Live data from Hacker News

Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

271–280 of 466 posts

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#273
There is one thing I do not really understand about this. nVidia releases a macOS driver here http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73628/en-u...

Would it be possible for this driver to add OpenGL/OpenCL and Vulkan support to macOS like it is done on Windows? (Or am I completely misunderstanding how this works)

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#274

This is a problem that is entirely of Apple's own doing. Microsoft could not care less about OpenGL on Windows. However, it works just fine. You know why? As soon as you install your video card drivers, your OpenGL implementation is no longer from Microsoft. It comes from AMD, NVidia or Intel, with all needed optimizations for their hardware. Apple insisted in not allowing this and doing the OpenGL implementation the…

OpenGL is very much a second class citizen on Windows. Mass-market OpenGL apps like browsers currently use ANGLE to emulate OpenGL on top of D3D. Native OpenGL is used in professional apps that can make demands on GPU and driver setups. (Many toolkits, like Qt and Cocos2d, also use ANGLE on Windows for OpenGL functionality)

Pro 3D apps from Autodesk tend to use DirectX. Certainly 3dsmax and Revit use DirectX over OpenGL and have done for a while.

The same is true for plenty of other “Pro” apps on Windows.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore...

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#275
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…

I believe, as of now, there are more AAA games running Metal than there are running Vulkan. Pretty much every new macOS release is running Metal now, meanwhile a game running Vulkan on PC is considered a rarity.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#276
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…

Apple must truly hate gaming, or suffer from a serious case of Not Invented Here with their Metal stuff. As if any serious gaming studio would target Metal which doesn't run on Windows. In fact, they couldn't get their act together, keep with current versions, and as a result titles like Elite Dangerous were being shut down anyway. Reason: OpenGL stuck on an old version without support of compute shaders. https://for…

Hypothesis: There are more machines in consumer hands which support Metal than DirectX.

This may sound crazy, but remember there are billions of iOS devices out there in the world, and I don't think X boxes plus windows game machines count in the billions.

Its true Apple hasn't won the hard core gamer market, but they are no longer the niche player that had to cater to windows users.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#277
post #95
post #61

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? 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.

Visualisation is largely done on Windows, mainly with 3dsmax. Has been for a while. Linux is used more in movie VFX.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#278
post #245
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those games are horrible. Almost all of them are built around exploiting weaknesses in the human psyche to convince people to spend money and become addicted. The biggest difference between those games and gambling is that you don't carry a slot machine in your pocket. For the most part the only exceptions to that are the games that were ported from desktop.

PUBG Mobile is one of the best game I have played in a long time. And it doesn't cost me a penny. Nor do I have to pay to win. ( Actually I may have to upgrade my phone to play better ) But not every game are gambling. Fortnite seems to be doing great. And that shouldn't be a pay to win game.

PUBG was ported from desktop. It originally started out as an ARMA 2 mod, was turned into PUBG, and only much later ported over to mobile. It's a perfect example of the kind of game that can come out of the desktop gaming community. You don't get games like PUBG, Minecraft, Starcraft, Terraria, Civ, Kerbal, and so on without desktop gaming.

The games that grow out of the app store ecosystem are games like Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, etc. I'm not saying good games don't exist on the platform, I'm saying the platform is conducive to low quality games. Almost all of the great games on the app store did not grow out of the platform.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#279
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…

Apple must truly hate gaming, or suffer from a serious case of Not Invented Here with their Metal stuff. As if any serious gaming studio would target Metal which doesn't run on Windows. In fact, they couldn't get their act together, keep with current versions, and as a result titles like Elite Dangerous were being shut down anyway. Reason: OpenGL stuck on an old version without support of compute shaders. https://for…

As much as Apple would like to emulate the Microsoft of the 1990's, they're just so bad at it.

Embrace. Extend. Then extinguish.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

such figures wont last forever once smartphones are sufficiently mature and there is no performance difference from one model to the next.

The main reason to buy a new phone these days surely is "the old one broke". Being with us all the time. The planned obsolence - unreplaceable battery, glued screen, glassback etc mean phones break all the time.

PCs stand still, even laptops tend be mostly stationary. No wonder my work laptop is now 6 years old and I feel no urge to request upgrade.

Post reply on HN