Vulkan Renderer

Vulkan is a modern cross-platform renderer available on Windows (x64 and ARM64) and Linux. Native Linux uses Vulkan exclusively. On Windows it is an alternative to the default Direct3D 12 renderer with the same feature set: Shader Model 6 effects, texture streaming , bindless rendering , temporal anti-aliasing and upscaling , Virtual Reality , and HDR output on compatible systems.

Performance compared with Direct3D 12 varies by GPU, driver, and scene. Vendor upscaler support differs between the two renderers, see Anti-aliasing and Upscaling . FSR 4 is unavailable when using Vulkan because AMD does not support FSR 4 on Vulkan.

Minimum requirements

BeamNG.drive requires Vulkan 1.3 and all Vulkan features used by the renderer. General Vulkan support alone does not guarantee compatibility.

The minimum hardware remains the regular BeamNG.drive minimum requirements :

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or Intel Core i5-8400
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• GPU: Minimum 6 GB VRAM (AMD Radeon RX 570 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060)
• Driver: A current Vulkan 1.3-capable driver. The game warns at startup when it detects an NVIDIA driver older than 550.00, an AMD Windows driver older than 31.0.21000.0, or Mesa older than 23.0 on Linux.
• Storage: 60 GB available space

Windows requires a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or newer, on x64 or ARM64. For native Linux, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or SteamOS is recommended. There is no native Linux ARM64 build.

The outdated driver warning can be dismissed permanently with Cancel. To see it again, delete settings/gpuDriverWarningAck.txt in the user folder .

Recommended specs

For 1080p:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel Core i7-9700
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with at least 8 GB VRAM
• Driver: The latest stable driver from the GPU manufacturer or Linux distribution
• Storage: A fast SSD

VR requires at least 8 GB VRAM; 10 GB or more is recommended. Higher resolutions, multiple vehicles, large maps, and mods can require more.

Advanced technical requirements

For advanced users, developers, and modders, the Vulkan renderer strictly requires a Vulkan 1.3-capable driver and hardware environment. It relies on the following advanced features and device extensions:

• Core Graphics & Memory Management:
  • VK_KHR_swapchain
  • VK_EXT_memory_budget (for dynamic VRAM budgeting and querying)
  • VK_EXT_memory_priority
  • VK_EXT_pageable_device_local_memory (optional memory optimization)
  • VK_KHR_get_memory_requirements2
  • VK_EXT_robustness_2 (requiring robustBufferAccess2 and robustImageAccess2 to prevent driver crashes with unbound descriptors)
• Sparse Binding & Residency (Sparse Resources): Requiring physical device support for sparseBinding and sparseResidencyBuffer. These features are unsupported on many older/virtual GPUs.
• Synchronization & GPU Execution:
  • Timeline semaphores
  • drawIndirectCount
  • Buffer device address
  • shaderDrawParameters
  • hostQueryReset
• Descriptor Indexing (bindless rendering):
  • runtimeDescriptorArray
  • shaderSampledImageArrayNonUniformIndexing
  • descriptorBindingPartiallyBound
  • descriptorBindingSampledImageUpdateAfterBind
• Shader Features:
  • 16-bit integers
  • Fragment shader storage writes and atomics
  • Storage image writes without a format
  • Sampler anisotropy
  • Independent blend, depth clamp / bias clamp, clip distance, fill mode non-solid, robust buffer access, and sampled-image array dynamic indexing
• Wave / Subgroup Operations: Required by Shader Model 6 features such as texture streaming feedback and several screen-space lighting effects (HLSL wave ops mapped to Vulkan subgroups). Older hardware may not support wave/subgroup operations even when Vulkan 1.3 is advertised.
• Upscalers: Vendor upscaler libraries (NVIDIA NGX Vulkan, AMD FidelityFX SDK Vulkan runtime, Intel XeSS Vulkan) are loaded on demand where the vendor ships them for the platform. FSR 3 (custom), the engine’s own FSR 3 implementation, needs only the compute features above. See Anti-aliasing and Upscaling .
• Interop & External API Sync (OpenXR / Virtual Reality):
  • Windows: VK_KHR_external_memory_win32, VK_KHR_external_semaphore_win32, VK_KHR_external_fence_win32, VK_KHR_win32_keyed_mutex
  • Linux: VK_KHR_external_memory_fd, VK_KHR_external_semaphore_fd, VK_KHR_external_fence_fd
  • Common: VK_KHR_external_memory, VK_KHR_external_semaphore, VK_KHR_external_fence, VK_KHR_dedicated_allocation, VK_KHR_bind_memory2, VK_KHR_create_renderpass2, VK_KHR_maintenance2, VK_KHR_multiview, VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore, VK_KHR_image_format_list, VK_EXT_queue_family_foreign, VK_KHR_push_descriptor
• Optimizations and Visual Debugging:
  • VK_KHR_fragment_shader_barycentric (used for custom terrain optimizations, pixel-shader wireframe, and overdraw debugging when supported)
  • VK_EXT_debug_utils (instance; validation / debug messaging)
  • VK_NV_device_diagnostic_checkpoints
  • VK_AMD_device_coherent_memory
• Display Features:
  • VK_EXT_hdr_metadata (used for native HDR10 metadata when available)
  • VK_EXT_swapchain_colorspace (instance; HDR color space selection)
• Ray Tracing (optional):
  • VK_KHR_ray_query
  • VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline
  • VK_KHR_acceleration_structure
  • VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations
• Video Encode (optional, hardware streaming):
  • VK_KHR_video_queue
  • VK_KHR_video_encode_queue
  • VK_KHR_video_encode_h264
  • VK_KHR_video_maintenance1 (when supported)

How to use Vulkan

On Windows, select Launch (Vulkan renderer) in the BeamNG.drive Launcher.

For troubleshooting, Vulkan can also be selected with this Steam launch option:

-gfx vk

Remove the option after testing so the Launcher can control the renderer normally.

The native Linux version selects Vulkan automatically and does not provide another native renderer.

Windows on ARM

The native ARM64 build (BinArm64\BeamNG.drive.arm64.exe) supports Vulkan, Direct3D 12, and Direct3D 11. Vulkan on ARM64 requires a Vulkan 1.3 driver from the GPU vendor. Virtual Reality is not included, and the vendor upscaler libraries differ. See Windows on ARM (ARM64) .

Troubleshooting

If Vulkan crashes, displays graphical errors, or does not start:

1. Confirm that the GPU and driver support Vulkan 1.3 and that the computer meets the minimum requirements.
2. Install the latest stable GPU driver. On Linux, use the packages recommended by the distribution (see the Linux driver guide ).
3. Disable third-party overlays, recording tools, ReShade, and other software that installs Vulkan layers.
4. Remove custom launch options and try again.
5. Open the Launcher Support Tools and try Safe Mode.
6. On Windows, test Direct3D 11 to determine whether the problem is Vulkan-specific.

Running out of VRAM may cause severe slowdowns, blurry textures, graphical errors, or crashes. Reduce texture quality, resolution, and the number of spawned vehicles if VRAM usage is too high.

The current session log is beamng.log in the user folder . It records the GPU, driver, Vulkan extensions, and device creation errors. Include it when reporting an issue , together with the GPU model, driver version, operating system, and selected renderer.

GPU crashes (device lost)

A VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST error ends the session and is usually caused by outdated drivers, overclocking, overheating, or insufficient VRAM. When it happens repeatedly:

1. Update the GPU driver and remove any GPU or memory overclock.
2. Lower the graphics preset, texture quality, and render resolution.
3. Run the game once with GPU crash breadcrumbs enabled so the log records which rendering pass was running when the GPU stopped:

-gfx vk breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs add a small per-frame cost. Remove the launch option after the crash report has been collected and attach beamng.log to the issue report .

See Known Issues for current version-specific Vulkan problems.

Feedback and discussion

See the Vulkan feedback, known issues, and FAQ thread .