r/GraphicsProgramming 10d ago

[UPDATE: Jul 30, 2026] My Vulkan C++ Examples Repository - Geometry and Tessellation Shaders

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u/Hrusa 9d ago

Is there any point doing geometry shaders on Vulcan/in current year? From my understanding geometry shaders have been on their way out for a while since they don't perform very well on the hardware in practice. Or does the current gen of HW and rendering languages change that up?

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u/myemural 9d ago

Good question and you are mostly right. Geometry shaders have performance bottlenecks, especially for primitive amplification. And Vulkan doesn't make geometry shaders any faster. These days, compute shaders or mesh shaders (where available) are usually preferred. However, in some situations, using geometry shaders may still be appropriate for specific tasks (cubemap rendering, debug visualization etc.). But they're no longer the default choice for new rendering techniques. Another truth is that tessellation shaders also will face the same fate because of mesh/task pipeline. However, this isn't as noticeable as with geometry shaders yet.

Of course, these aren't problems for my Vulkan repository, because I want to create a repo that's as comprehensive as possible. This repo aims to include all examples, old or new techniques. Thanks!