https://developer.x-plane.com/2023/02/addressing-plugin-flickering/

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it would be unfair of me to not also mention AMD. While they are partially the reason we are here today, they also provided us with help and driver updates to make Zink work together with X-Plane and every engineer of theirs that I have met along this journey has been nothing but kind and helpful.

OK, maybe huge shout out to AMD is something of an exaggeration here, that credit really goes to

Mike Blumenkrantz

But redeeming themselves does deserve its fair share of credit, and this is sounding like they managed it.

Exciting times, created by awesome people.

 

 

Technically, if AMD had peoperly coded their Vulkan - OpenGL interoperation in their drivers properly from the start, there would not have been a need for Zink in the first place.

Mike Blumenkrantz is the real hero here. Since he's under contract from Valve, but a few games on Steam to ensure he stays fed. 😅

This is vulkan flexing as well. Reduced driver overhead means potentially faster GL calls than when GL was the big wig. Same for running directx apps via DXVK or vkd3d. Can be faster to translate the dx9/11 calls to Vulkan and run that, than execute dx9/11 natively.

Looks like there is a dx11 to dx12 layer out there, but I can't find reference to anyone using it. 

12 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Reduced driver overhead means potentially faster GL calls than when GL

there is a grander plan at play here to (aiui).

the mammouth problem with opengl is there is basically no way for plugins to do parallel panel drawing once they dispatch their displays to xplane. When this gets fully integrated with the new devices sdk, each cockpit display can be effectively locked into its own little world and XP should hopefully be able to draw complex custom displays and popouts (CL650, AVITAB, terrain radar springs to mind) simultaneously. That should significantly reduce the panel draw time, with corresponding reduction in frame time and a very decent fps boost.

which will hopefully make the more highly customised aircraft significantly more VR friendly.

There is a road to go before we get there, for now, just getting to the point AMD cards are OK to use with xplane 12 is a pretty big step in the right direction. 

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

the mammouth problem with opengl is there is basically no way for plugins to do parallel panel drawing once they dispatch their displays to xplane.

Ahhh, that makes sense! Because it's not actually running opengl (it's literally just pretending to be), LR isn't limited to the requirement that GL calls be made from the thread the GL context was created in? That would essentially make it the highest-performance plugin API you could possibly get. Industry-leading, to be precise.

5 hours ago, blingthinger said:

That would essentially make it the highest-performance plugin API you could possibly get. Industry-leading, to be precise.

As I understand it that's the plan, should make the lives of 3PDs much easier to, way to go before its ready I guess - not sure how much is even possible, but fixing AMD cards for what exists already definitely a good reason to give it a go on its own.