Wine Developers Are Exploring A Vulkan Backend To WineD3D

While Wine developers have already been working on VKD3D as Direct3D 12 implemented on top of Vulkan for Windows programs, it turns out Wine developers are exploring getting WineD3D on top of Vulkan for older versions of Direct3D using Vulkan rather than OpenGL.

This new effort is akin to DXVK for running Direct3D 10/11 to Vulkan or VK9 for Direct3D on Vulkan. Right now Wine's WineD3D code is mapping D3D calls to OpenGL while some developers happen to be exploring the viability of using Vulkan here, just like VK9 and DXVK. Apparently they did investigate DXVK but was deemed that it wouldn't workout for reasons unmentioned.

Wine developer and prolific WineD3D contributor Henri Verbeet who is employed by CodeWeavers commented, "the short answer is that we are in fact working on a Vulkan backend for wined3d. We also tried working with the DXVK project; that didn't work out."

It will certainly be interesting to see what comes of this. If DXVK is any indication, this could really help pre-DX12 Windows games to run much faster on Linux systems with Vulkan.