VK_GOOGLE_surfaceless_query

This proposal regards layering OpenGL over Vulkan, and addresses a discrepancy where EGL is able to respond to certain queries before a surface is created, while Vulkan requires a surface for corresponding queries.

1. Problem Statement

An application using EGL can query the list of supported EGLConfigs, based on which it would create an EGLSurface. Additionally, based on the availability of extensions, it can provide a color space to eglCreateWindowSurface at the same time.

In Vulkan, the format and color space information are retrievable from the VkSurfaceKHR through vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceFormatsKHR When layering OpenGL over Vulkan, there needs to be a way to query this information before the surface is created.

Similarly, the OpenGL implementation layer needs to know:

  • The supported present modes by the platform to be able to correctly expose the EGL_KHR_mutable_render_buffer extension,

  • Whether protected surfaces are supported to be able to correctly expose the EGL_EXT_protected_content extension.

On some implementations and platforms, the surface formats, color spaces, present modes and support for protected content are identical for every surface, and such queries could in fact be answered before a surface is created.

2. Solution Space

Currently, no cross-platform solution is known to exist to support layering OpenGL over Vulkan in this regard.

2.1. Surfaceless Queries

One solution is to modify the existing relevant queries to allow querying without a VkSurfaceKHR. This works on platforms where this information is truly global, which is currently the case with Google’s Android and SwiftShader.

Pros:

  • Trivial to implement and use

Cons:

  • Works only on some platforms, and cannot be implemented on all platforms.

3. Proposal

In VK_GOOGLE_surfaceless_query, the first solution is adopted primarily to accelerate producing working systems where OpenGL is layered on Vulkan.

With this extension, the surface parameter can be VK_NULL_HANDLE in the following:

In all the above situations, calling the function with any valid surface parameter will produce identical results to calling it with VK_NULL_HANDLE.