By design, Vulkan device drivers provide no error checking. However, Vulkan application developers will need a way to validate that they are using the Vulkan API correctly while developing their applications. The solution described in the Vulkan Specification was to define validation layers as a critical, if not mandatory, part of the development process. While the Vulkan Validation Layers can provide valuable information to developers, constant runtime API validation can result in performance penalties. Vulkan developers can use the Validation Layers as part of the debug process and then turn them off when running production code — eliminating the performance penalty.

Looking for release builds of the Vulkan Validation Layers for Android? Developers can find Android binary versions of the Validation Layers in the Vulkan Validation Layers repository. LunarG releases the Vulkan SDK approximately every 6-8 weeks. The focus of the SDK is for desktop development environments. However, LunarG has received feedback through their ecosystem surveys that indicate Android developers may be using components in the SDK and as such, they have also requested that the Android versions of the Validation Layers be included in the SDK. Instead of including them in the SDK, LunarG has begun the process of creating a build of the Validation Layers for Android coincident and compatible with the Vulkan SDK. Download the Android Validation Layers These releases can be easily downloaded at the Validation Layers repository: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/releases. For more information LunarG’s software engineering experts create innovative products and services for open source and commercial customers using leading-edge 3D graphics and compute technologies, including Vulkan, SPIR-V, OpenXR, and OpenGL. We have strengths in performance analysis and tuning, runtime and tools development, shader optimizations, driver development, and porting engines and applications to Vulkan. For more information about LunarG, please check out our website.

Learn about a Vulkan extension that helps developers debug unexpected behavior or compatibility issues by allowing an application to query info about Vulkan tools active on a system. This extension is VK_EXT_tooling_info and is available now in the SDKs for Vulkan header 1.2.135. Applications can query Vulkan layers and tools.  Some tools may reside in the driver or the loader. You can find the tooling extension on the LunarG/VulkanTools GitHub repo and it is now available for the LunarG Utility Layers in the Vulkan SDK. Information available During the query, the following information can be provided: the name of the tool the version of the tool flag bits describing the purposes of the tool (Validation, Profiling, Tracing, Adding Features, Modifying existing Features, etc.) a description of the tool and, if the tool is implemented by a layer, the name of said layer Benefits of the tooling info extension This extension will be useful for tools like RenderDoc and other Vulkan profilers/debuggers and will offer some uniformity and assistance to developers in debugging potential compatibility issues between Vulkan tools and other problems. In addition, a developer may want an application to check if it is using the correct version of a tool or a developer might want that information while debugging an issue. Purpose bits let the application and the developer know what effect the tool is having on the program. For more information Please read the Release Notes for Linux, Release Notes for Windows, or Release Notes for macOS for additional information or go to the Vulkan SDK download site to download the latest SDK. LunarG’s software engineering experts create innovative products and services for open source and commercial customers using leading-edge 3D graphics and compute technologies, including Vulkan, SPIR-V, OpenXR, and OpenGL. We have strengths in performance analysis and tuning, runtime and tools development, shader optimizations, driver development, and porting engines and applications to Vulkan. For more information about LunarG, please check out our website.