Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7 on Linux, D7VK has a 1.0 release out now

Bringing more classic gaming goodies with the Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7, D7VK 1.0 is out now for Linux.

From the GitHub page: "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."

In the release announcement the developer mentioned how they consider it "production ready" but not everything on it is quite finished, but it's good enough to run a whole bunch of games properly.

Pictured - Clive Barker's Undying

Some notes from the release announcement:

Why bother with D7VK at all?

The good (vs WineD3D):

• Anti-aliasing / D3DRENDERSTATE_ANTIALIAS support (you can also optionally force enable it)
• targeted performance fixes for bad behaving games (looking at you, 1NSANE)
• built-in frame caps for games known to break at high frame rates, or simply over 60 FPS (which is, sadly, quite common in D3D7)

The bad:

• A few missing D3D7 features, that I'll most likely add at some point in the future
• General WSI wonkiness on Wayland

The ugly:

• Quite a few remaining bugs
• A cursed design that by some miracle happens to work well enough in most cases

You'll still need to use WineD3D for:

• Earlier D3D and DDraw
• Games that make use of cursed legacy DDraw <-> D3D7 interop (thankfully, it didn't turn out to be entirely all that common)
• Its excellent general compatibility and feature coverage
• GPUs that don't support Vulkan 1.3

Amazing to see what the open source community comes up with.