Vulkan support is coming to Rainbow Six: Siege to boost PC performance

With Vulkan, Ubisoft hopes to offer PC gamers increases to both CPU and GPU performance by utilising several techniques, with the company highlighting Dynamic Texture Indexing, Render Target Aliasing/Dynamic Render Scaling and Asynchronous Compute. Let’s go over each of these features in turn. 

Ubisoft has confirmed that they tested both the Vulkan and DirectX 12 APIs in Rainbow Six: Siege before settling on Vulkan as the next-generation API of choice. Rainbow Six: Siege’s developers have stated that they were able to achieve better CPU performance using Vulkan, which is why the studio hasn’t opted to use Microsoft’s DirectX 12 API.  

Dynamic Texture Indexing

When using Vulkan, Ubisoft can reduce CPU overhead of Rainbow Six: Siege using Dynamic Texture Indexing, a feature that’s also known as “Bindless Rendering”. The technique reduced CPU load by allowing Rainbow Six: Siege to issue fewer draw calls, a feat which is accomplished by allowing the user’s graphics card to dynamically select the textures used in a shader, a task that is usually completed by a CPU. 

Dynamic Texture Indexing frees up CPU cycles and will allow CPU-bound players of Rainbow Six: Siege to have higher, more consistent framerates. 

Dynamic Render Scaling

Ideally, gamers would be able to play their favourite titles with high framerates and high rendering resolutions, but sadly, this is not often the case. Performance usually comes at the cost of graphical fidelity, which is why dynamic game resolutions have become the norm in recent years, especially on console titles. 

The idea behind dynamic resolution rendering is simple, offer the highest game resolution possible while maintaining a steady framerate. While resolution scaling elements have always been a part of Rainbow Six: Seige, dynamic resolution scaling hasn’t, and that changes with the addition of Vulkan support. With Render Target Aliasing, Ubisoft has brought dynamic render scaling to Rainbow Six: Siege, allowing players to select a resolution target to help increase framerate consistency. 

Dynamic render scaling will help GPU-bound players to maximise Siege’s resolution whenever possible and only reduce the game’s resolution when GPU loads demand it.  
 
Asynchronous Compute

Since the game’s console release, Rainbow Six: Siege has utilised Asynchronous Compute to offer higher performance levels on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Now, thanks to the game’s Vulkan API support, this feature is available to PC players. 

In Rainbow Six: Siege, Ubisoft has used Asynchronous Compute to optimise their game’s Ambient Occlusion and ScreenSpace Reflections. The impact of this feature on Rainbow Six: Siege’s performance depends on several factors, the most important of which is your PC’s graphics card. 

More information about Rainbow Six: Siege’s Vulkan support is available in the video below.