If you don't have a compatible GPU, you can use a software renderer to run BigWheels applications. Note that not all features may be supported by the software renderer, and performance will suffer significantly.
The Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform is a software renderer provided by Microsoft as part of the DirectX runtime.
BigWheels supports using WARP as the renderer natively. Simply pass --use-software-renderer as a command-line flag to the application and WARP will be selected.
bin/bigwheels_application.exe --use-software-renderer
Note that while WARP already comes with Windows, we use DX12 features that require the latest version of WARP, which is distributed indipendently.
You can download the latest pre-built WARP DLL here (simply double-click d3d10warp.dll under build/native/amd64 to download).
Place this DLL in the same folder of your executables before running. WARNING: You have to tick "unlock" on the DLL's properties.
BigWheels can use SwiftShader's Vulkan ICD in place of a GPU's ICD using the VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable, which will instruct the Vulkan loader to load a specific ICD.
Using BigWheels with SwiftShader requires building or obtaining a pre-compiled binary for SwiftShader.
git clone https://swiftshader.googlesource.com/SwiftShader
cd SwiftShader
mkdir build-vs2019
cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 -Thost=x64 -DSWIFTSHADER_BUILD_PVR=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_BUILD_TESTS=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_WARNINGS_AS_ERRORS=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_ENABLE_ASTC=FALSE -DSPIRV_SKIP_EXECUTABLES=TRUE
Open SwiftShader.sln and build.
The DLL and JSON for the ICD will be located in build-vs2019/Windows.
git clone https://swiftshader.googlesource.com/SwiftShader
cd SwiftShader
mkdir build-make
cd build-make
cmake .. -DSWIFTSHADER_BUILD_PVR=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_BUILD_TESTS=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_WARNINGS_AS_ERRORS=FALSE -DSWIFTSHADER_ENABLE_ASTC=FALSE -DSPIRV_SKIP_EXECUTABLES=TRUE
make -j $(nproc)
The .so and JSON for the ICD will be located in build-make/Linux.
The DLL/.so library and JSON manifest can be copied to a different location. Remember to set/export the VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable before running any of the BigWheels samples.
If you're running the application as a standalone application outside of Visual Studio, set the VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable before running the application. For example, in PowerShell:
$env:VK_ICD_FILENAMES = 'C:\absolute\path\to\vk_swiftshader_icd.json'
bin/bigwheels_application.exe
If you are using Visual Studio and running an application through it, add VK_ICD_FILENAMES=C:\absolute\path\to\vk_swiftshader_icd.json as an entry to Configuration Properties -> Debugging -> Environment in the project's property pages, as shown in the following screenshot. Do not use quotes around the path or a path with spaces in it.
Set the VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable before running the application.
VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/absolute/path/to/vk_swiftshader_icd.json bin/bigwheels_application