Rachael wrote:Another thing that I think does not get a lot of consideration is besides the obvious performance advantages (which probably won't improve common major CPU chokes like 20000 2-sided linedefs in a single scene), what are the real benefits to moving to Vulkan? What does it support that OpenGL does not, and will that be critical in the future?
I myself am
definitely not the most knowledgeable on the subject of Vulkan versus OpenGL - but I can say for sure that I am an advocate of it being used for the future because if GZDoom were to really become a full on-its-own engine soon, Vulkan would
hands-down overtake OpenGL for some of the stuff like shaders and any other postprocessing. It is not only that, but it does have the drastic performance advantages that can really allow people with heavy rigs to completely have the best performance over any of the other ports that are currently available with OpenGL. I can guarantee that Graf knows much more on the subject anyways and I am certain that is the type of topic he should discuss with the other developers on.
Rachael wrote: But features cannot always depend on one person's hardware.
I believe Graf deserves the mindfulness of being able to have remote access to your computer as a makeshift work space with Vulkan and all of that — and it certainly is very generous of you to offer that opportunity Rachael! We all—as the community—want the developers to have the comfort of being able to get things implemented and try to do it in a way that makes both (QZDoom and GZDoom) source ports happy. And from my point-of-view, I think Graf should absolutely take this opportunity and take advantage of it instead of having us all wait until September for him to even begin implementing stuff for Vulkan.
Rachael wrote: Supporting what will essentially be an additional renderer, at this point, is a pretty shaky prospect by itself. I have no doubt that if anyone can pull that off, you can - but even still, that's a LOT of different code that in the end will all be doing much the same thing: presenting some sort of 2.5D map on the screen.
If he is willing to work with it as well and is showing the interest, then he will indubitably be able to pull it off for sure! My standpoint has and always will be that if the developers can provide anything that will make improvements and especially drastic ones, then I (and probably a good portion of the community) certainly will want it to be an addition/omission for whatever it takes to make the improvement.