DirectX 11 is sometimes your only choice if you want to play splitscreen couch co-op on the PC.
Vulkan results in many graphical glitches and certain areas are unrenderable (the culprit being the black boxes so many people mention). My partner and I reached a point where we couldn’t move on anymore and graphics drivers were already updated and game was already updated so we were confused as how to move forward.
After searching for a few hours, I found a post specifically about the splitscreen and how this seems to affect lots of people trying to play splitscreen with Vulkan.
I personally prefer Vulkan and think it runs better in single player mode, but if you want to play splitscreen without major issues, I strongly suggest DirectX 11.
Which GPU manafacturer was that with?
AMD
I think this will vary too much between OS and hardware. For me, Vulkan feels better overall. Dx11 looks slightly better but less performant.
But I’m running all AMD hardware, Linux steam with proton.
I’m on linux with hyprland. With vulkan i get large black boxes that flicker in the bottom third off the screen.
That’s weird, I do get the black boxes as well, but a much smaller portion of my screen. What resolution are you running? I’m at 4K.
1440 (whatever is between 1080 and 4k)
Fedora and Wayland for me. So idk.
I’ve been using Vulkan in Linux with an AMD card. Seems mostly fine except the occasional black boxes during cut scenes (about 15% of the edge of the screen). I haven’t tried DX11 yet.
I’m also in Vulkan on Linux with an AMD card. I don’t get those black boxes.
The main menu has terrible framerate, but everywhere else is acceptable through Proton (45-50). DX11 has great framerate on the main menu, but like 8-10 FPS ingame (my Windows partition can hold a steady 60).
I have those strange black boxes as well (vulkan, nobara linux and amd) but when I tried DX11 today it doesnt show them anymore.
In Linux doesn’t DX calls get converted to Vulkan calls?
Yes which is why I chose Vulkan over DX11. But depending on the Vulkan implementation for a specific game, sometimes converting DX to Vulkan might function better.
I’m on Linux with AMD, but Vulkan is a crashy mess for me. Can’t keep the thing running more than a few minutes. It’s fine on DX11 (a few stutters here and there, but hasn’t crashed).
Dang, I’ve only had one crash.
Running on Windows 11 with a 6900XT and Vulkan and DX11 look effectively identical as far as I can tell but Vulkan runs a lot faster and doesn’t stutter when loading a new area.
Unfortunately though it tends to crash on tab out which means I need to use DX11 because I play with friends.
Yes. It’s not really meant as a visual improvement but as an efficiency improvement. Sadly it does seem (for some, myself included) that the Vulkan build needs a bit of work. For me it crashes all the time, and Larian themselves mentioned that it isn’t quite as stable as the DX11 build.
There are some instructions here on how to skip the launcher and ensure you still launch with your chosen graphics API.
Linux with RTX 3070 here. DX works, Vulkan don’t.
I tried to play on Vulkan with my Arc A770 (Arch Linux) and it just black screened. With DX11 it played at around 60fps with VRR (dips down to the 50s) at 1440p.
I get 60+ fps at 1440p ultrawide on high settings. Ultra has and frame dips but still ok. On pop os.
I’m on Linux with nvidia, vulc crashes after the airship crash, so using dx11 with proton.
Linux with 6.1 kernel and Kisask-Mesa drivers on an RX 6700XT: Vulkan works better with fewer crashes/glitches for me. Also seems to load a little faster, but that could just be because I’ve used it more so there’s more cached shaders.
Direct X 11 crashes for me a lot so I use vulkan. Windows 10, ryzen 5800x, andddd a 3080
On Windows 11 with an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU I’ve had better luck with DX11 at the moment.
Vulkan has been slightly less stable for me overall, and has had more visual glitches.
Meanwhile DX11 has been largely flawless on my system.
I think if you’re using an AMD system Vulkan may be slightly better. But it definitely feels like DX11 is the current “default” option for a reason.
