VKD3D-Proton 3.0 released
Hans-Kristian Arntzen just announced vkd3d-proton 3.0, a big step forward for the project following its rapid development over the last year. This update brings plenty of new features and bug fixes integrated into the codebase as it gained momentum.
One highlight is doitsujin's rewrite of the DXBC shader backend. They've basically replaced the old vkd3d-shader path with a cleaner, simpler intermediate representation, mirroring how DXVK handles DXBC. This change helps games run better and opens up compatibility for titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 in D3D12 mode.
FSR4 support is another noteworthy addition, but only as it applies to AMD GPUs. It's optimized specifically for those cards, so you might not see benefits on other hardware just yet. There is a "hacky" emulation option available if you build from source with certain flags, though this comes at the cost of performance.
While FSR4 gets attention, vkd3d-proton 3.0 doesn't really bring anything truly groundbreaking. The focus has been more about catching up on existing capabilities and smoothing out those rough edges that cause problems in specific games or situations. That's especially true for bugs. One exception worth noting is the experimental implementation of D3D12 work graphs, using compute shaders to make it work even if your GPU doesn't support them natively.
Performance-wise, there are some solid improvements too. Texture copy batching has been overhauled, GDeflate handling works better when compression extensions aren't available, and GLSL is used as a fallback instead of HLSL in certain OpenGL scenarios. They've also refined how PointSamplingAddressesNeverRoundUp gets reported, fixing odd behavior related to Vulkan-ValidationLayers.
The release includes many bug fixes, covering everything from minor format reporting quirks to more serious problems like memory handling issues on older NVIDIA cards or crashes involving root signatures and pixel shaders. And they're keeping things stable by addressing game-specific glitches in titles including FF VII Remake (sync bugs), Starfield (NonUniformResourceIndex), and Wreckfest 2.
The team also added extra debugging tools to make it easier for developers working with vkd3d-proton on Linux-native projects and removed DXVK_FRAME_RATE tracking to align more closely with recent DXVK changes. Now you can all give the new version a try and send feedback their way.
Release vkd3d-proton Version 3.0
A new major release, yay! A few milestones have been reached over the last year, warranting a new major bump. It's been quite a while since the last release due to new things coming up constantly. ...
