Star Citizen now plans to make use of the Vulkan API, dropping DX12 assist

In a discussion board publish over on the programming forums for Star Citizen, director of graphics engineering Ali Brown has introduced that Star Citizen will now use Khronos’ Vulkan API, moderately than switching to the most recent version of DirectX. While the event group had beforehand said their need to assist DX12, Vulkan is “a more logical rendering API” which is able to profit all customers.

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One of the principle causes Brown offers for not supporting DX12 is that “it doesn’t force our users to upgrade to Windows 10” and signifies that Star Citizen could be developed with “a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux.” As Star Citizen is focused to be a multiplatform PC title, utilizing Vulkan makes much more sense than having to spend a considerable amount of time remodeling the sport simply to work on Linux.

The present plan is for Star Citizen to solely assist Vulkan, with DX11 assist slowly being phased out because the group swap to the brand new API. This API change mustn’t have an effect on any backers which are already in a position to run Star Citizen, however Roberts Space Industries will likely be continuously checking for any points within the porting course of.

According to Brown, DX12 “would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan,” and even then the APIs “aren’t that different.” If something is topic to alter, you could be sure the boffins over at Cloud Imperium Games will let their legion of pilots know.

This would not be the primary time Star Citizen has modified large components of its backend, with it switching from the CryEngine to Amazon Lumberyard in December of final 12 months.

You can try the latest graphical developments for Star Citizen within the video discovered above, which particulars a number of the leaps the event group have made in lighting, facial animations together with stage design.


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