VK_ERROR_LAYER_NOT_PRESENT on GTX1060

[2H0U]

Hi, I tried all ray tracing samples, and vkCreateInstance always return error message "VK_ERROR_LAYER_NOT_PRESENT". Please help. Thanks in advance. Below is my environment:

• GTX1060, driver 460.89
• Vulkan SDK 1.2.162
• Win10 pro 64
• VS 2019

[2H0U]

It seem that GTX1060 (6GB) doesn't support ray query. VkPhysicalDeviceRayQueryFeaturesKHR::rayQuery is set to 0 after calling vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures2().

[2H0U]

The old version vk_raytracing_tutorial works on GTX1060. It uses traceRaysNV instead of traceRaysKHR. https://github.com/nvpro-samples/vk_raytracing_tutorial

[NBickford-NV]

Hi 2H0U! In case you're still having the issue with VK_ERROR_LAYER_NOT_PRESENT (this repository's code except for ray_tracing_rayquery should work on the GTX 1060 6GB, as all samples except for that one use ray queries), see if the discussion in https://github.com/nvpro-samples/vk_mini_path_tracer/issues/8 solves your problem. In that case:

• The most important indication was that the console log did not display VK_LAYER_KHRONOS_validation in the "Available Instance Layers :" section - is this what's happening in your case?
• This led to looking at https://www.asawicki.info/news_1683_vulkan_layers_dont_work_look_at_registry
• Looking at the Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\Vulkan\ExplicitLayers folder in the Windows Registry Editor, it turned out that on the developer's machine, there were leftover registry keys pointing to a version of the Vulkan SDK that had been removed (but which I'm guessing either hadn't been correctly uninstalled, or where maybe the installer had a bug). As a result, the Vulkan loader wasn't able to find the validation layer (because it was looking for it in the wrong place). I think the solution was to remove the registry keys from the old SDK.

[2H0U]

Thanks for the reply. I was using CUDA toolkit 9 when the error occurred. After upgrading to CUDA toolkit 11, all new version (using traceRaysKHR) samples except ray query run perfectly. In my case, VK_LAYER_KHRONOS_validation was displayed in console log.

[NBickford-NV]

Ah, OK, glad you figured it out!