aevaMar 9, 2025
if you think about it, vulkan logical device implies the existence of vulkan illogical device
Show threadaevaMar 9, 2025

I'm slowly working through the vulkan spec writing a compute-only vulkan program from scratch that doesn't render anything, and it's going pretty well because the spec is really well written and I already know more or less exactly what I want to do anyway, but I just want to say just how silly (fun) it feels to write a program like this because you get to just skip over large swaths of the API.

Like, I'm working from the spec because the tutorials all make it more complicated.

Show threadaevaMar 9, 2025
also the tutorials I reviewed all did the annoying thing where the tutorial squirrels away the stuff you're trying to learn or reference into abstractions that only serve the needs of the tutorial writer, which given my goal is very specifically to *not draw anything*, there's really not much of a point to any of them lol. I'm really not the intended audience here though :3
Show threadaevaMar 10, 2025

I think it's cute that practically every vulkan command has one or more optional args to let you enter Hard Mode

(sorry for the double post, I added this to the wrong thread)

Show threadaevaMar 10, 2025
ok even with just the compute-only subset vulkan is a slog D:
Show threadaevaMar 10, 2025

I wonder how many people have actually managed to knuckle down and write a complete, useful vulkan program from scratch (no copy pasting from tutorials and stack overflow, no offloading significant parts to 3rd party libraries like VMA)

To think if I power through and get this thing working I could potentially be like the 20th person to bother

Show threaddemofoxMar 10, 2025
@aeva this kind of thing was a big motivation for me making Gigi. So we sit and take a month to get to the first triangle in vulkan, metal, dx12, etc.
If we did it right we end up with the same code everyone else has.
There is so much boilerplate.
Literally saying "run these shaders with these inputs and outputs" is enough for a person knowledgeable about any platform to make it happen.
There is no reason for all the hoop jumping other than a knee jerk reaction to devs calling drivers slow.
Show threadaeva
@demofox I will say this: OpenGL's model of compiling shaders is *wrong* but OpenGL's model of binding resources to shader programs is Correct. Vulkan's model of compiling shaders is slightly less wrong, but their model of binding resources to shader programs is OH MY GAWD (insert all the question words here)
Mar 10, 2025 at 4:20amWeb