The Still New What Did You Last Do Thread

[InsanityBringer]

I have a question for people smarter than me: Is there a particular reason why Vulkan makes you specify blending information for literally every color attachment in all subpasses this pipeline is going to be for, even though by default they literally all must be identical and can only be different if you explicitly use a specific feature?

I'm still slowly on the vulkan grind, and as I got my renderpasses and subpasses set up, things felt like they were making sense, but I am at a complete loss with how I can even remotely begin to sanely encapsulate Pipeline objects with all sorts of weird bits like this.

[dpJudas]

This is because older GPU hardware doesn't support per-attachment blending (glBlendFunci is an OpenGL 4.0 feature). In vulkan that means that you must first check if the device supports a feature. Then you must also explicit opt-in that you want the feature.

Note that you don't actually have to use the subpass feature of vulkan (GZDoom doesn't). The way GZDoom renders is like this: begin render pass -> bind pipeline for no blend -> draw triangles -> bind pipeline for alpha blend -> draw triangles -> end render pass. The pipelines all work on any render pass as long as the attachments used are compatible with the frame buffer images used by the render pass.

The subpass thing is an optimization primarily for mobile GPUs. I really wouldn't bother unless you're already very used to working with vulkan.

[Captain J]

I've been struggling hard mentally but it feels so satisfying to finish the animation within 2 weeks.

EDIT:

Yeah, still got it.

[Enjay]

Had the chance to play for a few hours on an Oculus Quest. Mostly played Star Wars games but also some stuff on set on the ISS and a few other things too. Very immersive - more so than I expected. I particularly enjoyed scenes where I was interacting with other characters because, unlike on a monitor, they are the right size (i.e. full size) and really seem like they are standing right next to/in front of you. I also kept wanting to lean on scenery (like a bar, or some rocks, or the console of a space ship) but, obviously I couldn't. I didn't actually fall over though. I also didn't get motion sickness, which surprised me because I am quite susceptible to it on some forms of transport.

All in all, a very good, fun experience but ultimately, I feel, a novelty and a luxury that costs quite a bit and the decent games are also relatively expensive if you look at £/$ per hour of playable time that they provide. So I won't be rushing out to get one but when they come down in price, I might reconsider.

[Nash]

With the cost/time factor, I would only consider VR games that are known to have hundreds of hours worth of gameplay - the Skyrim and Fallout 4 VR conversions. Although, it is known that those ports have a lot of issues... yeah, I'm in no rush to get any VR equipment, either. :D

[ramon.dexter]

No, you really dont want to experience the ported games. Although Skyrim VR is great experience, fallout VR is shit.
Like, these games were not built with VR as basic concept. And that is the main drawback. You knwo, in HL Alyx, when you want to open the door, you have to physically grab the clutch, press it and then move it in the desired way. Skyrim/Fallout VR? You press the use button.
In Alyx( or any other vr game ), when you want to pickup an item, you have to physically grab it. Skyrim/Fallout - press use button. And so on.
Default install of skyrim or fallout dont even display hands, but only the controllers. For skyrim, this issue has been fixed by modders. But no fix exists for fallout vr, because bethesda forgot to include any first person model of hands...
Technically, the bestg vr experiences are games that are designed specifically for vr with the vr controls.
And also, the quest is just superb piece of HW. Considering it runs on mobile chipset, it rocks.

[DeeDeeOZ]

I picked up the PS4 VR system few years back on the cheap, it mostly gathers dust now but was incredibly good fun for awhile.

Will second everything ramon.dexter said. Skyrim VR is a incredibly immersive experience, So much so my wife had to stop playing it as she felt bad stabbing people. But plays much easier with a standard controller then the VR ones. Was also the only one to give me motion sickness unless you play in the point and teleport mode, which feels lot less immersive.

I also kept wanting to lean on scenery

This was me, also sitting. I actually sat down in middle of lounge room once attempting to sit on a chair.

Favorite VR stuff is anything with lots of conversations and weapon handling (Blood and truth was pretty good) but one handed weapons work much better then two.
But seeing as mine just sits on a shelf for the most part, I would heavily recommend just waiting till they are cheaper

[KSPBaron145]

Alright, the last things i did were:
- Fix my broken steam copy of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
- Eat spaghetti with beef for dinner (my mom made it )
- Download and play 30mins of PAYDAY 2
- Hop on Zdoom Forums and see this thread, deciding to make this reply
And thats it

[jetstrange]

last thing Ive done:
Finished the rendering shot of my mod
Making a smaller mod for gungeon
Watching a lot of stuff about warhammer (on the empire of man)
thinking of making food.

[irontusk341]

just got home and rubbed icy hot on my feet after working 16 hours at my job.
cashed my check and initiated the daddy tax on my daughters halloween candy from yesterday cause, its fun being a parent..
I'm thinking of getting taco bell, but im also hungry for Primanti brothers.. I don't know what I want.. Can I have both? Does that make me a bad person?

[Enjay]

One of other joys of being an adult is being able to have both Taco Bell and Primanti Brothers for no better reason than you want to.

[InsanityBringer]

I think my favorite part of vulkan is how the general trend seems to be changing decisions years down the line when they're determined to be not all that worth it on some hardware

does this give us any hope of the disaster of image layout transitions being fixed?

[dpJudas]

That's what they get from going too low level. When too much detail is pushed to the application layer it also means that every application developer needs to be a complete hardware expert. On top of that it also leaves less room for future hardware to be different from the current offerings.

I'm not really sure vulkan be fixed. There's just too much red tape in that damn thing. It wouldn't surprise me if it got replaced by something new at some point. Tracking what changes they make is almost impossible if you can't call and ask them. When they changed the NV raytracing extension to KHR they made so many subtle changes that I had to delete my entire codebase and start over.

[Graf Zahl]

Ok, so what does that link tell me?

[dpJudas]

Seems to be this: VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering

Basically, they removed the requirement for render passes. Instead you begin the rendering by calling vkCmdBeginRenderingKHR instead vkCmdBeginRenderPass and then there you dynamically supply what your frame buffers are, instead of having to first bake it into a render pass object. In addition you can pass a VK_RENDERING_SUSPENDING_BIT_KHR flag when beginning it to tell it that it should not close the render pass (to avoid flushing what it is drawing to the frame buffers) between the command buffers you are submitting.

Of course since it is vulkan, you also must do a bunch of red tape to enable the feature (fill in a VkPhysicalDeviceDynamicRenderingFeaturesKHR struct at device creation), and you must also pass in a second structure during pipeline creation (VkPipelineRenderingCreateInfoKHR) with the information it used to grab from the render pass when creating the pipeline.