v0.11.0 - Threaded Initialization, PSO Cache, Async Texture Uploading, Culling & DrawBatching Optimized Data & Task Scheduling

Release Notes

• Moved to C++20
• Load time improvements #176
  • Threaded initialization
  • Async texture loading #175
  • PSO caching
• CPU Performance optimizations #174
  • Optimized the data format used for frustum culling & instance batching to be more cache friendly (SoA)
  • Removed busy waits, added signaling mechanisms & improved job scheduling
• Renderer
  • Switched to using 3 distinct command queue group: Rendering, Background, Presentation #182
  • Improved command list management & closed state tracking
  • Command queues now use priority: NORMAL, HIGH, REALTIME
  • Refactored & moved draw call batching into renderer
  • Encapsulated texture data management into TextureManager
• Removed bloat & reduced build times 35%
  • Remove assimp, add cgltf #183
  • reduce C++ reliance, limit header usage
• UI
  • Light editor can now add/remove lights

The new task-based TextureManager, separated disk reads from mip generation & GPU upload tasks, shown in newly threaded initialization sequence

The new command list & queue management, enabling background (lower prio) gpu tasks and dedicated presentation queue

The dedicated presentation queue, can be toggled on/off from settings

Before: 6.95ms, After: 4.1ms | CullFrustum+GatherMeshData+BatchInstances+RecordCmds

Issue Fixes

fixes #160
fixes #171
fixes #172
fixes #173
fixes #179
fixes #180
fixes #88

VQE-v0.10.0 - Tessellation, async compute & copy, object picking, magnifier, instanced draw + LODs

RELEASE NOTES

• Added Tessellation pipeline for geometry passes
  • Quad + Triangle Domain -- Lines to be added later
• Added instanced rendering & LODs for built-in meshes: Cylinder, Sphere, Grids
• Added Magnifier effect
• Added pixel-perfect object picking & outlining
• Added vertex displacement through height maps
• Added Motion Vector rendering
• Added Asnyc compute & copy queue support
  • Async Compute: Depth Resolve + SSAO
  • Async Copy: ObjectID copy pass
• Updated DirectX compiler to version 1.8.2407
• All shaders are now SM6.0 & above
• Added .exr file support
• Reduced PBR texture set resolution to 2K from 4K
• Improved multi-threading, better load & runtime performance
  • Separated meshes & textures into their own worker thread pools
  • Separated shader & PSO loading workers
  • Finer frustum culling & draw call batching to improve thread utilization
• Added Editor GUI: Materials, Lights & Transforms
• Added Light bounds rendering for debugging
• Various stability fixes including resource barriers, race conditions & crashes
• Updated Tools/7zip to standalone release
• Updated requirements: CMake 3.4 to 3.24 & Visual Studio 2019 to 2022

VQE-v0.9.0 - FidelityFX: Stochastic Screen-Space Reflections, SPD, Denoiser

RELEASE NOTES

Features

Rendering

• FidelityFX Stochastic Screen Space Reflections (SSSR)
• FidelityFX Single-Pass Downsampler (SPD)
• FidelityFX Denoiser (DNSR)
• Motion Vectors
• Scene Render Visualization Modes
  • Lit
  • Depth
  • Normals
  • Roughness
  • Metallic
  • AO
  • Motion Vectors
  • Albedo

Engine

• Graceful exit with error reporting upon device lost instead of crashing
• Extended EngineSettings.ini: added EnvironmentMapResolution, Reflections options
• Improved shader compilation
  • PIX can now debug SM6 shaders
  • Extended support for DXC compiler flags
  • Release/Debug shaders are now separately cached
• Added more built-in materials: Checkerboard_Glossy, Checkerboard_Rough, Checkerboard_Metallic, MetallicBlack_VerySmooth

Scenes

• Default scene: assigned PBR material to the ground, swapped cylinder with the boombox model, load an environment map
• Stress Test scene: crank up object count, add randomized materials with compile-time toggles

Bug Fixes

• Fixed RenderDoc not being able to attach / device lost upon launch
• Fixed build script failing with file paths with spaces in them
• Fixed shader include path not resolving correctly
• Fixed assertion when the window is minimized

VQE-v0.8.0 - ImGui UI & FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0

RELEASE NOTES

Features

Renderer

• FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 integrated with minimal support
  • EASU (Upscaling) & RCAS (Sharpening) passes with sharpness slider, presets and custom upscaling ratio between [0.5, 1.0]
  • TAA, MipBias & HDR are NOT supported with this release and will be added at a later date

Engine

• Added UI using Dear ImGui
  • Profiler, Graphics Options, Debug Panel and Scene Editor windows with various controls
• Updated camera controller and mouse capture behavior
  • Left Click : Orbit Camera
  • Right Click : 'FPS' Camera
  • Mouse is now only captured when right or left click is held to operate the camera, and will stay uncaptured while interacting with the UI
• Removed pipelined Update+Render threads, merged them into a single Simulation thread
  • This change is added to support the ImGui integration as ImGui didn't provide a deferred context without global state, which made the engine architecture incompatible with ImGui by resulting in a race condition when the update thread is writing into the global context that the render thread is reading to draw
  • A preprocessor define VQENGINE_MT_PIPELINED_UPDATE_AND_RENDER_THREADS was added to toggle between the two architectures, although the separate update+render threads disable UI rendering
• Added frame stat collection

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the DownloadAssets.bat script after the texture website updated its URL for the assets
• VSync can sometimes add some frame delay

VQE-v0.7.0 - Multi-threaded command recording & frustum culling, SM6, Ambient Occlusion

RELEASE NOTES

AMD FidelityFX CACAO

Features

Renderer

• DXC / SM6.0 support
• Ambient Occlusion
  • AMD FidelityFX - Combined Adaptive Compute Ambient Occlusion (CACAO)

Engine

• Multi-threaded command recording
• Bounding Boxes & Multi-threaded view frustum culling
• Add RGP & PIX markers
• Skip loading materials if they're not used in the scene
• Add image downsizing for Environment maps

Bug Fixes

• Black line at the bottom of the screen when CAS is enabled

VQE-v0.6.0 - Physically Based Rendering (PBR), Environment Maps & Image-based Lighting (IBL), AMD FidelityFX CAS

Release Notes

Features

• Forward Renderer w/ Lighting System
  • Spot Lights (5x w/ shadows)
  • Point Lights (5x w/ shadows)
  • Directional Light (1x w/ shadows)
  • PCF Shadows for all lights
• UE4's PBR Model Pipeline
  • BRDF
    • NDF : Trowbridge-Reitz GGX
    • G : Smith
    • F : Fresnel_Schlick / Fresnel_Gaussian
  • Metallic / Roughness Maps
  • Emissive Maps
  • Built-in PBR Materials w/ textures from cgbookcase
• Environment maps
  • Real-time Image-based lighting
  • Cubemap convolutions for pre-filtered diffuse & irradiance maps
• Post Processing
  • Added AMD's FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS)

Known Issues

• Repeatedly changing scenes crashes due to the static heaps
• Alt+Enter might crash on some laptops
• VSync can sometimes add some frame delay
• Black bar at the bottom few pixels when CAS is switched on

Controls

Key
WASD+EQ	Camera movement
Page Up/Down	Change Environment Map
1-4	Change scenes 1 - Default Scene 2 - Sponza 3 - Geometry Test Scene 4 - Stress Test Scene
Shift+R	Reload level
C	Change scene camera
V	Toggle VSync
M	Toggle MSAA
B	Toggle FidelityFX-CAS
Alt+Enter	Toggle Fullscreen
Esc	Release mouse

See README.md for details.

VQE-v0.5.0 - Scene/Level System, GPU Event Markers, DPI-awareness, Model Loading (glTF, obj)

Release Notes

Features

• XML Scene/Level files & Scene loading
• VQE is now DPI-aware and will scale properly on high DPI displays
• PIX GPU Markers
• Multithreaded Model loading with assimp
  • .glTF
  • .obj

Bug Fixes

• App sometimes hangs on exit

Known Issues

• Repeatedly changing scenes crashes due to the static heaps
• Alt+Enter might crash on some laptops
• VSync can sometimes add some frame delay

VQE-v0.4.0 - HDR, Skybox, VSync, MSAA

Release Notes

Features

• HDR Display support w/ FP16 Swapchain & HDR10 Static Metadata
• HDR Environment Maps using HDRI Haven
• PostProcess: Reinhard Tonemapping & Gamma Correction
• MSAA & VSync support

Bug Fixes

• Mouse isn't captured when debug window is not initialized
• Window focus capturing mouse causes inconsistent behavior

Known Issues

• Alt+Enter might crash on some laptops

VQE v0.3.0 - Keyboard/Mouse Input & Camera Controller

Release Notes

Features

• Keyboard/Mouse input handling
• First-Person Shooter Camera Controller
  • Mouse Input using Raw input
• Improved Window behavior for Resizing, Alt+Tab & Alt+Enter

Fixed Issues

• Alt+F4 hits assertion on exit
• Exclusive Fullscreen startup crashes
• Minimizing window hits assertion

Known Issues

• Mouse isn't captured when debug window is not initialized

VQE v0.2.0 - Hello Cube!

Release Notes

Features

• Textures & Constant buffers
• Transformation pipeline (Model-View-Projection)
• Generic Geometry generator for various Vertex/Index Buffer types
• Loading Screen Rendering: 1 second 'loading' simulation by rendering a fullscreen triangle
• New Shaders
  • Fullscreen triangle: requires only index buffer with values {0, 1, 2}
  • Hello-Cube: supports textures + transformation matrix

Utilities

• Added Camera, Transform & Quaternion classes
• Added Timer class
• Added Image class to load common image formats, including HDR
  • Supported Image formats: .png, .jpg, .hdr, etc.

Bug Fixes

• Memory leak on Window events (resize + fullscreen)

Known Issues

• Alt+F4 hits assertion on exit
• Exclusive Fullscreen startup crashes
• Minimizing window hits assertion