Release Version 3.04 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.195 (from 1.2.189), adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_KHR_maintenance4 VK_EXT_rgba10x6_formats VK_KHR_shader_integer_dot_product VK_EXT_primitive_topology_list_restart VK_EXT_pageable_device_local_memory VK_KHR_shader_integer_dot_product Support for PowerVR texture compression image format support This version also finally adds support for the PowerVR texture compression formats provided by the VK_IMG_format_pvrtc. [Read More]

Intro The Vulkan Hardware Database just got another large update, bringing some substantial new features, quality-of-life improvements and bugfixes. A large part of the code has been reworked to make it easier to maintain and expand, and also more secure. Reworked format support views The biggest change in functionality are the reworked format support views. Instead of a single view that would only tell coverage for “is a format supported linear/optimal tiling or buffers”, the listings have been split into separate listings for linear tiling, optimal tiling and buffer format support and now list device coverage by format and flag. [Read More]

Release Version 3.02 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.184 (from 1.2.175), adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_physical_device_drm VK_EXT_multi_draw VK_EXT_global_priority_query VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow VK_HUAWEI_subpass_shading VK_NV_ray_tracing_motion_blur VK_NV_external_memory_rdma VK_EXT_provoking_vertex VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state2 Queue family presentation support on Linux This version also fixes a long-standing issue with presentation support on Linux always getting reported as false. [Read More]

Release Version 3.01 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.2.175, adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions: VK_EXT_ycbcr_2plane_444_formats VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state VK_EXT_color_write_enable VK_KHR_synchronization2 VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory VK_KHR_workgroup_memory_explicit_layout VK_NV_inherited_viewport_scissor Queue family flags for Video encode and decode This version also adds support for the video decode and encode queue family flags that have been introduced with the provisional Vulkan Video acceleration extensions. [Read More]

New target platform - iOS Thanks to a contribution by the fine folks at LunarG, the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now also available on Apple’s iOS based devices. Adding the fifth supported platform, which means that the app is now available on almost every device supporting Vulkan. I have also unlocked the iOS for the database so you can now filter and search through Vulkan data for all iOS devices present in the database. [Read More]

Intro 2021 starts with a huge update for both the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer application and the accompanying Vulkan Hardware Database, bringing some long-awaited features along with many smaller changes, additions and improvements. Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.0 Update mechanism One of the most requested features was a proper update mechanism, that would allow users to update reports with stuff added in newer versions. This version finally adds such an update mechanism. [Read More]

New extension data features The Vulkan hardware database just got another big feature update, adding some long outstanding functionality mostly related to extension features and properties.The Vulkan hardware capability viewer got support for those some time ago, and the database already displays these for single reports. But up until now there were no listings on those extension related information. This meant it was not possible to filter devices based on that data. [Read More]

New extension data features The Vulkan hardware database just got another big feature update, adding some long outstanding functionality mostly related to extension features and properties.The Vulkan hardware capability viewer got support for those some time ago, and the database already displays these for single reports. But up until now there were no listings on those extension related information. This meant it was not possible to filter devices based on that data. [Read More]

Vulkan ray tracing extensions final specifications have been released The finalized specifications for the cross-vendor hardware accelerated ray tracing extensions have finally been released, after being available as a provisional extension for some time now. So Vulkan now has official cross-vendor, cross-os support for accessing hardware accelerated ray tracing features. A great overview can be found on the Khronos blog, along with a great article on how ray tracing works. [Read More]