>It is completely honest. On a fresh install of Windows, if you don't have graphics drivers, you can't run Vulkan or OpenGL. Windows washes their hands of any responsibility. You can at least run DirectX with software rendering regardless of hardware support.
DirectX with software rendering doesn't actually result in games actually being playable, unless they are 2d games that barely touch the GPU to begin with. So the software rendering fallback is completely irrelevant here, and what matters is what APIs will work when you do have the GPU drivers correctly installed. And at that point, it doesn't matter what degree of support Microsoft provides for Vulkan, only the degree to which the GPU vendor provides that support. (And the software rendering fallback actually makes it less straightforward to diagnose why a game isn't running as expected, in the case of GPU drivers not being installed. Plus, what game developer cares about the software rendering fallback enough to even test their game against it?)
So no, it's not completely honest. It's a disingenuous red herring.
DirectX with software rendering doesn't actually result in games actually being playable, unless they are 2d games that barely touch the GPU to begin with. So the software rendering fallback is completely irrelevant here, and what matters is what APIs will work when you do have the GPU drivers correctly installed. And at that point, it doesn't matter what degree of support Microsoft provides for Vulkan, only the degree to which the GPU vendor provides that support. (And the software rendering fallback actually makes it less straightforward to diagnose why a game isn't running as expected, in the case of GPU drivers not being installed. Plus, what game developer cares about the software rendering fallback enough to even test their game against it?)
So no, it's not completely honest. It's a disingenuous red herring.