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 threaddemofoxMar 10, 2025
@aeva when people point at an api or engine interface and ask "why is this such a pain in the butt?" And the response is it has to be, I want people to be able to point at gigi and say "No, look. This other interface is just as descriptive. It can generate all the code you want me to write by hand, and writes it the way I want it to be and you want it to be, but i don't have to write a novel to express a sentence".
Besides being useful, I hope gigi starts a conversation about complexity.
Show threadaevaMar 10, 2025
@demofox so, if I'm following this, I can use gigi to describe a compute shader in a reasonable way, and use it to generate the vulkan code for all the shader management stuff?
Show threaddemofoxMar 10, 2025
@aeva it doesn't have vulkan code generation yet unfortunately. It's basically just me working on it so it's slow going development.
Publicly only dx12 right now. A couple more weeks (estimated) until webgpu/javascript (browser and node).
Internally at EA we also have code generation for UE5, frostbite, and a light weight research engine.
UE5 could be public but needs a little more work til it's ready for that.
Vulkan is next on the list after, I'd say, since it opens up so many more platforms.
Show threadaeva
@demofox oh... how long will it take for you to do all that 😅
Mar 10, 2025 at 4:38amWeb
Show threaddemofoxMar 10, 2025
@aeva lol. Yep.
Gigi is super usable right now for rapid prototyping, research things, and dx12 code generation.
We (people in seed, some others in EA, and some people outside EA) use it daily for this stuff and gigi generated code is in the wild.
Webgpu (javascript) is a couple weeks away.
No idea how long til vulkan would be in.
I have important blue noise stuff to do too 😭
If i had my wish thered be a couple other people working on it with me full time and we'd get vulkan in next.
Show threadaevaMar 10, 2025

@demofox that makes sense. I think they should let you hire some minions, that's a lot for one person to do.

What sort of blue noises are we talking?