[Gear VR] Vulkan API support soon ?

@firagabird Where do you get your info? UE4 has no forward render path for ES3.1. I asked imperativity about how to enable it and he said he will ask integration team - I never heard back (because there is no forward ES3.1?). I recall either Epic or Oculus folks mentioned to me that ES2 forward was fully implemented and one side or another decided to pursue Vulkan instead of ES3.1. UE4 already has Vulkan for non-VR mobile and for Daydream VR. Gear VR is missing a few extensions like it was mentioned before.

I'm basing it off imperativity's comment in the linked thread:

imperativity said:

On the mobile codepath, if you check in the ES3.1 box, you will get the ES3.1 version of the mobile forward renderer. There is also the "ES3.1 mobile deferred" box which obviously is a deferred renderer that you shouldn't use. Please stick with the forward renderer at this time.

He says there's a forward path, and I'm inclined to believe him as an official Oculus rep. I also acknowledge that you responded to that thread, noting that don't see it in your copy of UE4. Here's where our conclusions differ though; whereas you consider this conflicting statements as being that UE4 can't do forward rendering on ES3.1, I take the much more conservative perspective that there's either a bug or some other issue that led to you failing to enable forward rendering on your copy of UE4.

I believe that the more productive course of action at this point is not to accuse Epic and Oculus of deceiving their developer base of having an unimplemented feature, but rather contacting either (or both) through formal channels of bug reports and providing them with the info needed to address your issue.

firagabird said:

I believe that the more productive course of action at this point is not to accuse Epic and Oculus of deceiving their developer base of having an unimplemented feature, but rather contacting either (or both) through formal channels of bug reports and providing them with the info needed to address your issue.

Eeeh, no one is accusing anyone. It's clear as day that UE4 launcher version has no forward path for ES3.1.

Any news on this? I'd very much prefer to focus on a Vulkan renderer that would also work on Linux, than having an additional OpenGL ES one just for Oculus Go.

There is a description for one of the GDC talks this year mentioning Vulkan, but the talk itself unfortunately didn't even mention it :(


Edit: Just realized this is in the Unreal section of the forum, but I guess the question still somewhat works.

imperativity said:

@motorsep

We have never been closer! Sometime in the next few months I believe.

Just wondering about the status for Vulkan support on Go (I doubt you guys will have Gear VR Vulkan sooner than Go).