Detroit: Become Human will use Vulkan exclusively over DirectX on PC

[Master Disaster]

Confirmed by the developers themselves, DBH will use Vulkan exclusively. There will be no DX support at all.

Quote

Earlier this week, Detroit: Become Human was announced to be coming to the PC platform alongside Quantic Dream’s other two PlayStation exclusives, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. The game will be sold exclusively via the Epic Games Store, at least for the time being.

 

Today, Quantic Dream revealed the official system requirements for Detroit: Become Human on the store page. Interestingly, the Vulkan API will be used in this PC release instead of Microsoft’s DirectX 12.

 

https://wccftech.com/detroit-become-human-pc-requirements/

 

I find this interesting as the PS4 doesn't use OpenGL or Vulkan, Sony developed their own API called GNM (and GNMX) for the system. They even have their own Pixel Shader language too.

 

I wonder why they chose to forgo DirectX entirely? Maybe a hint at a possible Linux port down the line?

 

Either way in my experience Vulkan performs at least on par with DX in every game I've tried it on so I have no issue with this.

[RejZoR]

I was like, "cool, I'm interested", until I read the part about the fucking Epic store again. Go eat shit Epic with your fucking exclusives. Do we really need this shit to go from a console exclusive to a some shitty PC platform exclusive? I mean go fuck yourselves, for reals.

[D13H4RD]

To be fair, at least they didn't announce it as going onto other platforms and then suddenly announcing an Epic deal. 

 

In this case, at least we got a Playstation exclusive at all. Sucks that it's exclusive on Epic for a year but read above. At least they didn't pull a Metro: Exodus. 

[Fasauceome]

We need more developers to pave the way for these base level APIs. However, this kind of raises some questions:

It takes more work to program in vulkan, DX11 is so much more convenient. Is there a graphics overhaul? Is that why it took so long to port? Will this game look totally awesome on PC?

[Master Disaster]

5 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

We need more developers to have the way for these base level APIs. However, this kind of raises some questions:

It takes more work to program in vulkan, DX11 is so much more convenient. Is there a graphics overhaul? Is that why it took so long to port? Will this game look totally awesome on PC?

Chances are the reason this took so long to appear on PC is because of a Sony exclusivity contract.

 

As for the rest of your questions, I honestly have no idea.

[Hiya!]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Earlier this week, Detroit: Become Human was announced to be coming to the PC platform alongside Quantic Dream’s other two PlayStation exclusives, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. The game will be sold exclusively via the Epic Games Store, at least for the time being.

Detroit: Become Human, Added to the screw that list!

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Maybe a hint at a possible Linux port down the line?

Might also be that they're already planning for a release on Google Stevia...er, Stadia..with this, since the backend-servers use Linux and Vulkan. Why use DirectX when you can instead use an API that's supported on multiple OSes?

[WereCatf]

25 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

It takes more work to program in vulkan, DX11 is so much more convenient. Is there a graphics overhaul? Is that why it took so long to port? Will this game look totally awesome on PC?

I would actually assume that going for Vulkan was less work in this case than DirectX would have been. PS4 doesn't have DirectX, the APIs there are already closer to Vulkan, as far as I am aware of.

[WereCatf]

53 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

To be fair, at least they didn't announce it as going onto other platforms and then suddenly announcing an Epic deal. 

 

In this case, at least we got a Playstation exclusive at all. Sucks that it's exclusive on Epic for a year but read above. At least they didn't pull a Metro: Exodus. 

I have to agree. I mean, I'm still against the exclusivity-bullshit in general and all, but in this case I don't have much else to complain about.

[Stefan Payne]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

I find this interesting as the PS4 doesn't use OpenGL or Vulkan, Sony developed their own API called GNM (and GNMX) for the system. They even have their own Pixel Shader language too.

...wich is probably based on AMD's Mantle, wich is the Basis for Vulkan...

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

I have to agree. I mean, I'm still against the exclusivity-bullshit in general and all, but in this case I don't have much else to complain about.

Yeah, this still annoys me and I still don't like Epic's strategy one-bit. 

 

But at least it's being announced as an exclusive from the get-go, rather than being announced as going to Steam/GoG initially and then suddenly saying it's an Epic exclusive. 

 

Both of them suck but one is much more reprehensible than the other 

[Doobeedoo]

Well nice it's Vulkan and not some high-level API though. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Stefan Payne said:

...wich is probably based on AMD's Mantle, wich is the Basis for Vulkan...

Mantle was co-developed by DICE where as the PS4 development by Sony was started much sooner, even though they both came out in the same year. Mantle could work on either the PS4 and xbox but neither use or base themselves off Mantle.

 

Quote

The native operating system of the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a fork of FreeBSD version 9.0 which was released on 12 January 2012.[6][7]

 

The PlayStation 4 features two graphics APIs, a low level API named GNM and a high level API named GNMX. Most developers start with GNMX, which wraps around GNM, which in turn manages the more esoteric GPU details. This can be a familiar way to work if the developers are used to platforms like Direct3D 11. The developers of The Crew put a lot of work into the move to the lower-level GNM, and in the process the tech team found out just how much work DirectX does for developers in background in terms of memory allocation and resource management.[8]

 

Another key area of the game is its programmable pixel shaders.[8] Sony's own PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL) was introduced on the PlayStation 4.[9] It has been suggested[by whom?] that the PlayStation Shader Language is very similar to the HLSL standard in DirectX 11, with just subtle differences that could be eliminated for the most part through preprocessor macros.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software#System

[Stefan Payne]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Mantle was co-developed by DICE where as the PS4 development by Sony was started much sooner, even though they both came out in the same year. Mantle could work on either the PS4 and xbox but neither use or base themselves off Mantle.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software#System

Do you have any informations about the differences between the two??

As far as I know, Vulkan is basically mantle with just renamed features (well, more or less)...

[CarlBar]

You can run hitman 2 in Vulkan mode if your willing to download a couple of files. So it can't be that hard surely?

[Sauron]

10 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I wonder why they chose to forgo DirectX entirely? Maybe a hint at a possible Linux port down the line?

Or maybe they just figured there was no reason for them to put in the effort of adding DX when Vulkan does everything just as well without being tied to Windows.

[Stefan Payne]

10 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I wonder why they chose to forgo DirectX entirely? Maybe a hint at a possible Linux port down the line?

Because Vulkan is supported since Windows 7, DX12 is not.

And all you need is a GPU from 2012 (Radeon GCN and Kepler on nV Side), so there isn't really a reason to not do it.

 

Linux doesn't have anything to do with that, that you can use a low level API that might be close to the PS4 API and also support it from Windows 7 onwards does.

[williamcll]

Isn't the PS4 OS close to Linux? 

[Nowak]

10 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Isn't the PS4 OS close to Linux? 

It's a fork of FreeBSD 9.0.

[Drak3]

9 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Isn't the PS4 OS close to Linux? 

Nope, it's firmly a Unix OS, based off of FreeBSD.

[kuhnertdm]

Wow, this is a great power move that might influence more devs to make their games work better with Vulkan, which would very likely improve the gaming experience across the industry on Linux.

[SADS]

Does this mean no RTX?

 

If so, ooohh noooooo /sarcasm

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, SADS said:

Does this mean no RTX?

We won't get to enjoy Conner, the android sent by Cyberlife, in all that raytraced glory?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good.

[AlexGoesHigh]

2 hours ago, SADS said:

Does this mean no RTX?

 

If so, ooohh noooooo /sarcasm

Maybe I missed this with the sarcasm but Nvidia has Vulkan extension for raytracing.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Do you have any informations about the differences between the two??

Not really, Sony loves creating their own things for their consoles though. They have had their own graphics APIs since the original PlayStation, their last one was a fork of OpenGL called PSGL.

 

Mantle and Vulkan will be a bit larger is scope than GNM/GNMX because the PS4 only has a single GPU possible, with customization, so it'll be tailored to that.

 

5 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

As far as I know, Vulkan is basically mantle with just renamed features (well, more or less)...

Yep, was handed over to Khronos group after DX12 announced similar feature capabilities and glNext (Vulkan) was announced. Khronos used that Mantle IP to develop glNext/Vulkan in to what it is now, with a lot of work of course.