Intel Vulkan Driver Lands Improvement For Helping Direct3D Games Under Steam Play
Merged today to Mesa 25.2 is an adjustment for the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver to help with Direct3D games running under Linux with Valve's Steam Play via Proton + VKD3D.
The improvement merged today is for increasing the maximum vertex buffer "VB" count to 33 for Ice Lake's Gen 11 graphics and newer generations of Intel graphics hardware.
The Mesa merge request by Intel engineer Caleb Callaway explains:
So with the now-merged Intel ANV code for Mesa 25.2, the driver is meeting the Direct3D minimum specification around vertex input bindings going back to D3D10.
One example of a game helped by this with Intel graphics is this bug report around running Final Fantasy XVI on Intel Lunar Lake graphics and other hardware like Battlemage. The Intel Vulkan Mesa driver had caused the game to crash immediately after the splash screen while with this adjustment that should no longer be the case.
Other Direct3D games running on Linux with the Intel ANV driver should be helped as well thanks to today's change to Mesa Git.
The improvement merged today is for increasing the maximum vertex buffer "VB" count to 33 for Ice Lake's Gen 11 graphics and newer generations of Intel graphics hardware.
The Mesa merge request by Intel engineer Caleb Callaway explains:
"Prior to Gen 11, we had to upload a bunch of SGVs (FirstVertex, BaseVertex, BaseInstance, DrawID) via 3DSTATE_VERTEX_BUFFERS. For Gen11+, we upload via 3DSTATE_SGVS_2 instead.
Reclaiming those additional bindings is desirable for games that run through vkd3d; per doitsujin the D3D min-spec is 32 vertex input bindings since 10.1."
So with the now-merged Intel ANV code for Mesa 25.2, the driver is meeting the Direct3D minimum specification around vertex input bindings going back to D3D10.
👁 Intel Lunar Lake with the X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura
One example of a game helped by this with Intel graphics is this bug report around running Final Fantasy XVI on Intel Lunar Lake graphics and other hardware like Battlemage. The Intel Vulkan Mesa driver had caused the game to crash immediately after the splash screen while with this adjustment that should no longer be the case.
Other Direct3D games running on Linux with the Intel ANV driver should be helped as well thanks to today's change to Mesa Git.