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Nintendo Switch Added to Hardware Supporting Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5, and OpenGL ES

The new Nintendo hardware supporting these APIs is a good thing for prospective developers. 
Cassidee Moser
7

Khronos group has announced it will add the Nintendo Switch to its list of hardware supporting the development tools OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL ES, and Vulkan.

This announcement is relevant to those who have an interest in developing games for the Nintendo Switch. Developer Ethan Lee pointed out on Twitter that this suggests the Switch could be a more friendly platform to these APIs than the likes of iOS or MacOS.

OpenGL has been a leading graphical standard for some time, while Vulkan is a newer platform from NVIDIA. Vulkan has been cited as being used to help boost framerate performance among other things in big-budget games. While it is still relatively new and on the cutting edge of development tech, it has been used by notable developers id Software and Valve for Doom and Dota 2 respectively. 

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  • Shacknews legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
    reply
    December 20, 2016 10:58 AM

    Cassidee Moser posted a new article, Nintendo Switch Added to Hardware Supporting Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5, and OpenGL ES

    • EnhancedInterrogator legacy 10 years
      reply
      December 20, 2016 11:41 AM

      Here comes Doom 2016!

    • one random winner legacy 10 years
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      December 20, 2016 11:51 AM

      Quick edit needed. Villain is an API developed by Kronos Group derived from AMD's Mantel. Nvidia has actually been historically worse off compared to AMD hardware, but it's going to be an important middleware going cross platform.

      • one random winner legacy 10 years
        reply
        December 20, 2016 11:53 AM

        Bah... Villain Vulkan.

      • EnhancedInterrogator legacy 10 years
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        December 20, 2016 12:30 PM

        It wasn't derived from Mantle. Mantle was just added to the overall API early in development. So I guess you could say Mantle is certainly part of its DNA, but the whole thing is bigger than Mantle.

        • one random winner legacy 10 years
          reply
          December 20, 2016 12:57 PM

          Fair enough, either way Nvidia didn't have much to do with its development at this point.

          • EnhancedInterrogator legacy 10 years
            reply
            December 20, 2016 2:15 PM

            Yeah, Nvidia seems to be letting AMD take the lead on low-level API's. They seem content to brute force better graphics, while AMD is looking down the road 10 years when Moore's Law ends, and better programming will be the only way to get higher fidelity visuals.

        • timmie legacy 10 years legacy 20 years mercury super mega
          reply
          December 20, 2016 4:07 PM

          No, it's originally derived from Mantle. AMD gave the Khronos group the API because they knew that Mantle was basically a dead end. I remember hearing about this at the Vulkan talk I attended at SIGGRAPH 2015.

          • EnhancedInterrogator legacy 10 years
            reply
            December 20, 2016 5:26 PM

            Yeah, I saw a video of that talk, I guess I remember it differently. Sounded like Vulkan was already under way before AMD donated Mantle

    • d fluke legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      January 11, 2017 1:52 PM

      That's... reassuring!

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