Will vulkan api handle window creation?

Question

I have heared vulkan will unify the initialisation on different operating systems. Does that mean vulkan creates the window, handles mouse/keyboard events so I can avoid using os specific programming?

Answer 1

It won't. Window creation will be platform specific and an WSI extension will let you link the window to a renderable Image that you can push to the screen.

From information gleaned out of the presentations that have been given I expect that you will use a platform specific WSI Extension to create a Swapchain for your window.

Then each time you wish to push a frame to the screen you need to acquire a presentable image from the swapchain; render to it and then present it.

see this slide pack from slide 109 onward.

Answer 2

No, Vulkan is a low-level API for accessing GPUs. It does not deal with windows and input. In fact it can be used easily in a "headless" manner with no visual output at all.

Answer 3

Porbably not, Vulkan API is an Graphics Library much like OpenGL.

Where in Linux Ubuntu OpenGL is used for animation effects of the desktop in Unity and could be replaced with Vulkan for better performance.

But I don't think Windows will change it as they have their own DirectX Graphics Library and would be weird if they use something else instead their own software.

The most applications that are going to benefit from Vulkan are Games and other software that uses either 2D or 3D rendering. It's very likely that most of the games are going to change to Vulkan because it's Cross-platform and therefore they will gain more users which equals to more profit.

Khronos (Vulkan API developers) are also bringing out tools that will largely port your application from OpenGL or DX12 to Vulkan therefore requiring less development/porting from the software developers side.

So... Window creation, likely. (Although the code behind the window is CPU side, the library that draws the window on screen might be using Vulkan) - this differs greatly from which OS, distribution and version you are working on.

Mouse/keyboard events, no as this doesn't require any graphical calculations but CPU calculations.

Answer 4

Window (frames) are general desktop manager controls; you could display the vulkan app's content in the client area, otherwise vulkan would have to provide interfaces to the desktop manager for window creation (GUI library). Someone could simply create a device context (DC in windows, similar for the X server) then manage the "vulkan app" manually like a windowed game with no chrome (frameless), but this would be a great deal of work right now.

Old hand Windows developer bible addressing device context and rendering among many other things: Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Developer Reference) 5th Edition. Very good read and from an agnostic point of view provides a great deal of carry over knowledge loosely applicable to most systems.