Developer Star Citizen says it only wants to support Vulkan API

Cloud Imperium Games has announced that it will only use the Vulkan API for its game Star Citizen. Support for DirectX 12 will only be considered if it offers clear advantages over Vulkan.

CIG’s Alistair Brown announced the intention in a forum post on the Star Citizen forum. He was responding to a user question about the trade-off between DirectX and Vulkan in view of Linux support. The Vulkan api could offer benefits in that regard. Brown says that support for DirectX 12 was planned years ago, but now only Vulkan will be used.

He argues that this decision will eliminate the need for players to upgrade to Windows 10, as the Vulkan API is available on several Windows versions and Linux. According to Brown, DirectX 12 will only be possible if there are clear advantages to using it over Vulkan. The exclusive support for this api means that support for DirectX 11 will be phased out. According to Brown, this should not entail any disadvantages for existing backers.

The 1.0 version of the Vulkan API was released by the Khronos Group just over a year ago. It is a low level API for controlling the GPU. The API is largely derived from AMD’s Mantle and provides direct access to deeper layers of graphics hardware, reducing overhead. Other advantages of the api are that it is free of usage rights and that it is an open standard that can be used on all platforms, provided they support it.