D7VK brings Direct3D 7 to Linux using Vulkan based on DXVK

We've have DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for various versions of Direct3D on Linux, but now it seems we're also getting Direct3D 7 as well.

From the GitHub page the developer describes how it works:

A Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7, which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine. It uses DXVK's d3d9 backend as well as Wine's ddraw implementation (or the windows native ddraw) and acts as a proxy between the two, providing a minimal d3d7-on-d3d9 implementation. The project is currently in its early days. Expect most things to run, but not necessarily correctly or optimally.

The project has only recently had a first public release on GitHub (about two weeks ago), but a fresh update on November 5th should make it a whole lot better. As the developer said: "After focusing a bit on performance tuning, things are now anywhere between decent to stellar in most of the supported games".

Sounds like the intent is to keep it as a standalone project, and not merge it into DXVK. Pretty cool to see though, amazing for game preservation to get even more retro Windows games running and most importantly performing well on Linux where even modern Windows will likely struggle with some.

Pictured - Star Trek: Armada

It won't work with every Direct3D 7 game though, things were a bit messy back then with various APIs. The developers notes "d3d7 is a land of highly cursed API inter-operability, and applications that for one reason or another mix and match d3d7 with older ddraw (not ddraw7) and/or with GDI are not expected to ever work". With that in mind, it might also never be an official part of Proton (and certainly not Wine directly) - so this isn't some world-changing thing for Linux (or Steam Deck), but really cool to see anyway.

Going by PCGamingWiki, there's quite a number of games that use Direct3D 7.

You can find it on GitHub.