Creating a storage image

Storage images allow us to load (unfiltered) data from images bound to pipelines. But, what's more important, they also allow us to store data from shaders in the images. Such images must be created with a VK_IMAGE_USAGE_STORAGE_BIT usage flag specified.

How to do it...

1. Take the handle of a physical device and store it in a variable of type VkPhysicalDevice named physical_device.
2. Select a format that will be used for a storage image. Initialize a variable of type VkFormat named format with the selected format.

 

3. Create a variable of type VkFormatProperties named format_properties.
4. Call vkGetPhysicalDeviceFormatProperties( physical_device, format, &format_properties ) and provide the physical_device variable, the format variable, and a pointer to the format_properties variable.
5. Check whether the selected image format is suitable for a storage image. Do that by checking whether the VK_FORMAT_FEATURE_STORAGE_IMAGE_BIT bit of an optimalTilingFeatures member of the format_properties...