Vulkan Samples

Table of Contents

• Vulkan Documentation Site
• Introduction
  • Goals
• Samples
• General information
• Setup
• Build
  • Supported Platforms
• Usage
• License
  • Trademarks
• Contributions
• Related resources

Vulkan Documentation Site

Documentation for the samples is best viewed at the new Vulkan Documentation Site. The documentation uses AsciiDoc which isn’t fully supported by github.

Introduction

The Vulkan Samples is collection of resources to help you develop optimized Vulkan applications.

If you are new to Vulkan the API samples are the right place to start. Additionally you may find the following links useful:

• Vulkan Guide

• Get Started in Vulkan

Performance samples show the recommended best practice together with real-time profiling information. They are more advanced but also contain a detailed tutorial with more in-detail explanations.

Goals

• Create a collection of resources that demonstrate best-practice recommendations in Vulkan

• Create tutorials that explain the implementation of best-practices and include performance analysis guides

• Create a framework that can be used as reference material and also as a sandbox for advanced experimentation with Vulkan

Samples

• Listing of all samples available in this repository

General information

• Project Basics

  • Controls

  • Debug window

  • Create a Sample

• Vulkan Essentials

  • How does Vulkan compare to OpenGL ES? What should you expect when targeting Vulkan?

• Misc

  • Driver version

  • Memory limits

Setup

Prerequisites: git with git large file storage (git-lfs).

Clone the repo with submodules using the following command:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Samples.git
cd Vulkan-Samples

Follow build instructions for your platform below.

Note

The full repository is very large, and some ISPs appear to have trouble providing a robust connection to github while the clone is being made. If you notice problems such as submodules downloading at reported rates in the tens of kB/s, or fatal timeout errors occurring, these may be due to network routing issues to github within your ISP’s internal network, rather than anything wrong in your own networking setup. It can be very difficult to get ISPs to acknowledge such problems exist much less to fix them. In this case, consider trying the clone while running a VPN service.

Build

Supported Platforms

• Windows - Build Guide

• Linux - Build Guide

• macOS - Build Guide

• Android - Build Guide

Usage

The following shows some example command line usage on how to configure and run the Vulkan Samples.

Make sure that you are running the samples from the root directory of the repository. Otherwise the samples will not be able to find the assets. ./build/app/bin/<BuildType>/<Arch>/vulkan_samples

# For the entire usage use
vulkan_samples --help

# For subcommand usage use
vulkan_samples <sub_command> --help

# Run Swapchain Images sample
vulkan_samples sample swapchain_images

# Run AFBC sample in benchmark mode for 5000 frames
vulkan_samples sample afbc --benchmark --stop-after-frame 5000

# Run compute nbody using headless_surface and take a screenshot of frame 5
# Note: headless_surface uses VK_EXT_headless_surface.
# This will create a surface and a Swapchain, but present will be a no op.
# The extension is supported by Swiftshader(https://github.com/google/swiftshader).
# It allows to quickly test content in environments without a GPU.
vulkan_samples sample compute_nbody --headless_surface -screenshot 5

# Run all the performance samples for 10 seconds in each configuration
vulkan_samples batch --category performance --duration 10

# Run Swapchain Images sample on an Android device
adb shell am start-activity -n com.khronos.vulkan_samples/com.khronos.vulkan_samples.SampleLauncherActivity -e sample swapchain_images

License

See LICENSE.

This project has some third-party dependencies, each of which may have independent licensing:

• astc-encoder: ASTC Evaluation Codec

• CTPL: Thread Pool Library

• docopt: A C++11 port of the Python argument parsing library

• glfw: A multi-platform library for OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, window and input

• glm: OpenGL Mathematics

• glslang: Shader front end and validator

• dear imgui: Immediate Mode Graphical User Interface

• HWCPipe: Interface to mobile Hardware Counters

• KTX-Software: Khronos Texture Library and Tools

• spdlog: Fast C++ logging library

• SPIRV-Cross: Parses and converts SPIR-V to other shader languages

• stb: Single-file public domain (or MIT licensed) libraries

• tinygltf: Header only C++11 glTF 2.0 file parser

• nlohmann json: C++ JSON Library (included by tinygltf)

• vma: Vulkan Memory Allocator

• volk: Meta loader for Vulkan API

• vulkan: Sources for the formal documentation of the Vulkan API

This project uses assets from vulkan-samples-assets. Each one has its own license.

Trademarks

Vulkan is a registered trademark of the Khronos Group Inc.

Contributions

Donated to Khronos by Arm, with further contributions by Sascha Willems and Adam Sawicki. See CONTRIBUTORS for the full contributor list.

Also see CONTRIBUTING for contribution guidelines.

Related resources

• Mali GPU Best Practices: A document with recommendations for efficient API usage