VKD3D-Proton 3.1 Released With New Features Ahead Of Big v3.2 Release

Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve's Linux team just tagged the VKD3D-Proton 3.1 release. This version comes with a number of new features and performance optimizations while being the stable point ahead of VKD3D-Proton beginning to see a lot of new feature code for what will then become VKD3D-Proton 3.2. Arntzen is already teasing a lot of changes for the next version of VKD3D-Proton (3.2): "This release is mostly just tagged now to facilitate bumping the build version shortly after to 3.2. A ton of important changes will happen for 3.2, so this marks the last "stable" release before plunging into uncharted territory." As for today's VKD3D-Proton 3.1 there is descriptor heap support with VK_EXT_descriptor_heap but not yet enabled by default due to driver quality concerns. There is also KHR_opacity_micromap support for exposing DXR 1.2 when supported. Plus there is also Shader Model 6.9 support. VKD3D-Proton 3.1 also adds support for more NVIDIA NVAPI intrinsics to the DXIL-SPIRV code, exposes AgilitySDK 619 features, and exposes view instancing by default with more games relying on the functionality. VKD3D-Proton 3.1 also has a variety of performance optimizations and fixes too. Plus various game-specific workarounds. The full list of VKD3D-Proton 3.1 changes for Direct3D 12 over the Vulkan API can be fouund via GitHub.