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Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

201–210 of 466 posts

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#201
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behi…

> for example, it will randomly recompile shaders behind your back while you are trying to have a smooth frame rate. What? I've written commercial games with opengl on osx/ios and my experience doesn't show that at all.

Maybe the games were not very complex? Professional game programmers building games with lots of shaders are very familiar with what I am talking about. See for example this thread:

https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1998...

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#202
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behi…

Each to their own but over the last 6 months I've written a graphics engine in openGL + SDL. Once you truly understand modern openGL you realise how beautiful it is.

You will think it's less beautiful when you ship that game on several platforms and find that it has different bugs on each platform, on each hardware version, and on each driver version. And most of these bugs you can't fix or work around, you just have to bug the vendor and hope they ship a fix in a few months, which they usually won't because your game is too small for them to care about.

This happens in other APIs too (we definitely had it happen with DX11), it's just that OpenGL is a lot more complicated than anything else due to its history, so it has proportionally more bugs.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#203
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that kind of the point of OpenGL?

Yes, but OpenGL is so outdated that the people that should use it the most (game and 3D application developers) were avoiding it due to a hardware vs. API incompatibility.

Vulcan was created to get that same portability, with an API that fits modern hardware.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Chicken and egg. If they remove it apps stop working, if apps don’t update they can’t remove it.

I’m not so sure they’re worried about apps breaking. They’ve certainly stuck to the “no more 32bit iOS apps” thing.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#206
post #107
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…

I disagree, I think Apple is still rather committed to the Mac even if it is no longer their #1 priority. Even if it's a small part of their profits, it's a big source of the strength of their brand (visually speaking, a Mac stands out against a PC far more than an iPhone stands out against any other smartphone), and that's something that's crucial for all of their products. Bad press about the Mac damages the brand,…

The big signal for me that Macs are becoming second class citizens is if they ever start supporting Xcode on something that isn’t MacOS. That is the only thing keeping app developers on their platform, and if/when that changes, you know the final nail is in.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#207
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the cross api shader support?

Surprisingly good. My tests have run across properly across 4 os's without much change. I can't verify for Apple though.

> across 4 os's

windows, gnu/linux, android; and what other os?

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#208
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason Microsoftinvests in DirectX. Lock in software developers and consumers alike.

I can kind of understand iOS, but it’s not like there’s a thriving graphical computing market worth locking in on the mac side. All major titles already use game engines. They’d just be locking out smaller developers who can’t invest in porting all their shaders: it’s not gonna be worth the effort. Granted, this may also be true for OpenGL.

But iOS is a lot bigger than macOS.

You notice that Apple supported OpenGL while they were making most of their money from desktop and laptop sales; but once iOS became so profitable, they decided to go their own way and start pushing Metal.

Lock in, or at least getting people to do more iOS first development (helped by lower profits on app store sales on Android, Android fragmentation, etc), helps Apple out a lot. You get the first version of apps and games, or more polished versions of apps and games, on iOS this way.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#209
I think it’s a great idea to alienate developers from every other operating system out there and ensure that great effort is needed to maintain and port apps from other platforms. This is what we expect from Apple anyway, right?

Who’s going to start working on an OpenGL to Metal wrapper?

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#210
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. If cable tv providers can get away with disintermediating TV viewers from TV stations I don’t see how Apple is any worse, especially since I can still buy third party apps, but I can’t either set up or tune into an indie TV station. Amazon is a far worse problem with respect to books (and without any demonstrable user benefit) so good luck waiting for regulation here. 2. Again, you can use Chrome on a Mac. The App…

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Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
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