Vulkan Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Vulkan (OpenGL) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

It's finally here! If you're new to Vulkan, this is probably the best place to start.When I started with Vulkan a couple of months ago, this book wasn't out, so I read the spec and searched the web. This book would have helped me get to the same place, faster and with less pain.From my perspective, it has two main shortcomings, The index feels very sparse; most of it consists of a listing of Vulkan API functions, with only a single page of topics that don't start with "Vk".Secondly, I don't feel like my knowledge has been deepened by reading it. There are several topics that I managed to mostly learn before I received this book. When I consulted it to try fill gaps in my understanding, I was unsuccessful. For example, I was unable to find any discussion about "disturbing previously bound descriptor sets".The book has an associated GitHub repository, which currently has no code. I may have to revise my rating after code is published there.Overall, the book is well-written and approachable. I think that the second edition will probably be excellent: Vulkan is very new, and there hasn't been much time for Khronos to hear community feedback, to understand the topics that people will find difficult when mastering Vulkan. I'll probably buy it, despite already owning the first.For now, this is probably the best starting point for someone who is serious about learning Vulkan.

In my opinion this book is just an organized collection of API calls; something like the "OpenGL reference manual". There is almost no code inside and no explanation on how you can use all those APIs to create something with any sense. For example you can find what a buffer is and how to create one, but there is no mention on how you can create and fill one that is resident on the device (GPU) memory.Even if I am an expert on raster graphics I had a very hard time trying to figure out how to build an engine out of those APIs. I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone without a deep understanding of computer graphics and next generation graphics libraries.If you already master DirectX 12 or had a chance to play with AMD's Mantle, then maybe this book can be helpful.

This book is just a copy of Vulkan API official online reference with few comments. I am disappointed.

The book itself is ok. If you go through the official vulkan documentation and do some random online tutorials you'd probably learn just as much. I'd give it two stars, but currently the code for the book is not available yet.Update: After several months, still no code.Update 2: 5 months later... still no code.I bought this book because it was one of the first resources out, but now there are much better resources available. I would skip this an dlook elsewhere.

This book continues the same bad teaching method as the OpenGL books of the past. It has most of the information, but frequently skips over vital details or fails to explain how something needs to be done and why. It assumes the reader has not just in-depth expertise in graphics programming, which is a reasonable assumption, but also expertise in Vulkan programming, which is obviously a silly assumption in a Vulkan Programming Guide. They need Frank Luna to write their learning materials. He's infinitely better.

Overall a really good book, with a lot of detail. I see a lot of complaints about it being overly complicated but honestly I didn't really feel the same way, it's definitely not a beginners book but that's really just the nature of Vulkan. There are a LOT of errors in the inline code samples in the book chapters though, and not minor ones, things like accidentally using the wrong function/wrong structure (where code was clearly copy/pasted from another example, and find/replaced to change the function names but forgot to modify the structure or details). Thankfully these are pretty obvious if you're following along and understanding so it shouldn't really cause too many problems, but it really should have had some better proofreading. The book sections are also in a VERY weird order, making you have to constantly flip back and forth between hundreds of pages to read what are essentially two halves of the same topic. It's the best reference book out there but in desperate need of a second revision.

The first and the last chapters are probably the best, but overall the book is as fun to read as a collection of manpages would be. It is not structured around practical scenarios or use cases, but instead describes the Vulkan API part by part. You can still get a decent understanding of the API from it, especially if you have a prior experience with graphics, but I advise fast-forwarding the middle part and returning back to particular functions later, when you have a practical problem and need to look up nuances.

I pre ordered this book and waited for it. Once I received it was nothing but disappointment. This book is fundamentally snapshot of spec with very very little explanations on simple concepts only. There are much more detailed online tutorials for free.

It's a pretty good book, but you may need to "augment it with a bit of internet", however between the book and some internet search and studying various samples "you start to get a good idea about where to go".I don't say it's a book failure, I'd say "the topic of Vulkan is quite vast one book will never be enough" but this is a good book.I wish it would spend a bit "extra time" on the multi-thread/multi-pass rendering alas it's only around one last chapter .. but as I said the subject is really that large probably many books on it could be written.Overall, reccomended but you'll need a bit extra more than this book to start getting a better idea of Vulkan.

I'm starting out with Vulkan, but have experience in graphics and opengl in particular. I initially purchased the Vulkan Cookbook, but found that there is no meat behind any of the 'recipes', nothing tying them together, and it was a real struggle trying to piece together a working example from that book, so much so that I ended up using online tutorials to explain what the hell was in the book.The Vulkan Programming guide, on the other hand, actually explains what the relationships are between the extensive collection of structures that Vulkan uses to set up a rendering system, in a logical fashion. There isn't really a fully linear way to go through everything from start to end in Vulkan, but the book's ordering makes logical sense, in contrast with the Cookbook.I purchased the programming guide after spending some time working with Vulkan and getting past the point that the online tutorials become useful.The actual english words used to explain things are such a breath of fresh air after pulling together snippets of code from the cookbook and tutorials (not to denegrate the online tutorials, many are excellent but rightly don't cover enough detail for production code).True, it is a letdown that the source code referred to doesn't seem to exist, but the book is clear enough imho that it isn't really necessary.Highly recommend, go through the online tutorials and then pick this book up to look a bit deeper.

The examples are missing from the web site that is referenced by the author. There's no complete example to try out in this book, which is disaappointing. An author should be writing a book only when he feels happy to share knowledge. The authors of this book felt like they had an obligation to write a book even if it's not that helpful to its readers. Very disappointing and I cannot recommend it.

It has plenty of information on Vulkan that can be useful. Possibly I wasn't the audience meant for this book, I am new to Vulkan and was taking a class where the homework was in Vulkan.Everything I tried to look up in this book was not in it, and I gave up on reading up on things in the book. I got more out of the documentation online.I do plan on reading through it when I have time and will possibly update my review if I change my oppinion

Dies ist in der Tat zur Zeit das beste Buch zu Vulkan, das liegt aber nur daran, daß es das einzige ist. Es ist auch gleichzeitig das schlechteste Buch.Der Text ist mehr oder weniger eine prosaische Fassung der Spezifikation, aber leider voller kleiner Fehler (z.B. wird oft gesagt "man sollte" wenn die Spezifikation ganz klar sagt "muss" und die Validations-Layer auch ganz klar einen Fehler ausgeben).Jede API-Funktion wird aufgelistet. Soweit so gut. Aber: Unwichtige bzw. offensichtliche Dinge werden zu ausführlich behandelt. Zu jedem Member jeder Struktur wird der Text der Spezifikation angegeben, und es wird gefühlt eine Million Mal (real etwa hundert) wiederholt, dass die ersten zwei Strukturmember auf null gesetzt werden sollten (wobei auch hier "sollte" falsch ist). Diese Information liefert auch die Online-Referenz bzw. das IDE per Intellisense, sofern nicht bereits offensichtlich. Andererseits gibt es zwei oder drei Gelegenheiten, wo ein Wort auftaucht, das jemand, der Vulkan nicht mitentwickelt hat, eben nicht kennt. In so einem Fall ist die Erläuterung "XYZ -- macht XYZ" nicht wirklich hilfreich.Leider werden auch einige wirklich wichtige Konzepte komplett ausgelassen, bzw. Sachverhalte, die bereits in der Spezifikation zweideutig sind, werden nur genauso unverständlich aufgelistet. Beispielsweise ist vollkommen unklar, wie man einen korrekten, gleichzeitig aber maximal effizienten Transfer durchführen soll (d.h. ein Transfer, welcher auf aktueller Hardware tatsächlich asynchrone Transfers durchführt und genau die notwendige Menge an Synchronisation beinhaltet, jedoch nicht mehr als nötig). Die blödest-mögliche Alternative ist gut dokumentiert und auch offenkundig, aber diese ist für jemanden, der Vulkan benutzen will, von vorne herein nicht interessant -- das hätte man auch mit OpenGL bei einem Zehntel des Arbeitsaufwandes. Hier würde man sich sehr viel mehr Klarheit wünschen.Zur Verteidigung des Buchs muss man allerdings sagen, dass alle Information, die hierzu online verfügbar ist, ebenso schlecht bzw. irreführend ist.