Valve recently released the release of the new version of VKD3D-Proton 2.5, which is positioned as a fork of the vkd3d code base designed to improve Direct3D 12 compatibility in the Proton game launcher.
For those who are still unaware of VKD3D-Proton, you should know that this Supports Proton-specific changes, optimizations, and enhancements for better performance of Direct3D 12-based Windows games, which are not yet accepted in the main part of vkd3d. Among the differences, there is also a focus on using modern Vulkan extensions and the capabilities of recent versions of graphics drivers to achieve full Direct3D 12 compatibility.
As such Valve uses the fork specified in the Wine-based package to run Windows Proton games. The DirectX 9/10/11 support in Proton is based on the DXVK package and the DirectX 12 implementation has so far been based on the vkd3d library (after the death of the author of vkd3d, CodeWeavers continued the development of this component and the wine community).
The development of VKD3D-Proton involved Hans-Kristian Arntsen SPIRV-Cross author and developer of some Vulkan API extensions, Philip Rebohle, DXVK author, and Joshua Ashton, D9VK author working for Valve.
VKD3D-Proton is not intended to maintain backward compatibility of the original vkd3d API and does not preclude termination of support for older GPUs and graphics drivers.
What's new in VKD3D-Proton 2.5?
In this new version more or less complete support for the DXR 1.0 API has been implemented (DirectX Raytracing) and experimental support for DXR 1.1 (enabled by setting the environment variable VKD3D_CONFIG = dxr | dxr11 «).
Even though it is mentioned that in DXR 1.1, not all functions are yet implemented, but the support for online ray tracing is now completely ready. Running games that use DXR include Control, DEATHLOOP, Cyberpunk 2077, World of Warcraft, and Resident Evil: Village.
For systems with graphics cards NVIDIA, support for DLSS technology has been added, which allows you to use the Tensor cores of NVIDIA graphics cards to scale realistic images using machine learning methods to increase resolution without losing quality.
It is also highlighted that added support for PCI-e Resizable BAR technology Base Address Registers), which allows the CPU to access all the video memory of the GPU and in some situations increases the performance of the GPU by 10-15%. The optimization effect is clearly visible in the Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding games.
Regarding the corrections The following are mentioned:
- Fixed the exchange chain display latency HANDLE behavior that fixes spurious deadlocks in some cases.
- Fixed many issues related to depth template handling, which fixed various issues in DEATHLOOP, F1 2021, WRC 10.
- Fixed DIRT 5 rendering crashes and issues. It should be fully playable now.
- Fixed some rendering issues in Diablo II Resurrected.
- Shadowing bugs were fixed in Psychonauts 2.
- Workaround for some Unreal Engine 4 shadowing bugs triggering multiple titles.
- Fixed some stability issues when VRAM runs out on NVIDIA.
- Fixed CPU crash in Far Cry 6 startup sequence (game still has some bugs, but is incorporated into game).
- Fixed various bugs with visible host images.
- Fixed various DXIL conversion bugs.
- Alternative invariable geometry solutions for specific games that require it.
- Fix how d3d12.dll exports symbols to be more in line with MSVC.
- Fixed some extreme cases in bit field instructions.
- Avoid extreme CPU memory buildup on specific versions of the NVIDIA driver that had this bug.
- Fixed regression in Evil Genius 2: World Domination.
- Fix bugs in Hitman 3.
- Fixed rendering of terrain in Anno 1800.
- Various bug fixes and fixes.
Finally If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.
And if you want try Proton on Steam now, you already know that you can install the Steam client from the official website, although you will also find it in the repos of most distros.