Window
- CreateSwapchain asked for exactly numFrames (3) images whatever the
surface said, read them into a three-element array, and keyed the
command buffers, the fences and the descriptor-heap copy holding "its"
swapchain image by the acquired image index. A swapchain of another
size fell back to FIFO (asked for MAILBOX or IMMEDIATE) or threw, and a
surface whose minimum is above three got a create info below it
(#160). Mesa's MAILBOX needs four images: Turnip on phoc, llvmpipe on
any Wayland compositor.
- The present mode is picked first, then the swapchain is sized by
SwapchainCapabilities: the surface's counts for that mode where the
instance has surface_maintenance1. With swapchain_maintenance1 the
swapchain names its mode (VkSwapchainPresentModesCreateInfoKHR), which
is what makes the mode's own count the one that applies, at creation and
to the forward progress of a UINT64_MAX acquire; without it the stricter
of the mode's and the surface's counts for all modes. It asks for
numFrames or that minimum where more, never past the maximum
(SwapchainMinImageCount). Turnip's FIFO keeps its three images and
MAILBOX gets four. The FIFO fallback and presentModeUnfit are gone.
- images, imageViewInfos (was imageViews: they are create-infos), the made
imageViews that descriptor sets take, imageInitialised and the
render-finished semaphores are per image, as many as the driver made.
The views are made once per swapchain. The semaphores only grow, since
a present of the old swapchain may still wait on one.
- Frames in flight stay numFrames, keyed by currentFrame, frameCounter %
numFrames: the command buffer, the fence, the acquire semaphore, the
heap copy (or set), RenderingElement3D::tlases, the frameIdx a pass is
recorded with. currentImage is the acquired image. currentBuffer is
gone, so code that used it stops compiling instead of picking the wrong
one; RenderPass::Record's frameIdx keeps its name and is now the frame
slot, as RenderPass.cppm says.
- The frame's fence is waited before the acquire. The acquire semaphores
need no spare then, and a frame waits for exactly the one numFrames
before it, which the deletion queue and the staging rings count on and
fences keyed by image did not promise once images come back out of
order. The swapchain slots are written before the fence is reset.
- From the acquire to the present the window is recording: a Resize or
SetPresentMode from a listener (a VSync key ticked in onUpdate) takes
effect after the present, through RebuildSwapchain, together with a
present that found the swapchain out of date. Rebuilding mid-frame used
to destroy the image the frame was drawing into; with images sized per
swapchain it would also index past the new one's end.
DescriptorHeapVulkan
- Frames and images pair up differently from frame to frame, so no heap
copy can keep one swapchain image. AddSwapchainSlot(slot, window) lists
an image slot as that window's swapchain image, and Window::Render
writes the image a frame acquired into its window's listed slots in that
frame's copy, or its set, before onUpdate, skipping a slot that holds it
already. A slot is one window's, so two windows can share a heap without
writing each other's slots under each other's frames in flight. A slot
listed during a frame its window records is written at once. A slot past
the heap's image slots, an empty ImageSlot's 0xFFFF among them, is
refused. Freeing a slot unlists it, as does initialising the heap in
either binding model. WriteImageSet, the one use of which this
replaces, is gone, and with it the per-frame dimension of setImageViews.
Device
- VK_KHR_surface_maintenance1 (or EXT) and VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2
are enabled where the loader has them (surfaceMaintenance1Supported,
vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceCapabilities2KHR), and the matching
swapchain_maintenance1 with its feature where the device has it
(swapchainMaintenance1Supported).
- DistinctGpus groups the physical devices by GPU as CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_DEVICE
numbers them, for ChooseGpu and tests.
UI
- UIRenderer lists its output slot instead of writing every copy itself,
and again on every resize; the resize listener is gone on both
backends. The headers' frameIdx is currentFrame.
Examples
- VulkanTriangle, Sponza, SponzaBench and RTVolume list their output slot
and write only the per-frame TLASes. They wrote imageViews[f] into copy
f once, which a resize left pointing at destroyed images.
Tests
- SwapchainImageCount: SwapchainMinImageCount on the numbers drivers
report; every offered mode keeps its mode and gets what the window asks
for; every frame presents the colour it drew, read back a texel per
frame; a switch and a resize asked for during a frame wait for its
present; a slot listed during a frame holds its image at once; two
windows on one heap draw their own colours. The frame checks run again
in child processes, through CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_DEVICE, on a GPU whose
swapchains have more images than frames (this one, else llvmpipe), in
each binding model the parent didn't cover; a child skips only for a GPU
that can't run the library, and checks it runs the model it was asked
for.
- FrameLoopSync checks the frame slot follows the frame counter and counts
the swapchain's own images. HeapASRead, HeapDynamicIndexHit and
RTPassPushData list their swapchain slot and drop their resize rewrites.
Docs
- README, AGENTS.md and AGENTS.consumer.md: frames and images, the
swapchain slots, rebuilds held to the present, the new optional groups.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Device
- Device::Initialize(required, optional) takes DeviceFeatures, the five
core feature structs vulkan10 to vulkan14. The library enables only what
its own shaders and code use. Device::enabledFeatures says what was
enabled, supportedFeatures what the GPU has, apiVersion the version in
use.
- shaderInt16, shaderFloat16, storageBuffer16BitAccess, scalarBlockLayout
and the uniform-buffer, storage-buffer and storage-image non-uniform
indexing bits are no longer enabled for everyone. An application whose
shaders take uint16_t spec constants passes
{.vulkan10 = {.shaderInt16 = VK_TRUE}}. scalarBlockLayout stays on with
the NVIDIA workaround, whose TLAS address may sit in a struct's tail
padding.
- Every GPU is weighed before one is chosen: Vulkan 1.3, the swapchain and,
below 1.4, maintenance5 extensions, the library's needs, the required
features. One that can't run the application is skipped, saying why when
it ranks higher. A CPU device runs it only when nothing else is listed,
and CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_DEVICE never falls back. A GPU two drivers both list
is tried through each.
- When no GPU qualifies, Initialize throws naming each GPU's gaps. It
destroys the instance it made, before any Wayland connection, so it can
be called again asking for less.
- maintenance5 is vulkan14's on a 1.4 GPU and VK_KHR_maintenance5's below.
CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_NO_VULKAN_1_4 runs as a 1.3 application, to exercise
that path on a 1.4 GPU.
- VK_KHR_spirv_1_4 and VK_KHR_shader_float_controls, core since 1.2, are no
longer enabled, nor VK_EXT_shader_atomic_float, which was enabled without
its feature struct. memoryDecompression's feature bit is queried before
it is enabled.
Shaders
- VulkanShader checks a module's capabilities, declared directly or
implicitly, against the enabled core features, the GPU's subgroup
operations and the optional groups, and throws naming the field to pass,
or saying the GPU lacks it. The tables are generated from vk.xml and
SPIR-V's grammar.
- WorkaroundNvidiaAS::Patch sized a row-major matrix push member by its
columns, so the TLAS address could land inside it.
Window
- The swapchain format is one whose own feature flags allow storage reads
and writes without a format, which since Vulkan 1.3 each format says for
itself; shaderStorageImageRead/WriteWithoutFormat are no longer required.
Tests
- DeviceFeatures: ResolveFeatures, ChooseDevice and CheckShaderCapabilities,
without a GPU.
- FeatureRequests: required and optional features end to end, the 1.3
path, and a retry after a refusal.
- PushConstantRewrite: a row-major mat3x4 push member.
- HeapASRead, HeapDynamicIndexHit, RTPassPushData and the ray-tracing
examples ask for the features their shaders use.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Window
- updateInterval runs Update on the window's own clock while the
compositor sends no frame callbacks (hidden, minimized): the Wayland loop
is a poll() loop, and the Win32 loop sleeps until the next update. Both
read the interval each pass.
- SetPresentMode (FIFO, Mailbox, Immediate). A mode the surface lacks, or
whose swapchain has other than numFrames images (Mesa's Mailbox has four),
falls back to FIFO until the mode is set again.
- AddPollFd / RemovePollFd wake the Wayland loop on the app's descriptors.
- The swapchain has TRANSFER_DST where the surface allows it.
- CaptureNextFrame replaces SaveFrame: it records the copy in the frame,
before the present, where SaveFrame read an image already presented. A
frame unwound past before the write still frees the readback buffer.
- Inter-pass barriers on the swapchain image carry the access masks of the
stages the passes use.
Deferred deletion (issue #101)
- VulkanBuffer, Mesh, VulkanShader, ComputeShader and PipelineRTVulkan hand
their handles to the deletion queue from their destructors and moves, as
a frame in flight may still use them; a static owner goes after the
driver has torn down. VulkanShader and PipelineRTVulkan move and can't be
copied; re-Load and re-Init queue the old pipeline.
- The queue and its mutex are never destroyed, and the queue takes handles
from any thread; Device::frameCounter is atomic. Both the queue and the
staging rings count frames as one window renders them (documented).
- DrainDeletions also lets every buffer's staging ring start over: without
a Window nothing else reclaims either, so an app without one calls it
after waiting for its work.
Meshes and buffers
- A Mesh rebuild queues the old acceleration structure and builds into the
same storage after a barrier, so the BLAS address stays put when it fits.
The refit and rebuild barriers cover compute ray queries too.
- RTBuildOptions::noDuplicateAnyHit. Mesh::geometryFlags replaces opaque,
and the refit and rebuild fallbacks keep the flags.
- A re-upload into a buffer a frame in flight may read (UploadDeviceLocal
of the same size, UploadDeviceLocalRange) copies on the GPU, after those
reads, through a per-frame staging ring; on ReBAR it used to write the
buffer in place. Empty uploads record nothing.
- A compressed Mesh::Build that keeps its buffers decompresses into them
after the reads of frames in flight, and the hit shaders and ray queries
wait for the decompress as well as the BLAS build. Its vertex buffer
takes a ranged refit's copies.
- Mesh move-assigns (queueing the BLAS it replaces), so it can be replaced
in place or erased from a vector.
- VulkanBuffer::Create asks for a device address only for buffers with
SHADER_DEVICE_ADDRESS usage, as vkGetBufferDeviceAddress requires; the
others have address 0. UIRenderer::RegisterBuffer refuses those.
- Build inputs are synchronized as shader reads.
Other
- RTPass pushes the app's own push data and traces at an explicit size.
- DescriptorHeapVulkan hands freed slot ranges out again (they leaked), and
keeps its free lists sorted.
- ImageVulkan's mip chain clamps each level to 1 texel: a non-square
image's shorter side went to 0.
- VulkanShader throws on a missing file instead of failing in bad_alloc.
- CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_DEVICE picks the GPU by its number among the distinct
GPUs Vulkan lists; anything but such a number is an error.
- The debug messenger prints info messages only with
CRAFTER_GRAPHICS_VALIDATION set.
- Windows: the WinRT gamepad code moved to a C file (mingw-w64's WinRT
headers don't compile as C++), -lcombase dropped, a reference leak fixed.
- project.cpp honours --local for Crafter.Event, Math and Asset, as Asset
does for Math, and builds every test through one helper, projectArgs
included.
- Tests: DebugMessengerSeverity, DeletionQueueThreads, DeviceSelection,
HeapSlotReuse, MeshLifetime, MipChainNonSquare, PipelineLifetime,
RTPassPushData, SwapchainTransferDst, UploadInFlight, VulkanBufferAddress,
VulkanShaderLifetime, WindowUpdateClock; others extended.
Breaking: SaveFrame is CaptureNextFrame; Mesh::opaque is geometryFlags; a
buffer without SHADER_DEVICE_ADDRESS usage has no address; frameCounter is
std::atomic.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On NVIDIA 610.43.02, selecting a descriptor-heap descriptor with a
runtime index in a hit shader lost the device, for storage buffers and
sampled images alike, which is why the examples use spec constants
there. HeapDynamicIndexHit renders two instances whose closest-hit picks
a buffer and a texture by a runtime index: one instance uses the same
set across every wave, the other a different set in every other pixel
column, so neighbouring lanes select different descriptors. It passes
on 615.78.08 and on llvmpipe.
On NVIDIA drivers older than 615.78.08 it skips rather than abort the
suite. With validation on it also renders in a child process with
validation off, since GPU-assisted validation hides the fault.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
