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

[GruenSein]

Blizzard has a long history of Mac support and Unreal is a multiplatform game engine so the rendering is a module that can be swapped (simplification) and most infrastructure for that has always been in place.
Not to sound like I don't believe you but I didn't see that. Could you post some sources for this?

Last time I looked there were one VR hardware maker (Oculus I think) that said things like "Apple makes devices with crap GPUs so we don't see why we should support MacOS", did the situation change?

Sure thing. This is the first thing that came up when I googled. I think, VR, eGPUs etc. were discussed at length during the WWDC keynote. http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/...amvr-for-macos

Which is the same I'm saying. If there is a gain on both sides then there is a trade, if one side gains and the other loses (like to add Metal support to FOSS applications to run them on MacOS) then there is no trade.
Note that most FOSS applications don't sell anything so there is even less reason to add Metal support than if we were talking of commercial closedsource application.

Heck it makes FAR more sense to add DX12 than Metal.

Sure. It always depends on the targeted user base. I don't expect the likes of redhat etc. to start implementing Metal drivers and display servers even if it was technologically superior (which I have no idea about and don't really care either) or anything like that but I also think that the FOSS and the Mac are not mutually exclusive. Take me for instance. I work in fluid mechanics at a university and do very data intensive analyses. These are usually run on large HPC-clusters. My primary machine is a MacBook Pro though since I happen to like the OS and hardware and macOS lets me use lot's of nice FOSS tools that are widely established in scientific computing. Hell, I can even develop my code on macOS and simply recompile it on the cluster to run it. So I don't really get why people always stylise the choice of hardware vendor as some kind of good vs. evil. Anyway, I am getting off topic. What I actually meant to say is that it always depends on your target user base. Even FOSS-devs might want to address mac users. If those are willing to implement platform specific features is another question, though.

[cj.wijtmans]

Well the recent patch for Warthunder that added Metal to its game under MacOS saw a double or more boost in performance, quite nice. However developer claims no gains will be had for Vulkan for PC users.... DERP, so yes Apple is just spending money to buy their way through the API wars IMO. I just hope we get more developers pushing Vulkan because there is still a huge amount of nay sayers around atm. Sadly.

comparing crippled opengl to a modern vulkan like API... yeah nice comparison there.

[andrei_me]

Yes, I would prefer Apple to adopt Vulkan, even just in addition to Metal, but I fault them mostly for not enabling graphics card manufacturers to supply the support themselves such as in other OSes, e.g. Windows and Linux. I would love if Apple even allowed "the FOSS community to do the heavy lifting for Apple".

^ THIS.

Everyone is adopting Metal because it is the only available/reasonable option.
You can google for OSX drivers bugs that are never fixed

In Windows you can have nvidia/amd/intel made drivers to run Vulkan in Win7/8/10, they are allowed/able to do it

[GruenSein]

I'd like to see statistics regarding what's the percentage of developers that have adopted that crap. Hopefully it's close to none.

My guess is that it is close or equal to Vulkan adoption. On iOS, it is well established an on the mac some major debs are supporting it now.

[Electric-Gecko]

To me it's just so obvious that Apple inc is such a nasty company. It's sad that so many people overlook this. It's crazy how hard it is to explain what's wrong with Apple to so many people, such as my own family members. They get away with way too much.

My guess is that it is close or equal to Vulkan adoption. On iOS, it is well established an on the mac some major debs are supporting it now.

You say it's almost as well adopted as Vulkan, and that it's well established? I was under the impression that Vulkan isn't well adopted yet.

[efikkan]

That is delusional in my mind. The Apple ecosystem is so huge that it is foolish of a developer not to use their technologies. You may not like that idea but right now their isn't a more heavily used mobile OS.

That's just a ridiculous claim.

For personal computers, there is no market at all for Macs, and there are very few GPU options for Macs.
For mobile smart devices, Apple's market shares have dropped below 10%, and will continue dropping as Android expands into emerging markets i Asia. The projected growth for Android the next years are huge. These are just facts, not my opinions.

So in just a few years iOS will be more of a niche market of premium customers. The revenue in the Android marketplace will by then be many times larger. Today, you can easily build a game in OpenGL and release it for Android and iOS with very little extra effort. In three years or so Vulkan would gradually replace OpenGL ES for Android. With ever-shrinking markets on iOS, most developers will then avoid Metal, leaving iOS with fewer and fewer applications. If Apple wants to stay relevant, they then have to add support for Vulkan.

[yolegi]

For mobile smart devices, Apple's market shares have dropped below 10%, and will continue dropping

Apple jan 2016 - announced it had surpassed 1 billion active iOS devices
Google IO 2017 - There Are Now More Than 2 Billion Monthly Active Android Devices
CounterPoint Research Jun 7, 2017 - installed base of 1b iPhones

[Marc Driftmeyer]

That's just a ridiculous claim.

For personal computers, there is no market at all for Macs, and there are very few GPU options for Macs.
For mobile smart devices, Apple's market shares have dropped below 10%, and will continue dropping as Android expands into emerging markets i Asia. The projected growth for Android the next years are huge. These are just facts, not my opinions.

So in just a few years iOS will be more of a niche market of premium customers. The revenue in the Android marketplace will by then be many times larger. Today, you can easily build a game in OpenGL and release it for Android and iOS with very little extra effort. In three years or so Vulkan would gradually replace OpenGL ES for Android. With ever-shrinking markets on iOS, most developers will then avoid Metal, leaving iOS with fewer and fewer applications. If Apple wants to stay relevant, they then have to add support for Vulkan.

They sell nearly 25 million Personal Computers annually. That number continues to expand.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Apple jan 2016 - announced it had surpassed 1 billion active iOS devices
Google IO 2017 - There Are Now More Than 2 Billion Monthly Active Android Devices
CounterPoint Research Jun 7, 2017 - installed base of 1b iPhones

And > 90 % of profits made are on the iOS platform alone.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

androids market share is 82%, I don't know what kind of maths you're using to make iOS the more heavily used OS.

You're delusional.