←back to thread

944 points 6a74 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.468s | source
Show context
Wowfunhappy ◴[] No.41803351[source]
> Tessellation enables games like The Witcher 3 to generate geometry. The M1 has hardware tessellation, but it is too limited for DirectX, Vulkan, or OpenGL. We must instead tessellate with arcane compute shaders

> Geometry shaders are an older, cruder method to generate geometry. Like tessellation, the M1 lacks geometry shader hardware so we emulate with compute.

Is this potentially a part of why Apple doesn't want to support Vulkan themselves? Because they don't want to implement common Vulkan features in hardware, which leads to less than ideal performance?

(I realize performance is still relatively fast in practice, which is awesome!)

replies(5): >>41803586 #>>41803686 #>>41805013 #>>41807048 #>>41811346 #
1. mandarax8 ◴[] No.41803586[source]
Geometry shaders are not part of base Vulkan. They're an extension.
replies(1): >>41803814 #
2. ornitorrincos ◴[] No.41803814[source]
they are not an extension, they are part of core 1.0 vulkan.

Although its true that they are an optional feature (as is tessellation).