Thursday, March 28, 2024

Vulkan API promises significant graphical improvements for Android gaming and 3D graphics

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vulkan gnomes3D graphics have been moving very quickly in the mobile space, getting increasingly competitive with traditional home video game consoles and the like. That trend will continue now that Vulkan, a 3D rendering API, is coming to Android to improve the graphics experience on mobile devices.

Vulkan is a much more efficient API than Open GL ES that Android currently uses, offering a significantly lower CPU overhead and better tools for developers. A video showcasing a horde of gnomes was created to really show off the difference between the two APIs, and it’s incredibly apparent how much better Vulkan should be for mobile gaming. 

The video shows tons and tons of gnomes on screen, and while both video stay pretty close in FPS at first, once the camera starts panning around and scrolling, Open GL fails to keep a decent framerate. On top of that, not only does Vulkan offer a drastically smoother experience, but CPU usage is much lower, too. That gives more room for game developers to squeeze some extra processing power out of an app, but it also means that energy consumption should be vastly improved.

The Vulkan API isn’t publicly available just yet, but once it is we should start to see some pretty quick improvements on gaming on Android devices, including things like Android TV consoles. Something like Razer’s Forge TV and NVIDIA’s Shield TV stand to gain the most from a more efficient API, since they’re competing more directly with home consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

source: Android Developers Blog

Click here to view the embedded video.

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