Star Citizen Plans To Go Vulkan-Only

Star Citizen, the much-anticipated space simulator video game that is the most-funded crowdfunding project ever with more than 39 million dollars pledged, is planning to go Vulkan-only.

Star Citizen has been planning for Linux support while now it's been made clear they are planning for Vulkan support not only on Linux but also under Windows.

One of their developers commented, "Years ago we stated our intention to support DX12, but since the introduction of Vulkan which has the same feature set and performance advantages this seemed a much more logical rendering API to use as it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10 and opens the door for a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux. As a result our current intention is to only support Vulkan and eventually drop support for DX11 as this shouldn't effect any of our backers. DX12 would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan. The API's really aren't that different though, 95% of the work for these APIs is to change the paradigm of the rendering pipeline, which is the same for both APIs."

Star Citizen is being built atop CryEngine / Amazon Lumberyard. There still is no firm release date yet for this game but those wanting to learn more can visit the game's website.