Stadia Is a Major Driver of Vulkan Adoption
stadiadosage.com
stadiadosage.com
The Bevy game engine reportedly runs happily on all those platforms.
In C++ land, Godot has similar portability. So do UE5 and Unity.
If it wasn't for Apple shooting themselves in the foot with Metal, we'd all be on Vulkan now, without these portability layers.
(We've had a split on concurrency. Web devs think in terms of callbacks and async, but not real multiple threads running on multiple CPUs with explicit locking. Game devs doing high performance games think in terms of multiple CPUs and the GPU all working in parallel, pumping huge amounts of graphics content. WASM and Android follow the web model. There's kind of a hack involving multiple processes with some shared memory, but it's not general purpose threading.)
Apps usually go for the API that works on all devices.
Plus you’d still have different graphics backends needed for the consoles.
AMD created Mantle, it was a good idea that they agreed to create it as an open standard and invited everyone in to participate in a unified standard. Halfway through Apple decided to do its own thing and created Metal.
Apple were clearly sabotaging a unified GPU platform by creating Metal.
Don’t keep saying Apple got there first because AMD did.
- out of 407 games running Vulkan natively, 270 run on Stadia (from the article)
- out of 407 games not running Vulkan natively, also 270 run on Stadia (numbers the article doesn’t mention that I made up to make a point)
Then, the two “runs Vulkan natively” and “runs on Stadia” are 100% independent.
As I understand it, the argument is like this:
* 407 games run Vulkan
* 270 of those games also support Stadia
* Therefore, direct quote here, "the entire gaming industry is better off because of Stadia and their partners paving the way here"
It's hard for me to believe that a writer who, to quote his own bio, "is an HPC professional with a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley" would make an argument that correlation implies causation. On the other hand, I've looked over this article a couple of times and that seems to be all the argument there is.
Considering how many tenuously related keywords the author stuffed into the article, I think a likely explanation is that this blog commissioned the article as SEO bait; a writer who doesn't know correlation from causation from their elbow and isn't being paid enough to find out wrote the article, concentrating mainly on keyword stuffing; the editor, who would have known better than to make this argument, posted the article after only the most cursory of readings, enough to satisfy himself that there were no blatant misspellings or racial slurs.
It's not an interpretation that's flattering to the putative author, but on the other hand, it also wouldn't be flattering to think of him as a scientist with such a poor grasp of logic.
Moot point anyway, I suppose, since though we might argue about how much Vulkan adoption Stadia was driving, I think we can all agree on how much more it will drive.
As you say, likely just ghostwritten/not their work.
The mobile games market has exploded hugely, there's definitely a big market there.
the mobile game market has exploded, but AAA games are a different dynamic and a different audience to the casual games popular in the mobile market.
and for iPad specifically, apple's 30% cut probably factors into the decision in a big way.
Which services give you the game on any platform? In my experience, you have to buy the game on each platform (and for some games, I have purchased them on multiple platforms because they were that good).
The Microsoft Store generally will, ironically. Buying a game on Xbox will often net you the PC version as well (so long as you get it from the Microsoft Store). I think Sony tried a similar thing with the Vita a while ago, but I'm presuming that was a failure.
Sony has also done some crossbuy stuff in the past. Their PS1 classics used to be generally PS3/PSP/Vita compatible and some titles were cross PS3/Vita/PS4 like Spelunky or PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. Microsoft has done some cross Xbox/PC stuff too although you have to buy from their store.
Overall I agree with you though, this is literally just a single datapoint, and I cannot think of another one. But that seems like a solid start, especially since it is a legitimate AAA game, and they are doing it a year after the (very successful sales-wise) release. So they clearly are doing it for reasons other than just boosting up the initial sales by promising the moon. Looks like they genuinely believe they might make enough money with that M1 port.
To be fair, Eidos and Tomb Raider didn't happen during M1 era, it was just a port for devices that were still using x86. Iirc Resident Evil devs explicitly called out working with M1 an what it brings to the table.
I agree though, we will see how it goes, somewhat impossible to tell how it is going to pan out. Could easily end up being just a one-off.
Realistically, I don't think it is going to usher in a new era of gaming on macOS, but I hope it will slowly move it in that direction. Similar to how it happened with Proton and Linux. It's been out for a while, but only somewhat recently (at some point in the past year or two) has it reached a critical mass on the market.
But, like you've said, there's dozens of allegories for why gaming doesn't work on MacOS. I guess we'll just have to see how (if?) Apple addresses that.
Apple Arcade is helping, but it’s never going to turn the tide. It’s a last bastion with a few games.
Port a recent game, sell it for $10, watch nothing happen. There are a few great ports out there (I just replayed SotN) but I doubt they make their cost back.
Consumable IAPs ruined everything.
And then you still can only charge a single digit (or at most a low 2 digits) amount of dollars.
There's no way you can charge as much as AAA titles with iOS games.
More than AAA? I’m not sure.
But Candy Crush didn’t cost what Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War did either. Not even close. And the game prints money year after year in a way most AAA games don’t.
Unless they IAPs too like GTA Online.
Uh no it isn’t. People who make that claim only think about AAA titles and high profile indies.
If you consider the entire gaming landscape, Apple earns more from gaming than most companies that actually operate in the gaming space.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/05/31/apple-earner-the-...
I’m not saying there are no games. Games could easily be the biggest section of the App Store. I’m saying there are no *good* games, only those designed to force you to make IAPs.
Stand alone titles that cost a few bucks (immediately or as a one time unlock) are basically dead compared to the era before IAPs existed.
There are some very highly regarded mobile games that do quite well.
- You need to port to ARM (not that bad, but now you're debugging two versions and increasing your dependency graph)
- You need to distribute on MacOS/iPad (not insurmountable, but kowtowing to Apple's ever-changing demands is a different game than jumping through Sony/Nintendo's hoops)
- You need to port to Metal (pretty hard, requires Mac-specific developers and a separate dev branch)
Of course, there are still devs who spend the extra time to make Mac-native games (Factorio and Rimworld), but compared to targeting Linux/Windows the effort doesn't make sense. For Apple to make their platform an attractive gaming platform, they can either a. Allow sideloading < or > b. Welcome third-party graphics APIs to Apple Silicon. Unless they sweeten the deal though, I doubt we'll see many AAA ports in the future.
Rimworld is actually built in Unity, but without using most of Unity's conveniences; I think it just uses it as a sort of platform-independent shim: launch an empty scene and then do everything with userspace render calls rather than Unity's GameObjects. It's certainly not a /typical/ Unity game, but nor is it in any way Mac-native.
Not that that detracts from your point, really.
[0] It was recently announced for Switch, but from what I've heard there aren't plans to release it for ARM on other platforms in the immediate future.
The only mobile platform with any adoption is Switch where the audience is used to paying much more for games than on PC/Consoles (equivalent games tend to be even up to twice the price there after awhile).
The other, potential mobile competitor, is Steam Deck which shares prices and game library with its desktop counterpart.
I am saying this as someone who has made games for the Macintosh in the 90's and iPhone in 10's. Apple avoids pandering to gamers to make sure they seem adult and serious.
The GPUs on macOS and iOS are incredible for mobile processors, especially in terms of power efficiency, but they don't compete with the GPUs in gaming PCs or current generation consoles.
iPad native ports are kept back by the small share of users who have a compatible gamepad and AAA games don't work with the touchscreen interface.
Now that Stadia is shutting down [1], does that mean anything bad for Vulkan, I’m curious?
PlayStation and XBox were never found of Khronos APIs (other than GL ES 1.0 + Cg on the PS 1).
Nintendo had a GL subset on the Wii, and while Switch supports GL 4.6 and Vulkan, those that want full control need to use NVN.
Apple is going with Metal.
And if one intents to use Vulkan abstraction layers as a kind of pseudo middleware, they are better of using classical middleware anyway.
If you dive into something like Ogre3D, you will see that actual 3D rendering API is a tiny slice of the whole cake, let alone in something like Unreal.
Vulkan is AMD's Mantle open-sourced, it's far too low level for devs to waste time with, it's a target for game engines and renderers.
Tons of AAA game developers make their own engine and therefore work directly with the APIs while making an abstraction layer for their higher level game developers.
Vulkan is also not just Mantle open sourced. It’s a significant deviation from the original Mantle API. Mantle was a starting point but what emerged as Vulkan was quite different.
Recently a bunch switched to Unreal. Are there THAT many that still maintain their own? Seems like it's just big studios and less than a dozen. Even a massive company like Square Enix is now using Unreal for many projects.
UE being picked up by a AAA studio is news, because gamers associate UE with extreme fidelity graphics. A studio using a proprietary engine is boring because it won't matter one bit for 99% of people, and is modus operandi, basically.
Edit: remembered SteamDB has a rough breakdown based on manual rules, so a lot of engines aren't picked up, but it's still interesting - https://steamdb.info/tech/
Proprietary engines tend to be more common on consoles I think - Steam has a lower barrier to entry overall, so it doesn't filter out the smaller projects as much (which are more likely to use an off-the-shelf engine).
Ubisoft use custom engines, EA use custom engines.
Call of Duty is a custom engine (derived from idTech)
If you go to the GDC YouTube channel ( https://youtube.com/c/Gdconf ) you can see the range of game specific things that these studios are working on that using an off the shelf engine is limiting
I also recommend looking at the presentations on http://advances.realtimerendering.com/
Most windows games still target DirectX or OpenGL instead of Vulkan.
With how well Proton runs, there’s even less incentive for game devs to directly target Vulkan now.
Game consoles don't use Vulkan, Windows is better served with DX12 if you also publish on Xbox, macOS has Metal but macOS is also a fairly tiny market. All in all, Vulkan doesn't actually matter all that much outside of Linux and Android.
People buy it to use like console
- Xbox is basically using Windows Core + the xbox shell and runs the games in virtual machines.
- The PS4/5 use FreeBSD with their shell and libraries on top.
- The Steam Desk ships Linux and a shell on top of it (Steam Big Picture + Proton).
modern consoles are just PCs using PC OSs with custom UIs that fit the control scheme.
The only one that I could think of that's heavily modified is the Switch.
However, since the release of those 2, seems like Microsoft and Sony use an off the shelf OS + their Shell and APIs (graphics, networking, matchmaking ...etc), which makes sense, especially for Microsoft, as they already develop a very capable x86 kernel, so why not use it.
Afaik, with the introduction of the Xbox one, they used the Windows 8 Core as part of their "One OS" strategy to unify all of their devices on the same platform/OS (eg. consoles, mobile, AR/RV, PCs ...etc).
The current version of the Xbox OS is based on Windows 11 [0].
Ofc, it's not exactly the same as Windows, but, it's largely based on it, at least as far as we know.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software
EDIT: Added the wikipedia link. It's the only source I could access from my work's network, but it show's the OS progression since the the first generation Xbox
And that platform is used in professional aerospace.
The Switch does.
Windows may be better served with D3D12, but Vulkan is fine for almost all cases. If you choose Vulkan rather than D3D12 you also get Android, Switch, Steam Deck/Linux and if you aren't too bothered about performance, iOS/macOS via the MoltenVK translation layer.
PC+Mobile is a pretty massive chunk of the gaming market to get with just one graphics backend.
Steam Deck/Linux emulates DirectX and Windows, no need to bother with anything Linux native.
On Switch there is support for OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan and NVN, and just like on PC, if you want the full deal, NVN is the way to go.
LG and Asus are arriving this year.
Then there is the whole Geoforce Now and XBox Cloud, where those DirectX games can be streamed everywhere.
(Edit: GeForce Now apparently runs fewer of my steam games than Linux. Certain games detect and block it. Same with android, but for different reasons.)
(At least on my collection of games ranging from the mid-1990's to 2022.)
And as a bonus you then work on Android if you do a bit of porting work later on, which can now support desktop shading models with Vulkan, while with a sufficiently old Direct X it may only let you more easily target Windows Phone...
AMD pushing Vulkan while their GPU are powering both the Xbox and the PlayStation.
ID Software adding Vulkan support to DooM (2016), resulting in a >30% FPS boost.
Is this the same disinformation as people claiming that PS3 used OpenGL?
Anyhow, Vulkan will survive for the same reason as Linux; no one truly trusts MS, Apple, Sony, etc...
Somehow there is this urban myth about Sony caring about Khronos APIs, when they only did such a thing with the Playstation 1, using GL ES 1.0 + Cg as alternative to their own API, as the adoption was very low, they eventually dropped it.
Even on the Switch, if you want all the low level features, you are better served using NVN.
By the way here is one of the public sources on the matter,
> Vulkan API: We recommend targeting Vulkan as your primary graphics API for best performance and battery life. If you use an engine like Unity or Unreal, enabling Vulkan in your build for all users will result in the highest performance/longevity. (Note: Proton includes a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer. If your game or engine has high-quality DirectX support but no Vulkan support, it's likely that this automated translation layer will exceed the performance of doing a custom Vulkan implementation.)
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/recommendations
Programming with Vulkan is like asking everyone to be a device driver developer and a GPU hardware engineer.
The recent webinar on profiles felt like a joke, manually jungling JSON files to generate bindings for specific profiles, meanwhile on proprietary 3D APIs that is a simple set of API calls.
Khronos still doesn't get what is a productive SDK development experience.
Yes, that's the point. To use a programming language analogy, OpenGL is C++ and Vulkan is LLVM.
Portable game code has survived with middleware for ages.
Vulkan is basically a bullet point on the API plugin selection dialog.
That doesn't add up. The PlayStation came out in 1994, and was followed up by the Playstation 2 in 2000. OpenGL ES 1.0 wasn't released until 2003.
Consoles are far from a driving factor for Vulkan other than the need for these engines to abstract anyway.
Engine is a totally different topic as they do have experts to just support both in parallel.
And when you look how DirectX is the default for tons of games on windows you wouldn't say what you said.
The DirectX sdk and documentation is also really good.
Generally, Vulkan yields better performance than directly-equivalent DirectX code. Even since the early days of commercial Vulkan use (2016), the performance uplift has been a notable upside. However, Vulkan code is generally more difficult to write than DirectX (or even OpenGL and Metal, AFAIK), which is part of the price you pay for portability. High-level libraries were expected to paste over these issues, but this infrastructure is still in it's infancy. Ironically, one of the best uses for Vulkan right now is acting as a sort of intermediate representation for DirectX/Metal API calls.