Experimental Work Allows DXVK To Be Natively Used For Direct3D 11 On Linux

The DXVK Direct3D 10/11 over Vulkan implementation to date has been built as a Windows library run under Wine along with the game/software being rendered for converting the calls to Vulkan for execution by the host drivers. There is now experimental work for building DXVK as a native Linux library for converting D3D10/D3D11 calls to Vulkan outside of Wine.

Joshua Ashton who previously worked on DXUP and is well known for his work on D9VK for taking Direct3D 9 over Vulkan has been tackling this experimental DXVK support for running natively on Linux itself rather than within Wine.

With this work DXVK could then run on the native platform just as the Direct3D state trackers within Mesa's Gallium3D have done so.

Currently been working on a way to use DXVK on your native platform! (ie. D3D11 on Linux! :D)

Currently supports SDL Windows and the all of D3D11 (aside from GDI interop lol.)https://t.co/odGYynwnEJ

Should be useful for some easy ports :)
Hopefully can be upstreamed. ^^

— Joshie 🐸 (@npc_josh) November 15, 2019

In announcing his work, he shared that it should be useful for "some easy ports" with being able to compile the same Direct3D code for the Windows build without having to do any rewrites. Granted, many cross-platform engines already support OpenGL/Vulkan rendering options and it's often other middleware causing the most difficulties in porting to Linux.

He's hoping to see this native support upstreamed in DXVK but for now it can be found here. It will be interesting to see where this work leads.