The Wine project has shipped VKD3D 2.0, marking a major version bump for the Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation layer that powers DX12 games running through upstream Wine. The release lands as the counterpart to Valve's downstream VKD3D-Proton, which handles the same job inside Steam Play but with a more aggressive feature pace targeted at modern game compatibility.
The headline improvements center on HLSL shader handling, where a long list of previously unimplemented operations now work correctly. Developers have also made improvements to the legacy Direct3D bytecode source type, polished DXIL handling, and added new effects framework improvements. Perhaps the most intriguing addition for cross-platform watchers is experimental support for emitting Metal Shading Language, which opens the door to running D3D12 workloads on Apple silicon through Wine in the future.
The jump from 1.19 straight to 2.0 also reflects a batch of newly exposed COM interfaces, expanded debug instrumentation for tracking down rendering issues, and a wide assortment of low-level plumbing changes. While VKD3D-Proton remains the path most Linux gamers actually touch through Steam, upstream VKD3D matters as the foundation that other Wine consumers, including CodeWeavers' CrossOver and various non-gaming D3D12 applications, depend on.
Source code, tarballs, and the complete changelog are available at the VKD3D 2.0 release page on WineHQ's GitLab.