VK9 Project Stalls As Developer Leaves To Pursue Other Interests
It's been almost three years that Christopher Schaefer has been near single-handedly working on this project to get Direct3D 9 running over the Vulkan graphics API. While he's been successful in getting code samples and other bits running from D3D9 over Vulkan, he's decided to throw in the towel at least for the time being.
He announced via Patreon that he is "taking a break from VK9. I've been working on VK9 for nearly 3 years. I'd like to take some time off to pursue other interests." He also mentioned to a Phoronix reader on Discord that "thus far nobody has expressed interest in taking it up. However there are other projects showing up such as Wine's implementation. I would be more than happy to share my experience with anyone working toward the goal of improving d3d9 support on alterative platforms."
Indeed, the ecosystem these days is certainly much more vibrant around Direct3D over Vulkan for greater performance. DXVK that was started after VK9 for Direct3D 10/11 on Vulkan is running many notable Windows games these days and is in remarkably good shape for opening up more modern Windows games to run on Linux under Wine/Proton. Additionally, Wine developers are exploring a Vulkan back-end for WineD3D that would at least in theory address having D3D9 over Vulkan. And yet another D3D9-over-Vulkan means may come via way of running Gallium Nine over Zink with Vulkan drivers once Gallium Nine fully handles NIR. Nine-with-Zink is quite a realistic goal that may happen not too far out in the future and due to leveraging that mature state tracker should be able to speed past VK9's now idle state. Or if anyone is interested in taking over VK9 development, this code-base still could move on.
Those wishing to dive into the VK9 code can do so via GitHub and great job to Christopher Schaefer in his work on the project over the past three years.
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