Although Linux has improved a lot in recent times, Windows still holds the top spot when it comes to gaming. However, with the release of Valve Proton, Linux has taken off and now supports over 6000 games.
Recently, Valve announced the new VKD3D project, which will bring some of its Windows-exclusive games to Linux operating systems. The company's new project was created by Hans-Kristian Arntzen, one of the developers on the Proton development team. According to him, VKD3D is a 3D library built on top of Vulkan. In order for it to be considered an official part of Proton, however, Arntzen had to rename the project to VKD3D-Proton.
However, although Proton is a Valve project, the Wine team has taken over the development of VKD3D. According to Valve, the company is currently working on integrating D3D12 into Proton, not on the development of VKD3D.
It is important to mention that Proton contains the DXVK library, which is responsible for DirectX 9/10/11 APIs. The purpose of the new library is to add the Direct3D 12 API into Proton. Thus, VKD3D will allow support for recent games.
Arntzen also says that the main goal of the new library is performance, as well as compatibility. To achieve this, it uses many of the new features of Vulkan, combined with the latest available drivers. For the same reason, the library does not contain support for older drivers and systems.
This means that, for now, the Project will only be useful for users with newer systems. However, the development of VKD3D is still in its early stages. The project continues to be developed frequently, and its compatibility is becoming increasingly wide. More information about VKD3D can be found here.
