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Comment by om2 | Hacker News Reader

Vulkan on Windows is all based on unofficial drivers that don't come with Windows and aren't supported by MS. We don't think it's right to depend on this even if it's theoretically possible. Likewise for unofficial macOS/iOS drivers.

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> Vulkan on Windows is all based on unofficial drivers that don't come with Windows and aren't supported by MS.

This is not materially different than the situation with OpenGL, and yet I hope you'll agree that basing WebGL on OpenGL was the right decision, rather than inventing a new API based largely on a lower level API proprietary to a single company's platforms.

As it happens, OpenGL was so high level that supporting it on top of DirectX was feasible. A number of Windows browsers use the DirectX back end to ANGLE, so users don't have to download OpenGL drives.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work as well for Vulkan. Vulkan is the lowest-level of the three APIs, so it's hard to support on top of Metal or DirectX 12.

Since WebGL was released, Microsoft has demonstrated a new willingness to support Web graphics. They joined Khronos, and now ship a WebGL implementation of their own with Windows. I have confidence that if the industry moved toward a WebVulkan standard that this new Microsoft would make platform changes to better support it. Unfortunately I have no such confidence about Apple.

Why don't you ask Microsoft what they think about this proposal instead of speculating?

Shipping WebGL is not the same as shipping OpenGL support, which they don't do. WebGL on Windows browsers is built on DirectX. Apple ship a WebGL enabled browser.

I would much prefer hardware vendor supplied drivers since they have an active interest in adding support for newer versions of graphics apis. OS vendors have proven to have a very poor track record supporting newer versions of graphics apis that they did not create themselves. (Microsoft support for OpenGL on Windows and OpenGL/Vulkan support on Mac). Calling driver vendors "unofficial" seems a bit backwards to me.

You're leaving out the "official" counterpart- Direct3D drivers. Microsoft and hardware vendors both have an active interest in adding support for new versions there.

Microsoft has interest for pushing new versions only in new OS releases and uses that to push these new OS releases - see DirectX since 10.

GPU vendors do not care, they will give you API to their hardware for any OS version that moves their wares. That's why I would trust more GPU vendors than OS vendor.

Is it your position that the only drivers worth using are those produced by the operating system's vendor? While I suppose this would make sense to Apple, it sounds entirely crazy to me. IMHO, it makes much more sense for the hardware vendor to write the drivers.

The web is supposed to be a universal platform. It doesn't make much sense to limit a feature to the subsection of web users who install graphics drivers.

I'm not saying that operating system provided drivers should be ignored, but that it makes no sense to ignore vendor provided drivers either. In this case we have all the major GPU vendors on board with the standard, yet Apple claims that since the OS vendor (i.e. Apple themselves) doesn't produce the driver, it shouldn't be depended upon.

In the case of Windows, the operating system installs proper drivers automatically. I don't recall if these are the exact same ones from, say, the NVIDIA or AMD or Intel website, but I'd be very surprised if these drivers didn't nonetheless ship with Vulkan support.

On the flip-side of that, the web is supposed to be a universal platform. It doesn't make much sense to limit a feature to the subsection of web users who have hardware that supports 3D acceleration. :)

What do you mean by "unofficial drivers"? Looking at the support matrix on Wikipedia, it seems that both NVIDIA and ATI support it in their official Windows drivers.

I believe he means unofficial as in not provided by Microsoft. Microsoft works to make sure Direct3D works and I imagine they have lots of tests and compatibility suites there. I'm guessing they don't have any tests or standards were requirements around Vulcan.

> I believe he means unofficial as in not provided by Microsoft.

Microsoft is only middle-man, the drivers are written by GPU vendors in the first place. Why should I prefer middle-man to the original source?

Historically, the drivers provided by Microsoft via Windows Update were worse (older) than those provided by GPU vendors directly.

> Microsoft works to make sure Direct3D works and I imagine they have lots of tests and compatibility suites there.

So do Khronos group and GPU vendors for Vulkan.

I guess he means that Microsoft isn't aggressive enough in distributing these drivers via Windows Update. Definitely the case with older Windows versions like Windows 7 where Windows Update doesn't seem to offer GPU driver updates at all if you have manually installed something like the driver cd that was in the GPU box. However with Windows 10 they have gotten more aggresive in updating these drivers. [1] Still, a lot of people on older Windows versions where the GPU drivers are likely out of date enough not to contain Vulkan.

[1] http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/stop-automatic-driver-upd...

"Still, a lot of people on older Windows versions where the GPU drivers are likely out of date enough not to contain Vulkan."

My guess would be that these same drivers would be out of date enough not to contain DX12, so if that's really the target, then there needs to be a fallback to OpenGL and/or an older DirectX.

DirectX 12 is only available on Windows 10, so that's the case regardless of drivers.

NVIDIA/AMD drivers with Vulkan support pass through WHQL, which is as official as a 3rd party driver can get.

So calling them unsupported/unofficial is quite a stretch.

Does WHQL actually include any Vulcan tests? The driver may be officially certified but is the featur in question?

What's probably more relevant is that those drivers pass the Vulkan conformance tests.

Intel's drivers may be beta but official NVIDIA and AMD GPU drivers both fully support Vulkan on Windows.

> We don't think it's right to depend on this even if it's theoretically possible.

Care to elaborate on that?

In the worst case, someone could implement Vulkan on top of the "supported" API. Or, the OS developers could get with the times and ship a modern, functional system?

I'd hardly call the drivers distributed both via Windows Update and via the vendors' own websites "unofficial". They're about as official as it gets.

> Vulkan on Windows is all based on unofficial drivers

Drivers from GPU vendors are as official as it gets.

> We don't think it's right to depend on this even if it's theoretically possible. Likewise for unofficial macOS/iOS drivers.

Then focus on fixing that, instead of wasting time on bullshit like this.

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