Zink Now Supports OpenGL Compatibility Contexts - Allowing More Games/Apps To Work

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 18 August 2021 at 12:00 AM EDT. 6 Comments
LINUX GAMING
In addition to Tuesday seeing the Zink sub-allocator merged for sharply improving the performance of this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation within Mesa, the Zink Gallium3D code subsequently merged support for OpenGL compatibility contexts.

While Zink supports OpenGL 4.6 for a while now with the core GL contexts, it hasn't supported compatibility contexts. Creating an OpenGL compatibility context with supported drivers allows making use of legacy/deprecated GL functionality that is otherwise not available with the core context.

With Zink now supporting OpenGL compatibility contexts, this allows the OpenGL-on-Vulkan layer to work with all of the games and applications out there that rely on this compatibility mode.

The necessary pieces of Zink support for compatibility contexts has been in place but was held off on exposing it until the sub-allocator was in place for allowing more playable frame-rates with games.

The compatibility context support is at OpenGL 4.6, inline with the core context support. The change is in place for Mesa 21.3 due out in November~December as stable.

New Zink benchmarks with this latest code are currently running at Phoronix with results coming out in the next few days.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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