MoltenVK Sees Big Update To Jump-Start Vulkan On macOS In 2019

[phoronix]

Phoronix: MoltenVK Sees Big Update To Jump-Start Vulkan On macOS In 2019

Next month MoltenVK will celebrate one year since being open-sourced for allowing the Vulkan API to function on Apple's macOS/iOS by mapping the Vulkan calls to the Apple Metal graphics/compute API. Just in time for that first birthday, a big MoltenVK update is now available...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MoltenVK-Vulkan-1.1.97

[ryao]

It will be nice when DXVK works with MoltenVK.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Now macOS is going to need an OpenGL 2/3/4.x to Metal 2 runtime translation library. I'm suddenly guessing a crap load of games on Steam for Mac will break when Apple finally pulls the plug on the their deprecated and unoptimized OpenGL and OpenGL ES implementations, in a future macOS release?

There is MoltenGL but that appears to only target the older subset OpenGL ES 2 API.

[Guest]

I'm guessing this will continue for another 4-5 years before Apple admits defeat and moves to Vulkan.

[Britoid]

I'm guessing this will continue for another 4-5 years before Apple admits defeat and moves to Vulkan.

I don't see that happening. Apple doesn't care about games, especially on OS X.

[cybertraveler]

Now macOS is going to need an OpenGL 2/3/4.x to Metal 2 runtime translation library. I'm suddenly guessing a crap load of games on Steam for Mac will break when Apple finally pulls the plug on the their deprecated and unoptimized OpenGL and OpenGL ES implementations, in a future macOS release?

There is MoltenGL but that appears to only target the older subset OpenGL ES 2 API.

Presumably Mac users are already used to newer releases of their OS not supporting their old software. I don't think Apple try to maintain a high level of compatibility between each new version of OS X.

I expect someone will produce a runtime translation lib, like you suggested.

[Boland]

Feral have made it clear they won’t be using MoltenVK, they have their own DX-Metal/Vulkan porting libraries. Besides, MoltenVK is lacking quite a few features (Tessellation support being one).