VKD3D 1.4 Released With More Direct3D 12 Features Supported, Better HLSL Compiler

Wine developers have released VKD3D 1.4, the newest version of their Direct3D 12 on Vulkan implementation that is useful with Wine for enjoying newer Windows games on Linux.

Valve's Steam Play (Proton) continues relying on their VKD3D-Proton fork while VKD3D remains the upstream Wine project for implementing D3D12 on Vulkan. With VKD3D 1.4 there are improvements to their HLSL compiler, a new descriptor heap implementation, and a new fence implementation. These new features are building off various Vulkan extensions for efficient usage of mapping D3D12 functionality atop Vulkan. There are also other new interfaces implemented, improvements to better match Direct3D 12 behavior, and other changes.

VKD3D 1.4 is available from WineHQ.org Git for those wanting to build this D3D12-on-Vulkan implementation on their own. Most Linux gamers though will be best off relying on Steam Play (Proton) with its VKD3D-Proton setup.