Author: The Khronos® Vulkan Working Group

# Vulkan® 1.4.341 - A Specification (with all registered extensions)

The Khronos® Vulkan Working Group
version 1.4.341, 2026-02-03 09:15:05Z
from git branch: makepkg commit: ac8223b312d40a6bc1733fb3490bdcdb5a389d50

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## Appendix G: Legacy and Superseded Functionality

Functionality in the specification such as commands and structures may be marked as legacy. This label indicates that either functionality that supersedes it is available in a newer core version, or the functionality has simply fallen out of favor for other reasons. Forward-looking applications should avoid using functionality marked as legacy where possible.

A link to an explanatory section is provided to explain why the functionality was marked as legacy, what functionality supersedes it (if any), and what applications should do instead.

Newer extensions may also provide functionality that supersedes existing functionality, but the original functionality will not be tagged as legacy in the specification unless a superseding solution has been fully promoted to the core API. Explanatory text will still be included below for these cases as reference.

Note | Legacy and superseded functionality is tagged in the xml registry via a deprecation tag, for both core versions and extensions. It is expected that tooling such as the validation layers will be able to warn users when they are making use of any functionality that is either legacy or superseded by the version and extensions the application has enabled.

Legacy functionality remains available for use in the specification, but it may be less capable than newer functionality. Interactions with legacy functionality will often be omitted when new extensions or features are developed, so legacy functionality may not work with the latest features.

Note | Another mechanism exists to indicate that an entire extension is considered legacy, using different terminology. See the Deprecation section of the Extensions chapter for more information.

### List of Legacy Functionality

When functionality is marked as legacy or if an extension supersedes it, an explanation will be added to the following sections.

Note | This list is a work in progress - we intend to add other items to this section over time. Examples include shader modules (superseded by VK_KHR_maintenance5) and anything superseded by a new version of the same functionality (e.g. VK_KHR_synchronization2).

#### Physical Device Queries: Superseded via version 2

VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2 was incorporated into Vulkan 1.1, which introduced new versions of several physical device query functions. These provide the same functionality as the Vulkan 1.0 functionality but with greater extensibility.

When querying device features, vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures2 should be used instead of vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures. When enabling device features, VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures2 should be provided in the `pNext` chain of VkDeviceCreateInfo instead of using VkDeviceCreateInfo::pEnabledFeatures.

#### Version Macros: Superseded via replacements including API variant

The version macros that do not take the API variant into account, such as VK_MAKE_VERSION or VK_VERSION_MAJOR, are superseded by those that do, such as VK_MAKE_API_VERSION or VK_API_VERSION_MAJOR.

Instead of VK_API_VERSION, specific version defines (e.g. VK_API_VERSION_1_0) or the VK_MAKE_API_VERSION macro should be used instead.

#### Device Layers: Superseded via instance layers

Previous versions of this specification distinguished between instance and device layers. Instance layers were only able to intercept commands that operate on `VkInstance` and `VkPhysicalDevice`, except they were not able to intercept vkCreateDevice. Device layers were enabled for individual devices when they were created, and could only intercept commands operating on that device or its child objects.

Device-only layers are now marked as legacy, and this specification no longer distinguishes between instance and device layers. Layers are enabled during instance creation, and are able to intercept all commands operating on that instance or any of its child objects. At the time this was marked as legacy, there were no known device-only layers and no compelling reason to create one.

#### Render Pass Functions: Superseded via version 2

VK_KHR_create_renderpass2 and Vulkan 1.2 introduced new versions of several render pass functions. These provide the same functionality as the Vulkan 1.0 functionality but with greater extensibility.

Note | Render pass objects and all related commands are further superseded by dynamic rendering.

#### Render Pass Objects: Superseded via dynamic rendering

VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering and Vulkan 1.3 added a new way to specify render passes without needing to create VkFramebuffer and VkRenderPass objects. However, subpass functionality had no equivalent, meaning dynamic rendering was only suitable as a substitute for content not using subpasses.

VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering_local_read and Vulkan 1.4 later allowed the expression of most subpass functionality in core or extensions. Any subpass functionality which was not replicated is still expressible but requires applications to split work over multiple dynamic render pass instances. Functionality not covered with local reads would result in most or all vendors splitting the subpass internally.

Note | VK_QCOM_render_pass_shader_resolve does not have equivalent functionality exposed via dynamic rendering. Use of legacy functionality will be required to use that extension unless/until replacements are created.

Outside of vendor extensions, applications are advised to make use of vkCmdBeginRendering and vkCmdEndRendering to manage render passes from this API version onward.