Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 466 posts

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#221

Post by waynecochran »

Firecracker wrote: post #186
outworlder wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Article is about Vulkan, but briefly mention Apple's own outdated OpenGL stack.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...

Yes. But tell me a Mac past 2015 that you can even use an nVidia card in.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#222

Post by lightedman »

shurcooL wrote: post #2

I would be a lot more okay with this if Apple supported Vulkan, the more portable comparable API, rather than just the macOS/iOS-only Metal. I also wonder what means for WebGL and its future. Right now, WebGL works in browsers on macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android, which is incredible. There is no equivalent. Sure, Apple has started working on WebGPU, but that’s not yet ready nor is it guaranteed to gain Linux, Wind…

I'd be a lot more okay with this if Apple would drop the Metal moniker, as I still have a functioning Virge with MeTaL acceleration and is still in use.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#223

Post by sparky_ »

Sephr wrote: post #55
_bxg1 wrote: post #32

Ugggggh. As if graphics support on macOS weren't middling enough already. It's like they're trying to become as irrelevant as possible in that area. I could understand if they were deprecating it in favor of Vulkan. That would be in-line with Apple's history of aggressively pushing forward new standards. But by no means do they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work…

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

Ditto for OpenGL ES (http://moltengl.com/)

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#224

Post by BurningCycles »

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).

Indeed, I directly thought of 3d applications like Blender, Maya, etc which use OpenGL.

It's a very weird move to me, even if the software in question will be kept compatible with Apple's Legacy OpenGL, these versions will be worse than their counterparts running on other platforms making use of new shiny OpenGL features.

It's like Apple is saying 'we don't care' to the 3d professional market, also doesn't Photoshop rely on OpenGL these days as well ?

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#225

Post by sparky_ »

astrange wrote: post #155
opencl wrote: 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.

But you have to rewrite it for every major hardware vendor, or else you won't get the performance you want. GL should always work for the simple case, but instead you need to rewrite to avoid bugs in its many layers. And once you have Vulkan/Metal, industry-specific wrappers are better than the impossible to debug procedural GL junk.

I'm not sure I agree with the claim, but even if we take a full rewrite at face value, "every major graphics vendor" for desktop applications is NVIDIA and AMD/ATI. On mobiles, you're probably using Unity or similar middleware and therefore not thinking about bare metal (no pun intended)

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#226

Post by sparky_ »

coldtea wrote: post #44
_bxg1 wrote: post #32

Ugggggh. As if graphics support on macOS weren't middling enough already. It's like they're trying to become as irrelevant as possible in that area. I could understand if they were deprecating it in favor of Vulkan. That would be in-line with Apple's history of aggressively pushing forward new standards. But by no means do they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work…

> All they'll accomplish is further killing off the already-small presence they have in the gaming space. In the AAA game space you mean. Else, in the casual gaming space, iOS is perhaps the most popular platform -- and the new integration effort means all those games will be able to run on macOS as well soon.

I don't expect there will ever be an AAA game presence on macOS at this point, given so few of their machines offer dedicated GPUs anymore.

And even in cases where they are available, for example Macbook Pros, the cost difference involved in stepping up from an integrated GPU to an entry-level dedicated card is greater than the cost of buying an Xbox or PlayStation.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#227

Post by sparky_ »

waynecochran wrote: post #221
Firecracker wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes. But tell me a Mac past 2015 that you can even use an nVidia card in.

They're doubling down on eGPU support, so there's that. But not as ideal as having something actually inside your machine.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#228

Post by sparky_ »

anaphylactic wrote: post #126
Brakenshire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need a new more developer-friendly API built on top of Vulkan as a replacement for OpenGL.

I believe (hope) that OpenGL continues to be that developer-friendly API. Building OpenGL on top of Vulkan shouldn't be too hard, and it means we don't have to pointlessly deprecate and recreate the huge number of OpenGL resources out there.

There is already OpenGL-on-Metal and OpenGL-on-DirectX middleware, so this may not actually be an issue.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#229

Post by sparky_ »

rbanffy wrote: post #62
dgellow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a really worrying point, yes. Mac users can say goodbye to the majority of our steam library.

It will take a couple more releases for it to stop working.

I would be surprised if it disappears entirely. More likely some third-party hero (or perhaps Apple themselves) will spin off their GL implementation as a separate package - see XQuartz.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#230

Post by lambda »

drb91 wrote: post #216
lambda wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Y…

So why lock in macOS at all?

Because the developers who would be working on OpenGL on macOS are working on Metal instead, because that's where the value is for Apple.
Post reply on HN