🥇D7VK 1.5 Release with Direct3D 3 Support

The release of the D7VK 1.5 project has been published, which enhances the implementation of graphic APIs Direct3D 3, 5, 6, and 7 proposed by Microsoft in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. D7VK operates through the translation of calls to the Vulkan API and allows retro games dependent on Direct3D 3, 5, 6, and 7 to run on Linux using Wine. The project code is written in C++ and is distributed under the Zlib license. The backend code d3d9 from the DXVK project has been used as a basis for development — D7VK transforms Direct3D 3, 5, 6, and 7 API calls into Direct3D 9 calls, which are then translated into Vulkan API calls. The developer does not intend to include D7VK in DXVK, as was done with the implementations of Direct3D 8 and Direct3D 9 over Vulkan.

The new release provides experimental support for the Direct3D 3 graphic API in addition to the previously available support for Direct3D 5, 6, and 7. As for other versions of Direct3D, DirectX 1 did not include 3D components. The Direct3D API appeared in DirectX 2, which is largely similar to DirectX 3. DirectX 4 was not released by Microsoft and remained a prototype (shortly after DirectX 3, DirectX 5 was released). Support for Direct3D 8, 9, 10, and 11 is provided by a separate project, DXVK.

In D7VK 1.5, work has also been done to fix bugs and improve compatibility for games with code supporting Direct3D 5, 6, and Direct3D 7. Support for Execute buffers has been implemented for transmitting GPU commands, the ability to write to the Back buffer and Depth buffer, as well as support for the old method of streaming vertex buffers framed with Begin and End commands.

Support for the following games has been added: