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Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

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Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#291

Post by rimliu »

pfranz wrote: post #152
mellinoe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No game developer in the world will write both an OpenGL/DirectX/Vulcan and Metal renderer for the purpose of staying up to date with Apple's "deprecations". Actually, most game developers do that. Pretty much every game (even ones with a custom, "non-AAA" engine) will have some kind of abstraction layer for dealing with graphics API's. Writing an additional backend for Metal is not a monumental undertaking -- it's…

That's kind of true for games, but he's totally right about CAD and other software. Big 3d applications Nuke, Houdini, Maya all use OpenGL. Before OSX, Mac versions either didn't exist or were kept up about as well as IE or Word was. Over the past 5-10 years they've been reliably released for OSX at the same time Windows and Linux versions were (they all originated on IRIX). They all have a lot of other development g…

Well, then maybe it is a good thing for wannabe pixelmators? Create a nice Mac-only tool, profit.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#292

Post by piva00 »

kbwt wrote: post #289
kayoone wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc, which all support Metal already. Hardly anyone writes their own game engines these days, and if they do they probably have the resources to support Metal. Overall still a bummer though.

> 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?

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#293

Post by pjmlp »

BurningCycles wrote: post #224
vvanders wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Photoshop CC 2015 already had partial support for Metal.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#294

Post by ensiferum »

wlesieutre wrote: post #254
BurningCycles wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

After discontinuing AutoCAD for Mac in 1994 people begged for 18 years to get it back and now Apple says "eh, we didn't want that anyway." I heard they have a WebAssembly/WebGL version now, betting that'll get wrapped up in a WebView and we can all pretend it's a native program still. Speaking of WebGL, that's basically OpenGL ES 2.0, but I assume the implementation in WebKit is backed by Metal? What about other brow…

LibANGLE

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#295

Post by jonathanstrange »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #80

To me this signals that the Second Moribundity of Apple is nigh. The First Moribundity was the period in the 1990s when Apple was coasting on the DTP and Photoshop advantage over Windows they had, reducing the features of their desktops and not innovating. Schindler, a smart but ineffective leader, was replaced by Gil Amelio, a star in his prior field but unable to get Apple headed in the right direction. It took Job…

The difference is that in the 90s they were close to bankruptcy whereas today they are swimming in cash. That's not going to help them much in the long run if they have lost their vision, but they are definitely too large nowadays to go away within a few years.

You may call me Captain Obvious now. :)

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#296

Post by ensiferum »

AstralStorm wrote: post #287
wlesieutre wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After discontinuing AutoCAD for Mac in 1994 people begged for 18 years to get it back and now Apple says "eh, we didn't want that anyway." I heard they have a WebAssembly/WebGL version now, betting that'll get wrapped up in a WebView and we can all pretend it's a native program still. Speaking of WebGL, that's basically OpenGL ES 2.0, but I assume the implementation in WebKit is backed by Metal? What about other brow…

Translating between these two is not particularly hard. (Similar to Vulkan backend for OpenGL)

It is. Keep in mind you have to transform the shaders too and make them safe so that they would not allow for undefined behaviour to happen.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#297

Post by pjmlp »

sparky_ wrote: post #226
coldtea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which none of them support either Vulkan or OpenGL.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#298

Post by pjmlp »

adamredwoods wrote: post #148
coldtea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Additionally, I don't think indie developers have loads of time on their hands to port their niche games over to a new technology. I can see Unity supporting Metal, but smaller platforms (jMonkeyEngine) will have a slower adoption rate, and in that time hopefully open-source middleware will come out to handle legacy APIs.

Indie engines like Ogre3D just need to add a new backend to their already backend agnostic engine.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#299

Post by roel_v »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #275
_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…

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.

Because on PC, there are working alternatives.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#300

Post by pjmlp »

wolfgke wrote: post #158
exelius wrote: 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…

> Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes. My personal impression is that while pre-built PCs are mostly sold to businesses, there is a strong growing trend since a few years to build your own PC from parts. I really do observe that if mobility is not an issue, people now tend to move away from laptops towards self-built PCs (or often rather: let a good friend…

The trend around me is to see the shops that used to sell PC parts closing down, while consumer stores have 80% of their PC surface full with laptops, tablets and mobile devices.
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