SwiftShader article creation

[osc_e 0]

SwiftShader is mentioned in a couple articles (i.e. Diablo III & Legend of Grimrock) with a broken and/or unresolved link.  If someone could create the Swiftshader page: 

• What it is statement: A CPU-based implementation of the Vulkan and OpenGL ES graphics APIs (Note: it has legacy DX8/9 API implementations as well)
• Github page:  https://github.com/google/swiftshader
• Google Git: https://swiftshader.googlesource.com/SwiftShader/   (this looks like the main repository)
• and there's a google drive for a Windows 32 and 64 bit build of the D3D9.dll: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8_BlOx5-97CRldzOEg5S3o0NUk

There's a video of the DX9 implementation running Crisis:  SwiftShader - Can it run Crysis? Yes!

And another video on the more practical side of why/when it would need to be used: "Gaming" With Old Intel GMA 3100 Integrated Graphics

Anywho's, seems like a useful tool in the right situation.

Edited May 30, 2020 by osc_e
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[Aemony 142]

We actually had a SwiftShader page back in 2012 but it was removed due to lack of content, and honestly I sorta don't see it go any different this time around.

From the looks of things, SwiftShader is essentially turning graphics APIs and calls into software rendering -- that is, being rendered and executed on a CPU and not the GPU.

It is intended for enabling 3D rendering on systems that otherwise can't fully support hardware-accelerated rendering, and was developed by Google to allow 3D web content to be available even to those users without proper GPU capabilities.

It makes it... I mean... Its use-cases becomes extremely specific.

For example, the Crysis video highlights the fact that even with the game running at the lowest settings in 720p, on a Ryzen 2700x (8 cores, 16 threads) released in 2018, it is a stuttering mess and barely playable. And the game would almost certainly perform much faster on any integrated GPU of any CPU -- something that is the standard, I think(?), for CPUs nowadays.

We can still create the page, of course, to allow new users to add information to it, but unless someone really steps in and takes responsibility of filling the page out I would imagine any page would essentially just be a few sentences at most.

[osc_e 0]

That's exactly my point.  I think having that little bit of info and the links to the software are more than enough for a page, then it would solve the broken links and still have the info for the fix/work-around in the (admittedly) few instances were it's used.  Mostly I see this sort of thing (along with IDAMTools 2.0, AddGame.Reg, and 3D-Analyze) being used by people still running systems that don't have modern API support, or a few specific cases were a modern system's API support precludes running an old game.  The pool of people that need these types of tools are small, but I think having the info available on the Wiki is worthwhile.

It's also interesting that Alphabet/Google has taken over the SwiftShader project for use with modern APIs to switch to mobile platforms.  There may be some functionality in the PC gaming space under the right circumstances as well.  Like running Vulkan titles on non-Vulkan supported GPUs, etc.