Vulkan: Geometry Shader Validation incorrect?

Question

I am currently using a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 (from Gigabyte if that matters - I don't know how much this could be affected by the onboard BIOS, I've also got two of them Installed but due to Vulkans incapeability of SLI I only use one device at a time in my code. However in the NVIDIA control center SLI is activated. I use the official Driver version 375.63). That GPU is fully capable of geometry shaders of course.
I am using a geometry shader with Vulkan API and it works allright and does everything I exspect it to do. However I get the validation layer report as follows: @[SC]: Shader requires VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures::geometryShader but is not enabled on the device.

Is this a bug? Does someone have similiar issues?

PS: http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/displayreport.php?id=777#features is saying the support for "Geometry Shader" is "true" as exspected. I am using Vulkan 1.0.30.0 SDK.

Answer 1

Vulkan features work differently from OpenGL extensions. In OpenGL, if an extension is supported, then it's always active. In Vulkan, the fact that a feature is available is not sufficient. When you create a VkDevice, you must explicitly ask for all features you intend to use.

If you didn't ask for the Geometry Shader feature, then you can't use GS's, even if the VkPhysicalDevice advertises support for it.

So the sequence of steps should be to check to see if a VkPhysicalDevice supports the features you want to use, then supply those features in VkDeviceCreateInfo::pEnabledFeatures when you call vkCreateDevice.

Since Vulkan doesn't do validation checking on most of its inputs, the actual driver will likely assume you enabled the feature and just do what it normally would. But it is not required to do so; using a feature which has not been enabled is undefined behavior. So the validation layer is right to stop you.