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Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

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Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#91

Post by exelius »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #80

To me this signals that the Second Moribundity of Apple is nigh. The First Moribundity was the period in the 1990s when Apple was coasting on the DTP and Photoshop advantage over Windows they had, reducing the features of their desktops and not innovating. Schindler, a smart but ineffective leader, was replaced by Gil Amelio, a star in his prior field but unable to get Apple headed in the right direction. It took Job…

Everyone is coasting in the desktop / laptop market. Refresh cycles are like 5-10 years on PCs now, and it’s not clear tablets even have a refresh cycle. You can’t get growth on PC hardware anymore, not even if you’re Apple. So it goes into maintenance mode. Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes.

Apple is all about mobile phones, the Apple Watch and air pods right now. The MacBook is barely a blip on their product radar.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#93

Post by mellinoe »

chabsf wrote: post #52
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #42

While this is startling, it seems pretty consistent with Apple's modus operandi in a lot of areas -- leap forward to where they think the industry is going and hope they're right. OpenGL is effectively being deprecated by its own developers in favor of Vulkan, which has an open source implementation for macOS and iOS, developed in part by Valve, built on top of Metal: https://store.steampowered.com/news/37575/ If gam…

OpenGL is "learnable" by someone in the process of learning. Vulkan and Metal are much less approachable. This will put a huge damper on low-level graphics programming as a hobby.

I would disagree with that, especially with regards to Metal. It's a very approachable and well-designed API. It might not have the volume of resources that OpenGL does, but the docs themselves are good, and I have seen plenty of intro-level tutorials that are decent enough. Debuggability is also much better than OpenGL, which I think is important for newcomers. Debugging OpenGL issues is very, very painful, especially with macOS's lack of debug extensions. Metal is described as "low-level", but it's not quite at the level of Vulkan -- things are simpler and more "streamlined".

There's also the problem that a large chunk of OpenGL learning materials out there are hopelessly outdated, and IMO actively detrimental to learning modern graphics techniques. Judging from the types of questions I see around various forums, it seems to be VERY hard for newcomers to distinguish between "bad" and "good" OpenGL tutorials. In general, there's too much cruft for learners to focus in on the stuff that is actually part of "good OpenGL".

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#95

Post by janoc »

coldtea wrote: post #61
larsiusprime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hate it when Microsoft does it, but at least they have market share. Who wants to support Metal just to target the Mac? And last I checked I have the choice of OpenGL and Vulkan on Windows because these days MS doesn't control the hardware stack from top to bottom on their software platform.

> I sure hate it when Microsoft does it, but at least they have market share. Who wants to support Metal just to target the Mac? Plenty of big 3D/CAD/etc players? In lots of creative areas, the Mac dominates still (despite stories about people moving to Windows nobody's going anywhere, where nobody = quite few creatives overall). Besides, with Metal they'll target iOS as well, and that's a huge platform, and where mo…

CAD on Mac is pretty much non-existent, as is any professional 3D market - the market share isn't there, the hardware support is terrible, so few major players bother with supporting Macs. All this stuff is either Windows (CAD) or Linux (3D simulation, visualization) these days.

And with this deprecation Mac is pretty much dead as a platform for professional 3D.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#96

Post by mankash666 »

The classic "Fuck Off" hubris from Apple.

Their B.S. is getting out of hand. List of gripes:

1. Heavy handed regulation of app store: This needs intervention from regulatory authorities. Apple has successfully inserted itself between the consumer and producer of apps. It plays kingmaker, and very clearly promotes internal apps to the competition (recent ban of the Steam app is a prime example). It's only legal recourse stems from being ~17% of the mobile hardware market, but from a paid-app developer's perspective, not being on the app-store is a definitive death-knell. It's a clear monopoly in the 'paid-app' space, and others are arguing a monopoly classification on other grounds [1][2]

2. Unreasonable restrictions placed on approved apps - like disallowing non-webkit based browser engines. Restricting API access though user security isn't compromised (dlopen, webgl-2, opencl, vulkan, etc). Restrictions designed to choke-hold potential competitors & restrict user choice

3. Forced licensing of hardware parts for accessory makers (look up the Apple MFI program)

4. Purposeful non-conformance towards industry standards (like OpenGl, Vulkan, WebGl, many, many holes in open-wen compliance). This non-conformance is steeped in monopolistic, unfair-trade-practices psychology to maintain absolute, unfair control over any potential competition.

I hope France fucks them for purposefully slowing down older iPhones/iPads. And hope the FTC, EU regulatory authorities pay heed to app-developers (and consumers) getting shafted by a beast of a corporation.

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-monopoly-ubs-steven-mil...

[2]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3157551/mobile/apple-must-fa...

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#97

Post by opencl »

_bxg1 wrote: post #76
Sephr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately you can still use Vulkan on iOS and Mac OS through MoltenVK[1], a Vulkan implemention in Metal. [1] https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

Sure, but the whole point of both Vulkan and Metal is to bring out more performance by being lower-level. I'd assume that at least part of that benefit is lost when you use something like this.

A lot of the point of Vulkan is not having to rewrite your entire graphics stack for every OS you want to target.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#98

Post by bilbo0s »

chuckdries wrote: post #82
_bxg1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the whole point of both Vulkan and Metal is to bring out more performance by being lower-level. I'd assume that at least part of that benefit is lost when you use something like this.

It's still way faster than opengl in some senarios

Way faster in most scenarios actually. I'll give it that. (Any scenario I've tested anyway.)

But it's also more difficult for the lay programmer to use as well.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#100

Post by jakobegger »

endorphone wrote: post #71
vvanders wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything that runs on OpenGL is a video game. Tons of applications out there that just won't have the budget to do a rewrite(and even fewer were probably setup with the right architecture if they were depending on OpenGL in the first place).

True, but they didn't remove OpenGL, they simply deprecated it (e.g. don't expect any updates to it, new tooling will not be built around it, etc). That shouldn't affect legacy apps.

Yes, and deprecation doesn’t mean a lot on the Mac. Apple often deprecates stuff and still leaves it in. They remove it only when there’s something to be gained.

(eg. linking with the system-provided OpenSSL has been deprecated for years, but AFAIK they still ship it.)

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