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Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

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Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#181

Post by archagon »

jakobegger wrote: post #100
endorphone wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

They mentioned in the State of the Union that this is the first step towards removing it.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#182

Post by rafaelvasco »

At this state if i'm coding a game engine and want HWA graphics in all platforms i'm better of using middleware/user level frameworks like BGFX, GFX-RS etc, that abstract away D3D, Metal and Vulkan. Best choice. All that time learning OpenGL will not go to waste completely.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#184

Post by brianpgordon »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #146
exelius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Approximate yearly sales of desktop PCs worldwide (all kinds) are 200 million per year... I can't find 5 year refresh cycles on any HP, Dell, etc. desktops or laptops. They tend to refresh in line with corporate cycles, i.e. 18 month to 3 years, from what I see.

Contrast with ~1.5 billion (!) smartphone sales per year.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#185

Post by jblow »

GuB-42 wrote: post #177
fabian2k wrote: post #28

OpenGL isn't pretty, but it's at least cross-platform. And my impression was that OpenGL support is mostly handled by the GPU manufacturers, so I'm not sure how much Apple gains here by deprecating OpenGL. Requiring developers to use an API locked to a particular platform feels pretty hostile to me. Doesn't matter if that API isn't perfect, or even far from it.

OpenGL is pretty. Much prettier than these Metal and Vulkan abominations. The difference is that OpenGL is designed to be easy for humans. glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); glVertex3f(x, y, z)...; glEnd(); you can't beat that. The issue is that it hard for the driver to optimize. That's where Metal and Vulkan come into play. These are low level APIs, sacrificing user friendliness for a greater control over the hardware. It is d…

Nope, glVertex3f was deprecated years ago by OpenGL itself. That is not the way the API works any more. [1]

Look into what it takes to write the minimum viable OpenGL program, written using non-deprecated routines, that puts a textured triangle on the screen. It sucks. On top of that, OpenGL is slow and gives you no way to create programs with smooth performance -- for example, it will randomly recompile shaders behind your back while you are trying to have a smooth frame rate.

1990s-style OpenGL was good for the time. In 2018, OpenGL is a pile of poop.

[1] https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Legacy_OpenGL

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#186

Post by Firecracker »

outworlder wrote: post #178
GeekyBear wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Apple refuses to allow GPU vendors to provide an OpenGL implementation? The real question is why would a GPU vendor go through the expense of creating and supporting such an implementation when Apple doesn't even make a computer with slots that you can install their video cards into? If producing an OpenGL implementation doesn't provide a competitive advantage for selling their products, why…

> What makes you think that Apple refuses to allow GPU vendors to provide an OpenGL implementation? Because it is a fact that Apple develops their own drivers. Also, when did you last download a driver update from NVidia for your Mac? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-... Article is about Vulkan, but briefly mention Apple's own outdated OpenGL stack. http://renderingpipeline.com/2012/04/sad-…

NVIDIA has mac drivers for their whole consumer line. For example https://images.nvidia.com/mac/pkg/387/WebDriver-387.10.10.10...

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#187

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

GuB-42 wrote: post #177
fabian2k wrote: post #28

OpenGL isn't pretty, but it's at least cross-platform. And my impression was that OpenGL support is mostly handled by the GPU manufacturers, so I'm not sure how much Apple gains here by deprecating OpenGL. Requiring developers to use an API locked to a particular platform feels pretty hostile to me. Doesn't matter if that API isn't perfect, or even far from it.

OpenGL is pretty. Much prettier than these Metal and Vulkan abominations. The difference is that OpenGL is designed to be easy for humans. glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); glVertex3f(x, y, z)...; glEnd(); you can't beat that. The issue is that it hard for the driver to optimize. That's where Metal and Vulkan come into play. These are low level APIs, sacrificing user friendliness for a greater control over the hardware. It is d…

> glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); glVertex3f(x, y, z)...; glEnd();

That's fine for a "hello triangle" program, but quickly becomes ridiculous for anything approaching a serious engine. There's a reason that glDrawArrays() has been around since 1995 (and part of the core specification since 1997).

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#188

Post by chris_wot »

vvanders wrote: post #66
endorphone wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But by no means to they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work anywhere else" To be fair, the overwhelming majority of game shops develop on engines, and leave the engines to deal with the platforms. Unreal Engine, Unity, etc, support Metal, among others.

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).

LibreOffice uses OpenGL and OpenCL extensively.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#189

Post by mbell »

outworlder wrote: post #178
GeekyBear wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Apple refuses to allow GPU vendors to provide an OpenGL implementation? The real question is why would a GPU vendor go through the expense of creating and supporting such an implementation when Apple doesn't even make a computer with slots that you can install their video cards into? If producing an OpenGL implementation doesn't provide a competitive advantage for selling their products, why…

> What makes you think that Apple refuses to allow GPU vendors to provide an OpenGL implementation? Because it is a fact that Apple develops their own drivers. Also, when did you last download a driver update from NVidia for your Mac? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-... Article is about Vulkan, but briefly mention Apple's own outdated OpenGL stack. http://renderingpipeline.com/2012/04/sad-…

> Also, when did you last download a driver update from NVidia for your Mac?

Last week.

Nvidia releases drivers for cards that the drivers which ship with macos don't support. I would also guess that the nvidia drivers which ship with macos are written by nvidia under some agreement with apple, same is likely true of AMD and intel.

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