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Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

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Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#251

Post by inDigiNeous »

DeathArrow wrote: post #245
inDigiNeous wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal allows Apple to squeeze that extra performance out of their devices. They have full control over, and can implement whatever they need to deliver Apple Vision Pro for example. With Vulkan, they would have to wait for a committee to approve required changes, and still they could not probably optimize it to match their GPU an CPU hardware profiles in such an efficient way. And not least at all, to optimize the de…

>Metal allows Apple to squeeze that extra performance out of their devices. They have full control over, and can implement whatever they need to deliver Apple Vision Pro for example. That doesn't stop them from implementing both Metal and Vulkan.

Sure, but a lot of extra work for something like that. Also, Apple Walled Garden..

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#252

Post by sspiff »

DeathArrow wrote: post #247
talldayo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be a small bit of irony if the gaming experience on Asahi ends up easier and more straightforward than MacOS. Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late.

>Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. Even if Apple supported Vulkan that doesn't mean AAA games would be ported to Mac soon. AAA require beefy GPUs and Apple silicon isn't going to match Nvidia.

AAA can make use of beefy GPUs, but equally it can run on more pedestrian hardware.

If AAA games sold only to those with desktops and high end graphics cards, PC gaming would have died a long time ago. Even today, many games run fine on Pascal era graphics cards, and they certainly run fine on mid range laptop versions of Nvidias 4050 & 4060.

Apples silicon can keep up with those, plus the simpler, less diverse hardware on Mac would probably lead to better optimisation if the market was big enough.

I'm not saying Vulkan is the only thing holding gaming from Apple computers, because I think the control Apple has over software distribution on Mac is also something that scares large publishers away from investing in the platform.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#253

Post by flohofwoe »

58028641 wrote: post #207
astrange wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't "just support Vulkan", it's too low level. To benefit, the implementation would have to target the GPU specifically since Apple GPUs are different from discrete GPUs.

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK proves that it is possible, but it is limited by having to go through Metal.

If Apple would add native Vulkan support to macOS, it would most likely also go through a Metal "emulation layer" (just like their GL implementation, or the D3D12 implementation in the Game Porting Toolkit).

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#254

Post by pjmlp »

pcwalton wrote: post #125
dagmx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan would likely not really have helped macOS gaming in any form. I consider it a red herring that people point to. The number of games that run natively on Vulkan is negligible. The number of games that run on Metal by comparison (natively) is orders of magnitude higher. If we're ONLY talking about the ability to use Proton, Apple does now have Game Porting Toolkit that does effectively the same thing with compar…

Vulkan probably wouldn't help macOS gaming from a users' point of view, but it sure would be nice for us engine developers. There aren't many Vulkan games , but the big 3 non-in-house game engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot) are all committed to supporting Vulkan in addition to Metal, so we (collectively, the engine dev community) currently have to support both. Dropping Metal would reduce the amount of engineer time spen…

The commercial engine developers also don't have any qualms supporting GNM, GNMX, NVN.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#255

Post by trissylegs »

skrrtww wrote: post #42
littlecranky67 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon Apple's dream is not to have AAA games land on Apple Silicon - they can do this with Proton-like layer, like they did with GPTK. Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store - not on Steam or Epic Game store. That is why the GPTK effort is only have assed (and the license prevents Valve integrating it into steam directly).

This is a bit of a tangential rant, so I apologize. But I recently tried to update Death Stranding, the flagship AAA game that Apple landed on macOS and in the App Store. The game itself is 77.5 GB; it had required a little over 150 GB to install. I shrugged that off at the time; they haven't figured out how to decompress on the fly, whatever. I had about 50GB free on my (1 TB M1 Max) machine at the time of the updat…

I just rember back when my internet was 512 kbps down and iTunes would have a minor bugfix update over >100 MB which would take over an hour.

I'd just not update iTunes ever.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#256

Post by pjmlp »

talldayo wrote: post #196
ttoinou wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point of view that could also be the other way around, Vulkan support being a hidden tax for the love of open source and free software rather than something really useful the market needed on top of others APIs / GPU architectures / platforms, pushed by a subset / minority of developers more ideological than practical grounded developers who accept that competition of private standards will bring out the…

It feels unlikely. Much smaller companies (Broadcom, Qualcomm) have no trouble writing compliant Vulkan drivers (let alone singular people), so I find it hard to give Apple the pass here. Assuming good faith on their part, Vulkan should be available; or at least some kind of cross-platform API target. Otherwise people are just going to ignore Mac and keep focusing on DirectX, like the status quo. Vulkan is everyone's…

Like in the OpenGL days, Vulkan keeps playing catch up with the games consoles, and DirectX APIs, and it is already a extension mess just like OpenGL, an achievment in a quarter of OpenGL's lifetime.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#257

Post by ricardojoaoreis »

rowanG077 wrote: post #3
dagmx wrote: post #2

Very impressive work, and a great testament to the value of shared, iterative and open components. I'll be curious how long it takes Proton to be ported, though I suspect even with an optimal Vk implementation, many games will run terribly due to the difference in GPU architecture + arm translation overhead + proton itself (however negligible). Still, I remain optimistic that more games will target unified memory and…

A ton of games which don't require dxvk are running at 60+ FPS. See https://vt.social/@lina/112524118075585601 Alyssa, the machine that she is, has also been working on improving FEX performance recently.

Alyssa did some work for Valve, they might have an interest in FEX for some ARM version of Proton.

Good thing that we can all benefit from it

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#258

Post by pjmlp »

atq2119 wrote: post #239
dev_tty01 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal only covers Apple. Vulkan covers so much more. I'm not sure "more" is the right term here. There are about 1.3 billion iPhone users worldwide. Sure, Vulkan covers more OS environments, but how important is that to a game developer vs. total available users? Does Vulkan user reach exceed 1.3 billion?

Surely there are more Android users than iPhone users worldwide, and if you target Android you target Vulkan.

Only if we don't care about those using devices where OpenGL ES is still more stable, with less buggy drivers.

If you only care about latest Android versions, and Samsung and Google phones, sure go Vulkan.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#259

Post by pjmlp »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #232
dev_tty01 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal only covers Apple. Vulkan covers so much more. I'm not sure "more" is the right term here. There are about 1.3 billion iPhone users worldwide. Sure, Vulkan covers more OS environments, but how important is that to a game developer vs. total available users? Does Vulkan user reach exceed 1.3 billion?

OS coverage vs pure numbers is something for the game developer to be worried about, and by extension the game engine devs. You want to get into the iOS gaming market, go Metal. By definition you've expressed you don't care about the other OS's. You want to make a AAA game, you probably don't go Metal if you want enough market coverage to recoup your costs - though I will be delighted to be proven wrong when a AAA iP…

AAA don't care about Vulkan, they care about Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft proprietary APIs.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#260

Post by pjmlp »

DeathArrow wrote: post #241
dagmx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan would likely not really have helped macOS gaming in any form. I consider it a red herring that people point to. The number of games that run natively on Vulkan is negligible. The number of games that run on Metal by comparison (natively) is orders of magnitude higher. If we're ONLY talking about the ability to use Proton, Apple does now have Game Porting Toolkit that does effectively the same thing with compar…

>The number of games that run on Metal by comparison (natively) is orders of magnitude higher. You mean iOS games?

It is still Metal, regardless.
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