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Vulkan API specification 1.2 released, new NVIDIA Vulkan Beta driver up

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Today, The Khronos Group has released the next big update the Vulkan graphics API specification with Vulkan 1.2 now available. This marks almost four years since 1.0 specification release.

Vulkan 1.2 pulls in 23 extensions into the core of the Vulkan API, bringing access to new hardware functionality, the possibility to improve performance and more. There's a lot of excitement around it, with multiple companies giving their support in the official press release here like Google for Stadia, Stardock Entertainment, NVIDIA, AMD, Arm, Intel and more.

"Vulkan 1.2 brings together nearly two dozen high-priority features developed over the past two years into one, unified core Vulkan standard, setting a cutting-edge bar for functionality in the industry’s only open GPU API for cross-platform 3D and compute acceleration," said Tom Olson, distinguished engineer at Arm, and Vulkan working group chair. "Khronos will continue delivering regular Vulkan ecosystem updates with this proven, developer-focused methodology to both meet the needs and expand the horizons of real-world applications."


Slides from their Launch Presentation.

The good news is that all existing GPUs that support Vulkan are capable of supporting Vulkan 1.2, ensuring no one gets left behind by it. The Khronos Group said that AMD, Arm, Imagination Technologies, Intel and NVIDIA all have Vulkan 1.2 implementations passing the Khronos conformance tests. You can follow their Vulkan 1.2 release tracker here.

NVIDIA, as expected, already have a brand new Vulkan Beta driver out for Linux at version 440.48.02 which pulls in Vulkan 1.2 support. This driver release also adds PRIME Synchronization support for Linux kernel 5.4 and newer.

AMD (RADV) and Intel (ANV) have their changes pulled into Mesa, ready for the next big open source driver release there for Mesa 20 which should be sometime in February/March.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Comandante Ñoñardo Jan 16, 2020
Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoAnd... there is a new Nvidia driver in the Ubuntu ppa

Wait, what? A Vulkan Beta driver in the PPA. First time that has ever happened and I'm wondering if this wasn't a mistake.

Or maybe they are improving the work with Ubuntu.
Changelog

nvidia-graphics-drivers-440 (440.48.02-0ubuntu0~~18.04.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release

 -- Rico Tzschichholz <email address hidden>  Wed, 15 Jan 2020 20:45:48 +0100
Ehvis Jan 16, 2020
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Just did a quick test, but the new Vulkan beta does not fix the recently introduced VR issue.
Mohandevir Jan 24, 2020
The new stable driver is 440.44... Yesterday, I tried running Shadow of Mordor's Linux Vulkan beta... Nope! Won't start. I get the loading ring on the black background, but it freezes dead at some point. Reverted to 435.21... No problem if not for the fact that my GTX 1660 Super is not recognized by this driver version.

Anyone else with this issue?
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