Mesa 22.0 Intel OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers Enable Adaptive-Sync/VRR

In the mainline Linux kernel for a year now has been the Intel variable rate refresh (VRR) support for Gen12 / Xe Graphics and then with the upcoming Linux 5.17 cycle that's being enabled for Gen11 Ice Lake graphics too. With the Intel i915 DRM kernel driver support for VRR/Adaptive-Sync being mature, the Intel Mesa OpenGL and Vulkan driver components are finally enabling the support by default.

For a year has been the Mesa merge request to go ahead and enable Adaptive-Sync for their "Iris" Gallium3D OpenGL and "ANV" Vulkan open-source drivers on Linux. The changes are trivial with just toggling the DRI_CONF_ADAPTIVE_SYNC option for Mesa's integration around the DRM Variable Refresh Rate API.... That Mesa DRM VRR API integration was previously tackled by AMD developers working on their VRR/FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync support years ago. All of the vendor-specific magic happens within the kernel drivers around this feature for reducing tearing and stuttering within games.

See the VESA whitepaper in the event you are not familiar with Adaptive-Sync.

As of today in Mesa 22.0-devel those Intel OpenGL/Vulkan driver patches have landed for enabling Adaptive-Sync. Mesa 22.0 will debut as stable later this quarter with these bits in place assuming you are running a recent kernel release (or Linux 5.17+ for Ice Lake).