Rainbow Six Siege is getting Vulkan API support in the upcoming Y4S4.3 Mid-Season patch. Vulkan API was first tested in TTS Servers back in November, but was later removed due to performance issues and crashes. Now, after heavy internal testing, developers have announced that Vulkan will be implemented in the live build of Rainbow Six Siege. Developers have been wanting to use a newer API for quite some time now. The initial contenders were DirectX 12 and Vulkan, but after long testing sessions, Vulkan was decided on as a better API.
The upcoming patch will allow players to choose the newer API or use the older DirectX 11 version. The Vulkan API provides several advantages over DirectX 11, which improves the performance of Rainbow Six Siege. Developers have reminded us that they are in the process of “tweaking and testing Vulkan” so some players might feel “no change or potentially decreased performance”. When the patch is released, you will be able to choose between either launcher.
“The Vulkan API will enable us to make improvements on workload through Dynamic Texture Indexing to reduce CPU cost, and Dynamic Resolution and AsyncCompute to reduce GPU cost.” developers at Ubisoft further added. “These features are already used on consoles, and the Vulkan API will allow us to do the same for PC. By combining all these features, we can optimize both the GPU and CPU cost of rendering.”
Without getting too technical, Vulkan is a low-overhead application programming interface (API). Compared to its direct alternatives like OpenGL, Dx11, Dx12, Vulkan provides more balanced CPU/GPU usage. It also provides more parallel tasking and better work distribution among multiple CPU cores.
Vulkan API was added in 2016’s DOOM via an update, and saw massive performance gains compared to DirectX 11, especially on AMD GPUs. Several major games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider received Vulkan support after their initial launches as well. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Rage 2 were made solely on Vulkan API.
You can check out the Ubisoft complete blog about Vulkan over here.
