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One Wine related project I completely missed writing anything about is DXVK [GitHub], a Vulkan-based compatibility layer for Direct3D 11 for use with Wine.

I've been keeping an eye on it, but I only realised today I've not even put up even a most basic article letting people know it exists. It's seeing rather fast-paced development too, with a new version being released only yesterday.

The latest release has added in: Improved support for deferred contexts, Initial support for some D3D 11.1 features, Clipping and Culling planes, an on-disk pipeline cache and more.

It's intended to work with Wine 3.4, to hopefully give you better performance in certain games run through Wine. It's like the VK9 project [GitHub], which is aimed at Direct3D 9 although DXVK has more people working on it and much faster development.

I'm now subscribed to their feed, so I will keep up to date on each new release as it comes in.

It's interesting to see what will become of this, since the Wine developers are working on their own Vulkan implementation.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Vulkan, Wine
18 Likes
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razing32 Mar 26, 2018
This is interesting
Did not know about the D3d9 one.
Methinks more games shall run soon :)
lejimster Mar 26, 2018
Still quite buggy at this stage, but some games do perform well already.

I like my Blizzard games, and it seems to be more fluid using DXVK than gallium-nine on Diablo III... But there are some visual bugs that need fixing.

I tried Quantum Break also which launches but is pretty slow in game right now 10-20 fps.

I've thought about trying this with Dying Light as I can't get the native Linux version to launch.

One thing to mention is you really need to be using the latest mesa-git and radv-git drivers if you're an AMD user, I was getting some weird glitches on the stable branch.


Last edited by lejimster on 26 March 2018 at 9:19 am UTC
silmeth Mar 26, 2018
QuoteIt's interesting to see what will become of this, since the Wine developers are working on their own Vulkan implementation.
If you mean that Wine people are working on their D3D-on-Vulkan implementation – that’s true, but they are not doing the same. DXVK implements D3D11 on Vulkan. Wine’s VKD3D is to implement D3D12-on-Vulkan (basically the exact reverse of what Vulkan Portability Initiative tries to achieve), and Vk9, as you wrote, is to implement D3D9-on-Vulkan.

Three projects, and every one of them tries to implement a different version of D3D API.

I only wonder if Windows applications can call to multiple D3D versions simultanuously to draw on the same context, and if so, how it can be handled by such projects (does D3D11 implementation have to implement D3D9 and everything below too?). And if so, can all the D3Dx-on-Vulkan projects share code? As I have almost no experience with GPU programming and absolutely none with DirectX, I have no idea – but it’s something that, in my not educated enough mind, seems like a potential problem.


Last edited by silmeth on 26 March 2018 at 9:25 am UTC
silmeth Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: GuestAny chance this will get included in the wine-staging project? so far it seams a pain in the ass to install as it is.
Installing DXVK is pretty easy. It’s just pasting two dlls to wine prefix / application directory and setting library overrides in wine.

The problematic part is not directly related to DXVK – it is setting up Vulkan support in Wine itself (which needs Windows Vulkan SDK installed and set up). I think with time Wine will handle it somehow more automatically (probably like installing Gecko and Mono?), but for now they did not figure out how to do it properly.


Last edited by silmeth on 26 March 2018 at 10:27 am UTC
Leopard Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: lejimsterStill quite buggy at this stage, but some games do perform well already.

I like my Blizzard games, and it seems to be more fluid using DXVK than gallium-nine on Diablo III... But there are some visual bugs that need fixing.

I tried Quantum Break also which launches but is pretty slow in game right now 10-20 fps.

I've thought about trying this with Dying Light as I can't get the native Linux version to launch.

One thing to mention is you really need to be using the latest mesa-git and radv-git drivers if you're an AMD user, I was getting some weird glitches on the stable branch.

I can run Dying Light native without problems on Nvidia binary. If you are a Mesa user , you must force OGL version to 4.5 via launch options.
Liam Dawe Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: silmethThree projects, and every one of them tries to implement a different version of D3D API.
True enough, I would have thought the Wine developers would eventually move to do more with Vulkan, but perhaps if they integrate stuff like this when it's more mature they won't need to themselves for other parts of D3D.
nox Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: lejimsterI've thought about trying this with Dying Light as I can't get the native Linux version to launch.
Hello fellow vega 56 user!
Just force the gl version:
MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.4 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=440 %command%

:)
drlamb Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: nox
Quoting: lejimsterI've thought about trying this with Dying Light as I can't get the native Linux version to launch.
Hello fellow vega 56 user!
Just force the gl version:
MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.4 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=440 %command%

:)

I need to try this tonight as currently nothing happens. Sometimes I'll get the splash box but then it immediately crashes.


Last edited by drlamb on 26 March 2018 at 12:35 pm UTC
Shmerl Mar 26, 2018
dxvk had amazing progress. Some features though are quite hard to implement, such as stream output, because Vulkan lacks comparable functionality. So that's still in the TODO list.

Overall performance is very good, unlike with wined3d which now currently is bugged by buffer mapping issues (but Wine developers are working on it).

For TW3, in the wilderness, dxvk gives 65+fps:


In areas with many NPCs, it gives 55+fps:


That's without vsync, 1920x1200, Vega 56 8GB VRAM.


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 March 2018 at 1:15 pm UTC
lejimster Mar 26, 2018
Quoting: LeopardI can run Dying Light native without problems on Nvidia binary. If you are a Mesa user , you must force OGL version to 4.5 via launch options.
Quoting: nox
Quoting: lejimsterI've thought about trying this with Dying Light as I can't get the native Linux version to launch.
Hello fellow vega 56 user!
Just force the gl version:
MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.4 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=440 %command%

:)

Thanks, but I guess I should have been more specific. It appears to be an Arch issue that only effects Mesa users. I think some other distros suffer the same problem. I tried for hours different work arounds, even following GloriousEggroll's snap package guide and it still wouldn't launch :'(.
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