14 DAY TRIAL // Valve and its Khronos Group partners presented at GDC 2015 this week a special version of Dota 2 running on the upcoming Source 2 engine, while employing the new Vulkan API, in order to show just how great the game can look and perform on slow hardware, as it employed a simple Intel integrated graphics chip.
Valve has big plans in the near future, as not only will it release the Steam Machines devices complete with the SteamOS Linux-based operating system, but also the special Source 2 engine that was presented to the world earlier this week at the beginning of GDC 2015.
The new technology not only supports Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 12 graphics API, but also a special open-source one called Vulkan, that's being developed by the Khronos Group, a consortium of companies that include Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or even Valve.
Dota 2 on Source 2 showed Vulkan enhancements
At a special Vulkan-themed panel during GDC 2015, Khronos representatives used a special version of Dota 2 running on the Source 2 engine with an early alpha implementation of its Vulkan API support.
As you can see in the video below, the game looks quite good and performs very well despite a big number of units. The demo served to show just how fluid a Source 2 game with the Vulkan API can be, even while it's running on a laptop that uses an integrated Intel graphics chip and a Linux operating system.
Bear in mind that both Source 2 and the Vulkan API are still in development and with the new engine Valve hopes to make games run better on a wider variety of computer configurations, not just to produce dazzling visuals that can barely be achieved by average PCs.
You can expect to hear and see more of Source 2 and the possible games that will arrive using it as standard, or those that will be ported to it (e.g. Dota 2 or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) in the near future.
