Blade Graphics

Blade-graphics is a lean and mean GPU abstraction aimed at ergonomics and fun. See motivation, FAQ, and performance for details.

Examples

Platforms

The backend is selected automatically based on the host platform:

• Vulkan on desktop Linux, Windows, and Android
• Metal on desktop macOS, and iOS
• OpenGL ES3 on the Web

Vulkan

Required instance extensions:

• VK_EXT_debug_utils
• VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
• VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2

Required device extensions:

• VK_EXT_inline_uniform_block
• VK_KHR_descriptor_update_template
• VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore
• VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering

Conceptually, Blade requires the baseline Vulkan hardware with a relatively fresh driver. All of these required extensions are supported in software by the driver on any underlying architecture.

OpenGL ES

GLES is also supported at a basic level. It's enabled for wasm32-unknown-unknown target, and can also be force-enabled on native:

RUSTFLAGS="--cfg gles" CARGO_TARGET_DIR=./target-gl cargo run --example bunnymark

This path can be activated on all platforms via Angle library. For example, on macOS it's sufficient to place libEGL.dylib and libGLESv2.dylib in the working directory.

On Windows, the quotes aren't expected:

set RUSTFLAGS=--cfg gles

WebGL2

Following command will start a web server offering the bunnymark example:

cargo run-wasm --example bunnymark

Vulkan Portability

First, ensure to load the environment from the Vulkan SDK:

cd /opt/VulkanSDK && source setup-env.sh

Vulkan backend can be forced on using "vulkan" config flag. Example invocation that produces a vulkan (portability) build into another target folder:

RUSTFLAGS="--cfg vulkan" CARGO_TARGET_DIR=./target-vk cargo test