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Vulkan Video API could help video editors be less terrible
The Kronos Group has announced the Vulkan Video API, a new API that will give video processing applications some much-needed boosts.
The Vulkan API was an important milestone in computer graphics when it was first released in 2016. It provided a cross-platform competitor to Microsoft's DirectX framework, becoming the true successor to the aging OpenGL architecture. Vulkan 1.2 was finalized over a year ago, and now a minor update is introducing something new — video support.
Khronos announces version 1.2 of the Vulkan Graphics API
Vulkan 1.2, the latest version of the Vulkan Graphics API, has now been released with key improvements and optimizations. Check it out!
It's been roughly four years since the announcement of the first version of the Vulkan Graphics API, in February 2016, by the Khronos Group. To keep things simple, it was a new graphics API - meant as a successor of sorts to OpenGL - that's able to utilize multiple-core processors efficiently, which is huge considering how mainstream octa-core processors have become in recent times. Through the years, it has started being utilized in many games, and most major operating systems we use daily, like Android and Windows 10, support the API. Version 1.1 was released with key improvements back in March 2018, and now, Khronos has officially announced version 1.2.
Android Q will support the Vulkan-backend for ANGLE to make 2D game development easier
We now know Android Q will support the Vulkan-backend for ANGLE to make 2D game development easier. Read on to learn more about what this means.
Vulkan API support for Android was announced with Android Nougat back at Google I/O 2016. To refresh your mind, this API helps developers gain more control of low-level hardware. This kind of access helps them better take advantage of the processing and graphical power of the respective units, and optimize games to run as smooth as possible. It's no surprise that correct memory allocation and thread management are important in any kind of power-hungry tasks, like running a game. This is what popular consoles like Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have done for a long time - giving developers low-level control of the hardware inside the devices.
Testing Fortnite Mobile on Android's performance: Can your device handle Fortnite?
Fortnite Mobile on Android is here for devices with the Snapdragon 820/821, 835, 845, & Kirin 970. We tested the game's performance!
Just as Epic Games promised would happen, the free-to-play battle royale game 'Fortnite' finally became available last week. For the first 3 days of its release, the game was limited the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S8, Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy Note 9, Galaxy Tab S3, and Galaxy Tab S4. We expected a much longer exclusivity period, possibly limited to just the Note 9 and Galaxy Tab S4, but it turns out the exclusive content is just a free skin and 15,000 V-Bucks (the in-game currency.) Now that the game is officially available for non-Samsung devices, we decided to do some quick gameplay tests on as many supported devices as we could and capture the performance data thanks to help from our friends at GameBench. We tested several devices with most of the supported chipsets—that being the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, Snapdragon 835, Snapdragon 845, Kirin 970, and Exynos 8895—just to get a feel for how well Fortnite Mobile on Android performs on most current Android smartphones.
Android Q+ may use the Vulkan Graphics API to render the UI
Skia, Google's open source graphics engine, has a Vulkan Graphics API backend. This backend may be utilized to render the UI in Android Q or later.
The next major version of Android, Android 9, is set to be released next month for multiple devices. Unlike Android Oreo where the main improvements were mostly under-the-hood, Android P offers more user-facing features such as the revamped user interface, navigation gestures, and Digital Wellbeing while also continuing work on Project Treble. But behind-the-scenes, Google has revamped how graphics rendering works on Android. In Android Oreo, Google began testing an OpenGL hardware-accelerated backend to the Skia graphics engine which was completed in Android P. Google isn't stopping there, however, as the company plans on implementing the Vulkan backend of the Skia graphics engine which will land in Android Q or a later release.