Hello Vulkan Window Example

Shows the basics of using QVulkanWindow .

The Hello Vulkan Window Example shows the basics of using QVulkanWindow in order to display rendering with the Vulkan graphics API on systems that support this.

../_images/hellovulkanwindow.png

In this example there will be no actual rendering: it simply begins and ends a render pass, which results in clearing the buffers to a fixed value. The color buffer clear value changes on every frame.

Startup

Each Qt application using Vulkan will have to have a Vulkan instance which encapsulates application-level state and initializes a Vulkan library.

A QVulkanWindow must always be associated with a QVulkanInstance and hence the example performs instance creation before the window. The QVulkanInstance object must also outlive the window.

    QVulkanInstance inst;

#ifndef Q_OS_ANDROID
    inst.setLayers(QByteArrayList() << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_standard_validation");
#else
    inst.setLayers(QByteArrayList()
                   << "VK_LAYER_GOOGLE_threading"
                   << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_parameter_validation"
                   << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_object_tracker"
                   << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_core_validation"
                   << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_image"
                   << "VK_LAYER_LUNARG_swapchain"
                   << "VK_LAYER_GOOGLE_unique_objects");
#endif

    if (!inst.create())
        qFatal("Failed to create Vulkan instance: %d", inst.errorCode());

The example enables validation layers, when supported. When the requested layers are not present, the request will be ignored. Additional layers and extensions can be enabled in a similar manner.

VulkanWindow w;
w.setVulkanInstance(&inst);

w.resize(1024, 768);
w.show();

Once the instance is ready, it is time to create a window. Note that w lives on the stack and is declared after inst .

The QVulkanWindow Subclass

To add custom functionality to a QVulkanWindow , subclassing is used. This follows the existing patterns from QOpenGLWindow and QOpenGLWidget . However, QVulkanWindow utilizes a separate QVulkanWindowRenderer object. This resembles QQuickFramebufferObject , and allows better separation of the functions that are supposed to be reimplemented.

class VulkanRenderer : public QVulkanWindowRenderer
{
public:
    VulkanRenderer(QVulkanWindow *w);

    void initResources() override;
    void initSwapChainResources() override;
    void releaseSwapChainResources() override;
    void releaseResources() override;

    void startNextFrame() override;

private:
    QVulkanWindow *m_window;
    QVulkanDeviceFunctions *m_devFuncs;
    float m_green = 0;
};

class VulkanWindow : public QVulkanWindow
{
public:
    QVulkanWindowRenderer *createRenderer() override;
};

The QVulkanWindow subclass reimplements the factory function createRenderer() . This simply returns a new instance of the QVulkanWindowRenderer subclass. In order to be able to access various Vulkan resources via the window object, a pointer to the window is passed and stored via the constructor.

QVulkanWindowRenderer *VulkanWindow::createRenderer()
{
    return new VulkanRenderer(this);
}

VulkanRenderer::VulkanRenderer(QVulkanWindow *w)
    : m_window(w)
{
}

Graphics resource creation and destruction is typically done in one of the init - resource functions.

void VulkanRenderer::initResources()
{
    qDebug("initResources");

    m_devFuncs = m_window->vulkanInstance()->deviceFunctions(m_window->device());
}

The Actual Rendering

QVulkanWindow subclasses queue their draw calls in their reimplementation of . Once done, they are required to call back frameReady() . The example has no asynchronous command generation, so the frameReady() call is made directly from startNextFrame().

void VulkanRenderer::startNextFrame()
{
    m_green += 0.005f;
    if (m_green > 1.0f)
        m_green = 0.0f;

    VkClearColorValue clearColor = {{ 0.0f, m_green, 0.0f, 1.0f }};
    VkClearDepthStencilValue clearDS = { 1.0f, 0 };
    VkClearValue clearValues[2];
    memset(clearValues, 0, sizeof(clearValues));
    clearValues[0].color = clearColor;
    clearValues[1].depthStencil = clearDS;

    VkRenderPassBeginInfo rpBeginInfo;
    memset(&rpBeginInfo, 0, sizeof(rpBeginInfo));
    rpBeginInfo.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_RENDER_PASS_BEGIN_INFO;
    rpBeginInfo.renderPass = m_window->defaultRenderPass();
    rpBeginInfo.framebuffer = m_window->currentFramebuffer();
    const QSize sz = m_window->swapChainImageSize();
    rpBeginInfo.renderArea.extent.width = sz.width();
    rpBeginInfo.renderArea.extent.height = sz.height();
    rpBeginInfo.clearValueCount = 2;
    rpBeginInfo.pClearValues = clearValues;
    VkCommandBuffer cmdBuf = m_window->currentCommandBuffer();
    m_devFuncs->vkCmdBeginRenderPass(cmdBuf, &rpBeginInfo, VK_SUBPASS_CONTENTS_INLINE);

    // Do nothing else. We will just clear to green, changing the component on
    // every invocation. This also helps verifying the rate to which the thread
    // is throttled to. (The elapsed time between startNextFrame calls should
    // typically be around 16 ms. Note that rendering is 2 frames ahead of what
    // is displayed.)

    m_devFuncs->vkCmdEndRenderPass(cmdBuf);

    m_window->frameReady();
    m_window->requestUpdate(); // render continuously, throttled by the presentation rate
}

To get continuous updates, the example simply invokes requestUpdate() in order to schedule a repaint.

Running the Example

To run the example from Qt Creator , open the Welcome mode and select the example from Examples . For more information, visit Building and Running an Example.

Example project @ code.qt.io