Apple Unveils "Metal 2" Graphics API, Better Performance & Capabilities For VR

[GruenSein]

One more WWDC, one more rush of spiteful comments on phoronix 😂
Yes, Apple doesn't go the fully open standard route but how about why wait and see what their new stuff can do before crying wolf? And honestly: If the app runs smoothly, do really care if it is Vulkan or Metal based?

[theriddick]

I have no doubt Metal 1/2 is good. I just hope MetalVK develops so that conversion between it and VulkanAPI becomes a breeze for developers. Otherwise we are going to see games supporting Metal on MacOS and DX11/OGL on PC... and NOTHING else! (already seeing this trend starting).

[profoundWHALE]

Here is my question: Why?

Perhaps they feel that Vulkan/OpenCL is moving too slowly. It reminds me of a certain display server.

[microcode]

Direct3d is not an open standard either.

macOS is not suitable for third-party drivers. Windows makes it simpler, and also has a fairly long history of vendors installing OpenGL drivers which exceed the capabilities of the native Windows OpenGL support.

[microcode]

Here is my question: Why?

Perhaps they feel that Vulkan/OpenCL is moving too slowly. It reminds me of a certain display server.

They don't want to be compatible, they want a walled garden. Fair enough for them, but I'm not going to play into it as a developer.

[microcode]

One more WWDC, one more rush of spiteful comments on phoronix 😂
Yes, Apple doesn't go the fully open standard route but how about why wait and see what their new stuff can do before crying wolf? And honestly: If the app runs smoothly, do really care if it is Vulkan or Metal based?

You're thinking of it from the pleb luser perspective, people here are thinking what a shame it is that Apple is alienating the broader 3D graphics development community, and forsaking the most credible attempt at a universal accelerated graphics API. They have every right to do it, but that doesn't mean people need to pretend to like it. I'm not an Apple user, I'm a developer who has published applications on their platforms, and from my perspective it is an immense waste of time and talent for Apple to be doing this unless their new GPU architecture is going to gain something from it, and there has been no indication of that being the case.

[AdamOne]

this is actually good news, since more users will feel slightly less appealed now

[geearf]

I have no doubt Metal 1/2 is good. I just hope MetalVK develops so that conversion between it and VulkanAPI becomes a breeze for developers. Otherwise we are going to see games supporting Metal on MacOS and DX11/OGL on PC... and NOTHING else! (already seeing this trend starting).

One Croteam dev talked about MoltenVK recently and said it was not up to par yet, and he couldn't use it for whichever game he tried... I don't know about Metal 2, but the first one was not as low level as Vulkan so the mapping may not be that easy/great.




As for the rest, I wonder why Apple picked this path, maybe they believe that Metal (2) is a better API...

[ElectricPrism]

You're thinking of it from the pleb luser perspective, people here are thinking what a shame it is that Apple is alienating the broader 3D graphics development community, and forsaking the most credible attempt at a universal accelerated graphics API. They have every right to do it, but that doesn't mean people need to pretend to like it. I'm not an Apple user, I'm a developer who has published applications on their platforms, and from my perspective it is an immense waste of time and talent for Apple to be doing this unless their new GPU architecture is going to gain something from it, and there has been no indication of that being the case.

That's the secret, the new GPU architecture does gain someone something. I'll give a hint, It's not the developers or the users.

[wizard69]

Well, who cares. They don't even support OpenGL 4.5 yet, and no Vulkan either. Apple should get lost.

Why?

Apple solve one big problem in this world, that is a Unix like OS on well supported hardware. As much as I would like to see it nobody does an outstanding job of supporting Linux on equivalent hardware.