Vulkan, OpenGL now work with Nvidia’s Shadowplay video-recording tool

By Jon Martindale Published May 10, 2017

Nvidiareleased an update for its GeForce Experience which will please those who make liberal use of its Shadowplay recording tool. It now has full support for games built on the OpenGL and Vulkan APIs, which means it is now possible to use Shadowplay to record games like Doom and Minecraft, which do not use the DirectX API.

Although there are a number of solutions for recording in-game footage, Shadowplay is aimed at Nvidia gamers who want a simple solution for it, without needing to opt for third-party providers. However, while popular among some gamers, the lack of support for alternative APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan made it non-viable for recording certain games. Until now.

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Built into Nvidia’s GeForce Experience, Shadowplay offers quick and easy recording at the touch of a couple of buttons and it is more capable than ever. Introduced along with version 3.6.0, the update also streamlines the upload process, by combining Gallery Upload and Broadcast functions into the same window.

Along with this update, Nvidia has also introduced a few fixes. The frames-per-second counter in Shadow Warrior 2 and HDR mode should now work correctly, according to Anandtech, and the overlay itself should now have much less of an impact on performance. In the header video, Nvidia’s Chris Turner describes recording at 4K 60FPS as having a “minimal” impact on framerates.

The Gallery has also been updated, with Nvidia adding a new upload history tab to it, which shows all of your previous uploads and their location. With support for all of the most popular social networking platforms, Shadowplay is looking to make it easier to organize your content before and after uploading it.

You can even quickly find that particular file on your local system, making it easy to edit them for creating thumbnails or pulling into a larger video.

You will need the latest version of the GeForce Experience to take advantage of this update, as well as Nvidia drivers 385.61 or later.

Former Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale covers how to guides, best-of lists, and explainers to help everyone understand the hottest new hardware and…

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