Vulkan seeks to standardize ray tracing technology in video games
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To date, only one retail game has offered support for Ray Tracing through Vulkan's API, Wolfenstein Youngblood.
Khrons seeks support from Nvidia, AMD and Intel for standardized Ray Tracing implementation in Vulkan
As things stand right now, the Vulkan API lacks support for Ray Tracing itself. Yes, Nvidia has released specific RTX extensions for Vulkan, but this support is exclusive to hardware and lacks the Ray Tracing multi-platform / multi-vendor support that Microsoft DXR offers.
At GDC 2020, the Khronos Group plans to discuss "Ray Tracing in Vulkan" with engineers from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. That's right, the top three PC GPU makers will be there. This makes perfect sense, as support for standardized Ray Tracing will require the support of multiple hardware vendors, and AMD, we know, intends to add this technology to future Radeon series graphics cards.
Unfortunately, we don't know what the Khronos 'ray tracing' implementation will look like. Still, given Khronos's recent moves with Vulkan 1.2, we assume that Vulkan will closely align with Microsoft and its DXR implementation. Vulkan 1.2 already supports HLSL (the DirectX shading language) with support for up to Shader Model 6.2. Support for Shader Model 6.3 will bring with it support for DXR HLSL code, and this code should be usable with Vulkan's planned Ray Tracing implementation.
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Why align so closely with Microsoft? The simple answer is that cross-platform game releases are likely to hit Microsoft's next-gen console, the Xbox Series X, and with that comes the need to use DirectX 12. Aligning with Microsoft when it comes to Ray Tracing will make it easier for developers use their existing code with Vulkan, or create new code that will work in both DirectX 12 and Vulkan.
At the moment, it is unknown when official Ray Tracing support will arrive in Vulkan, although we should expect more information from the GDC. We will keep you informed.
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