DXVK, the Vulkan-based translation layer that lets Windows games using Direct3D 8, 9, 10, and 11 run on Linux through Wine and Proton, has been updated to version 3.1.
A notable addition is basic support for DXGI incremental presentation, which lets applications specify which parts of the screen changed instead of updating the entire image.
DXVK 3.1 also adds support for creating D3D11 render target views directly on buffers, a feature mainly used by older games based on the Frostbite engine. For Battlefield 3, this fixes a long-standing graphical issue that could cause clouds to render incorrectly.
Another interesting change concerns Intel GPUs. DXVK can now load Intel-specific extension libraries when running on Intel hardware.
Importantly, this doesn’t immediately add new Intel-specific functionality to Proton, but it lays the groundwork for Proton to support Intel vendor extensions for D3D11 in the future.
The release also includes important fixes. A previously introduced D3D9 fog regression has been resolved, restoring correct rendering in The Witcher 1, Mabinogi, and other affected games. DXVK 3.1 additionally fixes a crash that could occur when applications attempted to compile shaders that were only valid for D3D12.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint receives two fixes. One resolves an issue where the pipeline state was not configured correctly for a particular shader, while another addresses incorrectly rendered water on Nvidia GPUs. Plus, Nvidia users get a workaround for an out-of-memory crash involving descriptor heaps.
Mirror’s Edge gets fixes for several Vulkan validation errors, while RaceRoom Racing Experience now has its web-based interface rendering correctly when running under Proton 11.
Finally, DXVK 3.1 improves compatibility with some third-party overlays hooking into specific DXGI entry points. It also introduces more aggressive render-area optimization on tiling GPUs, limiting render passes to the region actually being drawn.
For additional details, see the changelog.
