The Vulkan EXT_present_timing was in development for years to help avoid game stuttering and released this past November with Vulkan 1.4.335. This significant extension as of today has been wired up in Mesa 26.1-devel for the key Vulkan drivers and working on both X11 and Wayland.
VK_EXT_present_timing allows apps/games using Vulkan swapchains to obtain information on the presentation engine’s display for accurate timing information and to assist in scheduling a present to happen no earlier than a desired time. With VK_EXT_present_timing you can help avoid game stuttering and overall a big improvement for game engines opting to use this functionality.
The Mesa support for VK_EXT_present_timing support has been worked on by Valve developers and other stakeholders. Since December the code was considered feature complete while today it was finally merged to Mesa Git.
Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve’s Linux team and known for his work on VKD3D-Proton led the work on EXT_present_timing for Mesa.
The 19 patches for implementing Vulkan present timing support have it working on both X11 and Wayland windowing system integration. Mesa Vulkan drivers where EXT_present_timing is wired up include Intel ANV, Radeon RADV, Arm Mali PanVK, NVIDIA NVK, and Qualcom Adreno TURNIP.
The code is merged as what’s another big boost for Linux gaming for those using these Mesa Vulkan drivers.
