Now that VK_EXT_shader_object is out, I've got some thoughts...
Before I dig in, a disclaimer: I am NOT speaking on behalf of Khronos or the Vulkan working group. I also no longer work for a hardware vendor. I'm just very well-connected within the 3D graphics community.
The way I see ESO is as a sort of speculative or presumptuous directional extension. In an ideal world, it's where we'd like to go. Will we be able to get there? We've done enough engineering work to know it's implementable on the three desktop vendors. Will it get good perf?🤷♀️
Unfortunately, we can't try something this big out without just going for it and seeing what happens. There's too many players to do it all with internal NDA'd prototypes.
This means ESO is an industry-wide R&D project.
@gfxstrand has nintendo shared their motivation for it? i was assuming it was to allow a compatibility layer for their proprietary graphics api on top of vulkan
@leo I'm very hesitant to say anything about Nintendo's motivations. Even what little I know was said behind closed doors.
What I think I can reasonably say is that the Nintendo reps have put a lot of time and effort into this one. They probably wouldn't be doing that if they considered Vulkan an entirely throw-away API on their platform.
