Registered Extension Number

191

Revision

3

Ratification Status

Not ratified

Extension and Version Dependencies

VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
or
Version 1.1

Contact

Other Extension Metadata

Last Modified Date

2018-08-03

IP Status

No known IP claims.

Contributors

  • Vikram Kushwaha, NVIDIA

  • Faith Ekstrand, Intel

Description

This extension allows instance-rate vertex attributes to be repeated for certain number of instances instead of advancing for every instance when instanced rendering is enabled.

New Structures

New Enum Constants

  • VK_EXT_VERTEX_ATTRIBUTE_DIVISOR_EXTENSION_NAME

  • VK_EXT_VERTEX_ATTRIBUTE_DIVISOR_SPEC_VERSION

  • Extending VkStructureType:

    • VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_VERTEX_ATTRIBUTE_DIVISOR_FEATURES_EXT

    • VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_VERTEX_ATTRIBUTE_DIVISOR_PROPERTIES_EXT

    • VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PIPELINE_VERTEX_INPUT_DIVISOR_STATE_CREATE_INFO_EXT

Issues

1) What is the effect of a non-zero value for firstInstance?

RESOLVED: The Vulkan API should follow the OpenGL convention and offset attribute fetching by firstInstance while computing vertex attribute offsets.

2) Should zero be an allowed divisor?

RESOLVED: Yes. A zero divisor means the vertex attribute is repeated for all instances.

Examples

To create a vertex binding such that the first binding uses instanced rendering and the same attribute is used for every 4 draw instances, an application could use the following set of structures:

    const VkVertexInputBindingDivisorDescriptionEXT divisorDesc =
    {
        .binding = 0,
        .divisor = 4
    };

    const VkPipelineVertexInputDivisorStateCreateInfoEXT divisorInfo =
    {
        .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PIPELINE_VERTEX_INPUT_DIVISOR_STATE_CREATE_INFO_EXT,
        .pNext = NULL,
        .vertexBindingDivisorCount = 1,
        .pVertexBindingDivisors = &divisorDesc
    }

    const VkVertexInputBindingDescription binding =
    {
        .binding = 0,
        .stride = sizeof(Vertex),
        .inputRate = VK_VERTEX_INPUT_RATE_INSTANCE
    };

    const VkPipelineVertexInputStateCreateInfo viInfo =
    {
        .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PIPELINE_VERTEX_INPUT_CREATE_INFO,
        .pNext = &divisorInfo,
        ...
    };
    //...

Version History

  • Revision 1, 2017-12-04 (Vikram Kushwaha)

    • First Version

  • Revision 2, 2018-07-16 (Faith Ekstrand)

    • Adjust the interaction between divisor and firstInstance to match the OpenGL convention.

    • Disallow divisors of zero.

  • Revision 3, 2018-08-03 (Vikram Kushwaha)

    • Allow a zero divisor.

    • Add a physical device features structure to query/enable this feature.

See Also

VkPhysicalDeviceVertexAttributeDivisorFeaturesEXT, VkPhysicalDeviceVertexAttributeDivisorPropertiesEXT, VkPipelineVertexInputDivisorStateCreateInfoEXT, VkVertexInputBindingDivisorDescriptionEXT

Document Notes

For more information, see the Vulkan Specification

This page is a generated document. Fixes and changes should be made to the generator scripts, not directly.

Copyright

Copyright 2014-2023 The Khronos Group Inc.

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0