Valve’s Proton compatibility tool has unarguably turned the table for gaming on Linux. As we reported months ago, Proton brought about 6,000 games to Linux in the last two years.
Valve has started working on a new project to further bring Windows-exclusive games on Linux. Hans-Kristian Arntzen, a Valve’s Proton team developer, has forked out a VKD3D library built on top of Vulkan. To mark it as Proton’s official project, he renamed VKD3D-Proton.
Vkd3d is a 3D graphics library built on top of Vulkan for Wine to enable Direct3D 12 Windows games. Though the upstream Wine team has continued to work on VKD3D, Valve has now decided to work officially and freely on D3D12 implementation in Proton.
If you don’t know Proton also has DXVK for DirectX 9/10/11 API into Vulkan. VKD3D-Proton aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan for Valve’s Proton that powers Steam Play.
VKD3D-Proton has also outlined its priorities with performance and compatibility as primary goals using modern Vulkan extensions and features. Subsequently, the project does not intend to add backward compatibility with older drivers, systems, and vkd3d standalone API.
Hence, Vkd3d-proton recommends using the very latest drivers to get the best gaming experience out of Proton. For more details, you can check out its GitHub repository here.
It sure seems like great news and effort by Valve’s Proton team to bring more Windows games, especially D3D12-based games on the Linux platform with Steam Play.
Image Source: Phoronix
