In summary, what's the benefit of this work [on Gen 12 and Vulkan]? Why are we doing this work?
TL;DRGen 12 and Vulkan are for performance (better CPU use, lower latency) and for opening up features like ray tracing, VRS and async compute; it's described as necessary and the graphics team's biggest focus, with no date given.
Two reasons. The first reason is performance. We get the ability to use a more efficient API that can spread work over all of your CPU cores, which will result in a much, much faster rendering process on the CPU side and much lower latency as well. Latency is quite important to a lot of people these days. And the second side is, because it's a more modern API, it opens the door to many new features that we didn't previously have access to, which are things like ray tracing, VRS and async compute. And there's a lot of things we couldn't do locked to the previous API. So performance, then features afterwards.
So it seems like a big part in letting Star Citizen realize its full potential.
Yes. We don't really have a choice. This has to happen. This is the next logical step. We can't really achieve the performance or the visuals we want without taking this step first.
Want to put a date on it?
No, do you?
Nope. Just figured I'd ask.
It's our biggest focus this year. There's nothing else that we are putting anywhere near as much resources in, for the graphics team. Just the graphics and engine team.