Raspberry Pi 4 Expands 3D Potential With Vulkan Update

'The Raspberry Pi 4 has hit a major graphics milestone, adding support for a more modern Vulkan 3D APIa. Ars Technica reports: Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced the Pi 4's Vulkan 1.2 conformance on Monday. Support isn't available yet in downloadable Pi-friendly operating systems but should be coming soon. For most people using their Pi as a server, a DIY controller, or a light desktop, Vulkan 1.2 conformance won't be noticeable. Desktop graphics on the standard Raspberry Pi OS are powered by OpenGL, the older graphics API that Vulkan is meant to replace. There is one group that benefits, says Upton: games and other 3D Android applications. Android uses Vulkan as its low-overhead graphics API. As with most Raspberry Pi advancements, there could be unforeseen opportunities unleashed by this seemingly tiny change. Vulkan 1.2 support gives developers the same 3D-graphics interface (if not anywhere near the same power) as 2019 NVIDIA graphics cards, 2020 Intel chips with integrated graphics, and dozens of other devices. With a Vulkan 1.0 driver installed, developer Iago Toral was able in 2020 to get the original Quake trilogy mostly running on a Pi 4, with not-too-shabby frame rates. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/08/02/226200 Cheers, peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 13:19:26 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'The Raspberry Pi 4 has hit a major graphics milestone, adding support for a more modern Vulkan 3D [API].'
I wonder, though. All these more modern, higher-performance real-time graphics APIs become less approachable for a beginner. Years ago, someone asked me how to get started with OpenGL ES on Android. I suggested starting with “traditional” OpenGL, with the old fixed-function pipeline (built-in material/lighting model), on a regular PC, as being the easiest to get to grips with. Then try OpenGL ES 1.x, which has a subset of that fixed-function pipeline. Then go to full-on OpenGL ES 2.0 (the latest at the time), which gets rid of the fixed-function pipeline completely, in favour of doing everything with programmed shaders. With Vulkan, however, you are essentially chucked in the deep end from the beginning.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann