Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL • Hacker News Board

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#381

Post by sangnoir » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #118

janoc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Creative Suite has run better on PC and at better price-performance ratio for almost a decade. Graphic Designers still like Macs for the most part I guess -- and I still see them in video production a lot, but that's starting to change pretty quickly.

> I still see them in video production a lot, but that's starting to change pretty quickly.

I think the Final Cut "Pro" X was the inflection point - the change is ongoing.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#382

Post by kilon » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #174

kilon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope most of them use some sort of game Engine, unreal and Unity dominate. MacOS gaming is not only not dead it’s flourishing rapidly. Take a trip to Steam shop. You will find a massive amount of games are made for MacOS and the numbers are growing rapidly since Apple lost interest into OpenGL. But then MacOS has reached a 10% of the desktop market making it much harder to ignore than in the past when it barely reach…

"Nope most of them use some sort of game Engine, unreal and Unity dominate." But, don't those engines use OpenGL on the backend? They need some sort of interface to the GPU, and AFAIK, OpenGL is it for both Mac OS and Linux. Edit: Yes, at least Unity does. I can't find an authoritative source on Unreal. https://forum.unity.com/threads/opengl-core-backend-default-... Edit2: Found Unreal info...they switched to Metal i…

The backend plays a minor role, as I repeatedly say and I am repeatedly downvoted by ignorant people. Unreal supports on MacOS not one but 3 technologies. OpenGL, Vulkan and Metal and that is just for graphics. There is also CUDA, OpenCL, PhysicsX and much more that go far beyond the scope of 3d graphics.

A well designed graphics engine never ties itself to a platform however popular that platform may be. Whether that platform may be a OS , a graphics API or any kind of SDK.

At least Unreal is neither a game engine nor a graphics engine , its an entire ecosystem of tools , APIs. Unreal even extends C++ to facilitate for GC and some rudimentary reflective abilities.

So there are a ton of things go on, from low level to very high level.

Overall MacOS develpers have been very quick into embracing Metal for new projects and so did Unreal. Which is no big suprise because Metal gives access to both MacOS and iOS which is a variant/fork of MacOS.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#383

Post by CodesInChaos » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

psyc wrote: post #325

As a long-time professional game engine programmer, it is hard for me to see consternation over things like this, and avoid judging it as mainly ignorance. The amount of code in an engine that needs to touch the graphics API is tiny. A handful of methods for device init, filling buffers, uploading shaders, setting state, and saying "draw!" All of the graphics API code can easily fit in one medium-sized source file. A…

Gaming is all about legacy software, especially single player games. As a gamer I'm very happy that almost all older games still work on Windows today (either directly or using an emulator like DOSBox).

(Of course that does not mean that the OS needs built in OpenGL support. If you can convince an old game to use some kind of OpenGL-Metal compatibility wrapper without needing access to the game's source code or support from the original developer, that's fine with me as well.)

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#384

Post by kilon » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:33 PM UTC

bananaboy wrote: post #193

kilon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope most of them use some sort of game Engine, unreal and Unity dominate. MacOS gaming is not only not dead it’s flourishing rapidly. Take a trip to Steam shop. You will find a massive amount of games are made for MacOS and the numbers are growing rapidly since Apple lost interest into OpenGL. But then MacOS has reached a 10% of the desktop market making it much harder to ignore than in the past when it barely reach…

If you look at the most recent Steam hardware survey though 96.3% of players are on Windows and 3.07% are on macOS. I don't know if that's "flourishing rapidly". It's certainly going up slowly. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Well I will just mention that i am an iMac user since 2007 and I replying to your message with Win 10 via Bootcamp. Mac gamers choose the bootcamp route because its an easy solution and gives access to more games and software. I am willing to bet that Mac gamers are at least 8% if not more. Bootcamp became popular way before Steam did and way before we saw the big switch of big Game studio from pure Windows to Windows/MacOS. Windows also has a notorious reputaiton of being far more stable on bootcamp that a regular pc and and its a reputation that my personal experience confirms it. Because I am a developer I have decided to stick with Win 10 and bootcamp and it has been a smooth ride so far but from time to time I go back to MacOS. Windows 10 also has been the first reliable OS that came from Microsoft.

Of course bootcamp is not the only solution, there is also wine like solution and vm solution but Bootcamp is by far the most popular for gaming.

Another reason to stick with bootcamp is that games may offer a MacOS support but are not quick to fix bugs and resolve issues usually becayse they develop on windows and use crossplatform APIs to port to MacOS using Windows and not MacOS devs which can cause all sort of issues that can take time to resolve.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#385

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #246

fooster wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also, you can handle caching of compiled shaders yourself now (glProgramBinary).

I think the recompilations being talked about here are shaders generated by the OpenGL implementation behind your back. That is, your program never sees them as shader or program objects because they implement some permutation of blend mode, depth test, culling type, etc..

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#386

Post by soylentcola » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #362

wolfgke wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trend around me is to see the shops that used to sell PC parts closing down Couldn't this be simply explained by the hypothesis that people simply buy their PC parts mostly in the internet instead of a brick and mortar shop?

It could, but I am willing to bet that is even more niche than going to a physical shop. The kind of experts capable of understanding if they are ordering hardware that is supposed to work together instead of blowing up in some form when assembled, is quite tiny.

I'm sure it's rarer than I'd like to think, but if I managed to figure it out as a teen in the mid 90's without much in the way of internet access or budget, it's still probably easier today.

Anyone with a modern internet connection and a bit more patience than money (or at least a willingness to learn) can hop on Reddit or PC Part Picker and get a pretty good idea of what is out there and works together.

Compared to the days of making sure you had the right number and type of ISA, PCI, and AGP slots, assembling a PC from parts today is a breeze. Shopping online keeps costs low and places like Microcenter are great for buying in person.

I only haven't built one in a while because my current 5-year-old workhorse media/editing/gaming/everything PC shows no sign of needing a full upgrade any time soon. Sure I bought a new GPU after a few years when I got bitten by the experimental VR bug but other than that, it was an afternoon buying parts and snapping them together, an evening installing software, and 5+ years of "just working".

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#387

Post by kuroguro » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #292

kbwt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc On PC: Maybe by number of games, but not by the number of players. (I count Fortnite as an outlier because it's technically not built on a third-party engine)

So based on number of players, what is the most used engine today if not UE nor Unity? There's LoL, Dota 2 and Overwatch using their custom engines with huge numbers of players but... What else? CS:GO?

CSGO and DOTA2 both run on different versions of the source engine.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#388

Post by neurobashing » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

you're all completely correct: Apple is doomed. Since no one plays any games on iOS (where Metal is the only real option), forcing Metal adoption on MacOS is doomed from the start. iOS devices will be left in their moribund state, used only for a few limited tasks like DTP and blogging or whatever.

They should take a page from Microsoft and adopt an open, cross-platform technology like DirectX.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#389

Post by cmsj » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

sundvor wrote: post #347

bittcto wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've yet to see anyone build a hardcore Mac gaming machine. Oh wait, you can't.

you could make a pretty safe argument that the iMac Pro is right up there with the best gaming PCs one could buy/assemble.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#390

Post by wolfgke » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

glenneroo wrote: post #371

wolfgke wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Custom built PCs are a niche. The vast majority of people just want to buy a box that works. That is why I wrote "(or often rather: let a good friend build one)." :-) Seriously: In my opinion (but others might disagree) an advantage of self-built PCs over one that some company produces is that you know exactly what components are inside (in particular you can buy components in which you trust), which makes you far…

You're forgetting the most important reason to DIY: money. Where manufacturers are happy to charge you 2x the price to double your RAM or put in a non-shitty SSD, DIYing can shave off a few hundred Euro. Just as an example, over at apple.com, the new iMac comes with 32GB of DDR4 2666MHz ECC RAM. To add 32GB (64GB total) they are charging 960€, or 2,880€ to add 96GB (128GB total). Looking on amazon or geizhals.eu (pri…

> Just as an example, over at apple.com, the new iMac comes with 32GB of DDR4 2666MHz ECC RAM. To add 32GB (64GB total) they are charging 960€, or 2,880€ to add 96GB (128GB total).

Specifically Apple is well-known for their expensive pricing for better optional components (which is often necessary to pay, since for many models you cannot simply replace the component (RAM, SSD etc.) by another one on your own).