KosmicKrisp — A new Vulkan-to-Metal compatibility solution

[PotentPeas]

A Vulkan on Metal Mesa 3D Graphics Driver - LunarG

LunarG is thrilled to announce KosmicKrisp, LunarG’s new Vulkan driver for Apple hardware, built within the Mesa 3D graphics framework.

www.lunarg.com

This is a forthcoming Vulkan-to-Metal "driver" which will be integrated into the Mesa3D project. A potential replacement for MoltenVK, only for Apple Silicon systems.

I can think of so much utility for this with game "compatibility".

• A big issue with MoltenVK is missing "optional" features (i.e. geometry shaders) which prevent full Vulkan compatibility from being reached. It looks like KosmicKrisp is targeting full compliance.
• With CrossOver/Wine:
  • Combine with DXVK to get most Windows DirectX 12 games to work (i.e. in CrossOver). The biggest piece missing from getting the Proton stack working on macOS is a proper Vulkan implementation to hook up with DXVK.
  • Combine with Zink to get apps targeting newer versions of OpenGL to work (i.e. Homeworld Remastered), or go crazy with the WineD3D-Zink-KosmicKrisp chain to have another solution for DirectX 11 and earlier games.
  • A handful of Windows games target Vulkan directly (i.e. Detroit Become Human) and are currently non-functional.
• Most modern console emulators target Vulkan; this will allow them to be used without requiring a Metal rendering engine to be implemented.

I think these guys can easily beat MoltenVK when it comes to compatibility, but there is also performance to worry about and we won't know what that is like until this is in the wild to test.

Sounds like they plan to have something for us to play with later this year.

See various posts in this thread for background information:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/11990

 

[cbum]

You had me at Homeworld ...

 

[jeanlain]

• Combine with DXVK to get most Windows DirectX 12 games to work (i.e. in CrossOver). The biggest piece missing from getting the Proton stack working on macOS is a proper Vulkan implementation to hook up with DXVK.

I'm not optimistic about performance when stacking several translation layers. Hopefully, DXMT will be up to the task, but I don't think it can reach the performance of Apple's D3DMetal.

I'm more interested in playing certain vulkan games on macOS, mostly the Doom games.