Vulkan and OpenCL will merge into a single API

Re:Vulkan and OpenCL will merge into a single API by mathnode on Sunday May 21, 2017 @05:13AM (#14386426)

The reality is, in house tooling and engines do use multiple graphics api's, and that's perfectly fine. They are not slapdash implementations; professional graphics rendering programmers know and use these API's (See the GPU Pro book series, and Real Time Rendering), it's their profession.

A commercially successful multi-platform game like skyrim, use at least 4 API's (DirectX, NVN, PSGL, and DirectX), but no OpenGL or Vulkan to be seen at all.

Anvil and Frostbite have no existing opengl driven software titles. And that's perfectly fine.

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Re:Vulkan and OpenCL will merge into a single API by shmerl on Sunday May 21, 2017 @05:16AM (#14386429)

And using those 4 APIs isn't free, don't you think? It means a lot of resources are spent on supporting them, instead of fixing actual bugs or developing better features. I.e. they pay the tax. This applies to in-house or third party engines all the same. And it's not perfectly fine by far.

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Re:Vulkan and OpenCL will merge into a single API by mathnode on Sunday May 21, 2017 @07:03AM (#14386707)

I agree it's not free. But will you make return on the effort/time/money invested?

EDIT: Do you think debugging vulan/opengl is free? Software houses like valve have had to make their own tooling to debug and optimise for vulkan and opengl.

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Re:Vulkan and OpenCL will merge into a single API by shmerl on Sunday May 21, 2017 @12:23PM (#14387935)

It's not about some effort. It's about wasteful multiplication of that effort, caused by balkanized API landscape.

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