[int_19h]

What do you mean by "unofficial drivers"? Looking at the support matrix on Wikipedia, it seems that both NVIDIA and ATI support it in their official Windows drivers.

[Strom]

I guess he means that Microsoft isn't aggressive enough in distributing these drivers via Windows Update. Definitely the case with older Windows versions like Windows 7 where Windows Update doesn't seem to offer GPU driver updates at all if you have manually installed something like the driver cd that was in the GPU box. However with Windows 10 they have gotten more aggresive in updating these drivers. [1] Still, a lot of people on older Windows versions where the GPU drivers are likely out of date enough not to contain Vulkan.

[1] http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/stop-automatic-driver-upd...

[yellowapple]

"Still, a lot of people on older Windows versions where the GPU drivers are likely out of date enough not to contain Vulkan."

My guess would be that these same drivers would be out of date enough not to contain DX12, so if that's really the target, then there needs to be a fallback to OpenGL and/or an older DirectX.

[Strom]

DirectX 12 is only available on Windows 10, so that's the case regardless of drivers.

[MBCook]

I believe he means unofficial as in not provided by Microsoft. Microsoft works to make sure Direct3D works and I imagine they have lots of tests and compatibility suites there. I'm guessing they don't have any tests or standards were requirements around Vulcan.

[vetinari]

> I believe he means unofficial as in not provided by Microsoft.

Microsoft is only middle-man, the drivers are written by GPU vendors in the first place. Why should I prefer middle-man to the original source?

Historically, the drivers provided by Microsoft via Windows Update were worse (older) than those provided by GPU vendors directly.

> Microsoft works to make sure Direct3D works and I imagine they have lots of tests and compatibility suites there.

So do Khronos group and GPU vendors for Vulkan.