Vulkan 1.1.104 Brings Native HDR, Exclusive Fullscreen Extensions

With the annual Game Developers' Conference (GDC) kicking off tomorrow in San Francisco, Khronos' Vulkan working group today released Vulkan 1.1.104 that comes with several noteworthy extensions.

Vulkan 1.1.104 is the big update for GDC 2019 rather than say Vulkan 1.2, but it's quite a nice update as part of the working group's weekly/bi-weekly release regiment. In particular, Vulkan 1.1.104 is exciting for an AMD native HDR extension and also a full-screen exclusive extension.

There is also the usual assortment of different clarifications and corrections to the Vulkan spec, but the new extensions with Vulkan 1.1.104 are:

VK_AMD_display_native_hdr - This AMD-developed extension offers up native HDR display features for Vulkan to set the display color-space as well as local dimming control.

VK_EXT_full_screen_exclusive - This extension allows setting of policy for exclusive full-screen behavior for either accessing a particular display with a full-screen game/application or for cases like bypassing the display compositor.

VK_EXT_host_query_reset - This extension allows for resetting queries from the host.

VK_EXT_pipeline_creation_feedback - Provides a means of sending feedback to the game/application about pipeline creation.

VK_KHR_surface_protected_capabilities - With Vulkan 1.1 there has been support for protected memory and resources as well as the opportunity for protected displays/outputs. This new extension allows for querying whether a protected swapchain for a surface can be displayed on screen. NVIDIA developers worked out this extension.

The latest spec as always is up on Khronos.org.