Apple Deprecating OpenGL

[Blademaster91]

54 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

I'm not really sure why this is a bad thing. Gaming on macOS has been terrible for years. In fact, I haven't seen similar performance between macOS and Windows since the transition to Intel, aside from some very specific Mac ports like WoW and Valve's own titles. The OpenGL implementation was always rather lackluster. That, among other reasons such as cost, is a reason why people don't usually bother getting their games running on the Mac. Just bootcamp for your games and keep macOS clean for what it's designed to do well: productivity.

This isn't a good thing though, it really screws over cross platform developers. What does Apple plan to do, port over iOS games?

Apple doesn't have much reason to do this except for adding to the walls on their closed in garden.

[NelizMastr]

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

This isn't a good thing though, it really screws over cross platform developers. What does Apple plan to do, port over iOS games?

Apple doesn't have much reason to do this except for adding to the walls on their closed in garden.

I'd rather have less choice with games that are actually playable on a Mac than a wide variety of crap. Without Vulkan, it won't become a viable gaming OS anyway.

[Trixanity]

36 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

macOS has Vulkan.

It doesn't. 

[79wjd]

Vulkan supports Mac OS; MacOS doesn't support Vulkan.

@Nicholatian

[Trixanity]

43 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

I knew that was the idea behind the statement but it's not really the same. Ask Apple if their platform supports Vulkan or any graphics partner for their platform if the driver supports Vulkan. The answer is no. 

 

By your logic AMD supports CUDA (as an example). Meanwhile it doesn't really but there are tools to make it work one way or another. That goes for a lot of things with varying degrees of adoption and success. However, the real answer is no with an asterisk.

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd rather have less choice with games that are actually playable on a Mac than a wide variety of crap.

The thing is for PC games the primary target for developers is windows. Despite that you do get quite a number of games ported to OSX and Linux. For example I just started playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided on Linux. The way that devs justify it is something like this....

-ok we already have this thing working on windows

-how much extra work would it take to get it running smoothly on OSX and Linux

-If it's only 5% more work then this is worth porting for the slight increase in sales

 

So the less portable the original code is the less likely it is to get ported to Linux and OSX. Because devs are not going to spend another one years development time for platforms which will only provide a small increase in sales. When you can use cross platform APIs then the code is more portable.

 

Apple is only getting rid of openGL now, but they have been neglecting it for a long time. They have not allowed the GPU vendors to provide up to date support for the latest openGL versions for years. That has resulted in a situation where although people use openGL the performance was much lower than on Linux OpenGL and Windows OpenGL. But still it gets used a lot by indie devs.

 

PC game devs have not really adopted metal for OSX. Apple does not have the market share on pc to dictate terms like that. On IOS it's different. Apart from the market share difference there is a culture difference where walled gardens are more accepted for mobile devices. On PC people tend to expect freedom as it has been the source of PC innovation.

 

What people want is for Apple to not stand in the way, even if they don't support these APIs.

Look at Microsoft with Vulkan. Microsoft heavily pushes directX for windows. But if the dev community and the IHVs want to come together to create something new called Vulkan then Microsoft does not block them, they just turn a blind eye and allow Nvidia/AMD to ship the drivers.

 

That's all people are asking of Apple... don't stand in the way. Allow Nvidia and AMD to do their thing, it will make OSX a better platform.

[79wjd]

12 minutes ago, Humbug said:

The thing is for PC games the primary target for developers is windows. Despite that you do get quite a number of games ported to OSX and Linux. For example I just started playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided on Linux. The way that devs justify it is something like this....

-ok we already have this thing working on windows

-how much extra work would it take to get it running smoothly on OSX and Linux

-If it's only 5% more work then this is worth porting for the slight increase in sales

 

So the less portable the original code is the less likely it is to get ported to Linux and OSX. Because devs are not going to spend another one years development time for platforms which will only provide a small increase in sales. When you can use cross platform APIs then the code is more portable.

 

Apple is only getting rid of openGL now, but they have been neglecting it for a long time. They have not allowed the GPU vendors to provide up to date support for the latest openGL versions for years. That has resulted in a situation where although people use openGL the performance was much lower than on Linux OpenGL and Windows OpenGL. But still it gets used a lot by indie devs.

 

PC game devs have not really adopted metal for OSX. Apple does not have the market share on pc to dictate terms like that. On IOS it's different. Apart from the market share difference there is a culture difference where walled gardens are more accepted for mobile devices. On PC people tend to expect freedom as it has been the source of PC innovation.

 

What people want is for Apple to not stand in the way, even if they don't support these APIs.

Look at Microsoft with Vulkan. Microsoft heavily pushes directX for windows. But if the dev community and the IHVs want to come together to create something new called Vulkan then Microsoft does not block them, they just turn a blind eye and allow Nvidia/AMD to ship the drivers.

 

That's all people are asking of Apple... don't stand in the way. Allow Nvidia and AMD to do their thing, it will make OSX a better platform.

Except that Microsoft is pushing UWP, which only supports DX12.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Humbug said:

The thing is for PC games the primary target for developers is windows. Despite that you do get quite a number of games ported to OSX and Linux. For example I just started playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided on Linux. The way that devs justify it is something like this....

-ok we already have this thing working on windows

-how much extra work would it take to get it running smoothly on OSX and Linux

-If it's only 5% more work then this is worth porting for the slight increase in sales

I just want to point out that a bunch of major AAA releases on Mac and Linux (examples include Deus Ex, Mad Max, F1, Rise of the Tomb Raider and others) have absolutely 0 to do with any of that.

 

It has entirely to do with Feral Interactive coming to big companies and going "Can we do all of the work to do a high quality port of your game to Mac and Linux? We'll pay you like 50% of all the profits from these additional sales?" And game studios going "We don't have to do any work? Uh sure fine. Have at it. Just make sure we get our money."

 

We don't deserve Feral. *bows my head in reverance*

 

2 hours ago, Nicholatian said:

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

MoltenVK is *not* a full implimentation of Vulkan. It's a translation layer for a *subset* of the Vulkan API. It doesn't support everything that Vulkan 1.0 supported, and adds a fair amount of overhead over a native Vulkan or Metal implimentation.

 

3 hours ago, Nicholatian said:

macOS has Vulkan.

 

If you’re concerned about game ecosystems, API support is honestly the last thing you should care about. These things matter to engine developers for targeting systems like macOS, and with the Vulkan abstraction layer being hoisted by Valve I doubt it’s going to be a killer in the long run. Old engines that can’t move forward with the tech will suffer. All of this is as transparent to game developers as the list of advertised platforms supported.

Umm except that says absolutely 0 to address the fact that you can't just magically update the engine of older games (including some releasing today).

 

Nor that the engine doesn't magically just "do Vulkan" or "do Metal" for you, the developers need to invest reasonable amounts of resources into optimization. Explicit APIs are just that. Explicit. And there are some things that you as a developer have to handle explicitly if you want to use anything more than the most basic shaders.

 

4 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

I'm not really sure why this is a bad thing. Gaming on macOS has been terrible for years. In fact, I haven't seen similar performance between macOS and Windows since the transition to Intel, aside from some very specific Mac ports like WoW and Valve's own titles. The OpenGL implementation was always rather lackluster. That, among other reasons such as cost, is a reason why people don't usually bother getting their games running on the Mac. Just bootcamp for your games and keep macOS clean for what it's designed to do well: productivity.

It's not just games that use OpenGL and OpenCL though. There's a ton of compute software, photo editing software, CAD software, etc that all rely on OpenGL.

[Sauron]

5 hours ago, 2Buck said:

I'm just wondering if Apple will back pedal on this when Mac OS gets less support.

If they cared at all they would have added support for Vulkan a while ago. They are not interested in pc games and their hardware is terrible for them anyway, they just want to force metal on developers so they'll only need to support one api across all their devices.

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

It's not just games that use OpenGL and OpenCL though. There's a ton of compute software, photo editing software, CAD software, etc that all rely on OpenGL.

As if Adobe and Autodesk would just drop mac os support...

[JoeCoke]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If they cared at all they would have added support for Vulkan a while ago. They are not interested in pc games and their hardware is terrible for them anyway, they just want to force metal on developers so they'll only need to support one api across all their devices.

While I 100% agree with that, I just have to say, unless I'm missing something here I just don't see how this could be positive for Apple.

Also, it's kinda sad to see them take this route. As much of a "Apple hater" as I am I was liking the direction things seemed to be heading. They just got done adding official support for external GPUs...

[Sauron]

7 minutes ago, 2Buck said:

While I 100% agree with that, I just have to say, unless I'm missing something here I just don't see how this could be positive for Apple.

They'll have fewer things to support and they'll have forced companies like Adobe to make a sizeable investment in the platform, making it less likely that they'll drop it in the future. I also suspect they'll be dropping x86 in a not too distant future and if developers are already using their api it will be a less bumpy transition (although the idea of arm based premium workstations still makes me roll my eyes in disbelief).

11 minutes ago, 2Buck said:

Also, it's kinda sad to see them take this route. As much of a "Apple hater" as I am I was liking the direction things seemed to be heading. They just got done adding official support for external GPUs...

They had to add egpu support because of how underwhelming and unupgradeable their base hardware is.

[DrMacintosh]

5 hours ago, 2Buck said:

I'm just wondering if Apple will back pedal on this when Mac OS gets less support.

It’s been getting more support in recent years. 

 

16 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Really shitty move, but I wonder why they did it.

What does Apple stand to gain from this? Surely it can't be because they are worried people will port MacOS software to other systems.

Apple gets a more efficient OS. OpenGL is literal ass for performance, it has way too much overhead. 

 

Metal is new, more efficient, and Apple can do more with it. 

[JoeCoke]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I also suspect they'll be dropping x86 in a not too distant future and if developers are already using their api it will be a less bumpy transition (although the idea of arm based premium workstations still makes me roll my eyes in disbelief).

Ha, now that's funny to think about. While part of me says "There's no way!", I really wouldn't put it past them. They would be arrogant enough to pull something like that...

Quote

They had to add egpu support because of how underwhelming and unupgradeable their base hardware is.

Definitely true. It's even more hilarious when you remember that the 2012 Mac Pro did all that better than what they have to offer now. Now Apple's solution to everything seems to be dongles, adapters and cables.

[Sniperfox47]

33 minutes ago, Sauron said:

As if Adobe and Autodesk would just drop mac os support...

They both already use Metal and Metal Performance Shaders on Mac. I was thinking more about Blender, Gimp, and other such projects.

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apple gets a more efficient OS. OpenGL is literal ass for performance, it has way too much overhead. 

 

Metal is new, more efficient, and Apple can do more with it. 

But like having OpenGL support doesn't impede any of that...

 

A) OpenGL performance is decent with modern drivers. The issue with it is all the driver and implomentation bugs, not it's raw performance. About the only thing you get out of an explicit API like metal is a lighter, more threaded CPU load for GPU tasks.

 

B) Apple's *already* using Metal for Cocoa and all the other system UI stuff. Not that Metal is really any more efficient for 2D drawing, but it is a little I guess.

 

C) AMD and Intel and Nvidia all use one driver implementation across platforms so all the OpenGL stuff (and all the Vulkan stuff btw) is going to still be in there *anyways*

[Thaldor]

16 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Really shitty move, but I wonder why they did it.

What does Apple stand to gain from this? Surely it can't be because they are worried people will port MacOS software to other systems.

Bringing my two cents. I believe they did this and all the other BS just to get developers more bound to Apple. Comparing to iOS development they probably would want to do the same with Mac OS; If you want to develope a game for Apple, get Apple and stick with it (At least few years back Apple forced every developer who wanted to get their game/app to iOS to buy a Mac, any Mac would do, and at least use it to build the game (they didn't care with what platform you developed the game, ie. with Unity you could make the whole game with Windows and build it for every other platform with Windows but for iOS you needed a Mac with Unity iOS licence and you needed to have iOS developer account which could be requested only with Apple account that has a Mac linked to it IIRC).

 

Now removing OpenGL and earlier banning official Vulkan for the "all so mighty and glorious Apple Inc. product" Metal is just a move to get "casual" developers away from Mac OS. Those who want to develope for Mac OS must invest into learning Metal and so get more bounded to develope for Mac OS (and I really meant those who want, nothing forces anyone to develope for Mac OS and everyone can still support the 99,9% of gamers (I don't count FarmVille players as gamers) without even knowing what a piece of SOC-crap... quality product Metal is). They hope this would keep quality of games released for Mac OS high, but I personally think it just has effect of no one really giving a nickel for Mac OS leaving Apple with a platform where there even some fanboy creations (not good quality) and few bigger releases who think that they can get few dollars off from Apple users.

 

Think of it as an special "Apple-screw" for which a screwdriver costs 10 times that a normal screwdriver. If you happen to buy the "Apple-screwdriver" so that you can service Macs you are far more likely to service Macs longer because you have invested into it and if the "Apple-screwdriver" was your first screwdriver, you are far less likely to invest and start servicing other brands because your initial investment into the "Apple-screwdriver" was so big.

[Trixanity]

1 minute ago, Nicholatian said:

What public relations is saying and what’s actually feasible for developers are two different things. Vulkan is supported on macOS and iOS just the same as it is supported on Windows – third party support is still support. I really don’t understand why there’s this need to hold apple to some higher first-party ethic than Microsoft, Nintendo or any other OEM… it’s really silly.

Who's holding what? I'm certainly not. Just telling you how it actually is. 

It isn't the same as a native implementation. While it may run decently enough and, with work put into it, might perform 99% the same in some scenarios: that still doesn't adequately describe it as being Vulkan considering it's actually translating Vulkan to Metal.

 

I haven't heard of wider adoption of MoltenVK either and if Apple gets their way they may actively try to block any application that uses it from their app store. Apple uses every opportunity to be absolute douche nozzles.

 

Ultimately it may as well not exist if developers either opt for Metal or avoid the platform altogether.

Perhaps the porting studios will spearhead adoption but for now any pseudo Vulkan support remains to be seen.

 

Tl;dr it needs mainstream adoption to be considered a valid part of the ecosystem and even if that happens it's still using Metal to get there.

 

It's kinda like claiming you can speak French because you have an app that can do live translation.

[Sniperfox47]

19 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

What public relations is saying and what’s actually feasible for developers are two different things. Vulkan is supported on macOS and iOS just the same as it is supported on Windows – third party support is still support. I really don’t understand why there’s this need to hold apple to some higher first-party ethic than Microsoft, Nintendo or any other OEM… it’s really silly.

A translation layer (which is what MoltenVK is, readme or otherwise) is a *very* different thing than a proper driver implementation in the same way that a VM is very different then a physical machine or Wine is very different from Win32.

 

Implimentation matters in software engineering. You said you do this for a living so you should know that. The performance impact of any translation layer is always >0.

[Sniperfox47]

2 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

I haven't heard of wider adoption of MoltenVK either

Feral used it for both F1 and Rise of the Tomb Raider I believe.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

They both already use Metal and Metal Performance Shaders on Mac. I was thinking more about Blender, Gimp, and other such projects.

FOSS projects don't make Apple any money unfortunately.

[Trixanity]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Feral used it for both F1 and Rise of the Tomb Raider I believe.

Oh, that's cool. I thought it was still very 'proof-of-concept'-like in terms of adoption. I stand corrected.

I mean I hope it takes off - don't get me wrong - but Apple wants to destroy everything they can't control in their ecosystem. Their treatment of OpenGL which this very thread is about pretty much spells that out.

Another example is that I have a Macbook in which I can't replace the SSD because uses a proprietary connector. It's stupid.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apple gets a more efficient OS. OpenGL is literal ass for performance, it has way too much overhead. 

 

Metal is new, more efficient, and Apple can do more with it. 

You do know that you can support two different sets of API, without any drawbacks right?

Supporting OpenGL does not prevent Apple from using Metal, nor does it prevent anyone else from using Metal. All this does is limit the options developers has.

 

So no, removing support for OpenGL does not make the OS more efficient, nor does it allow Apple to do more. In fact, it allows Apple to do less.

[DrMacintosh]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

You do know that you can support two different sets of API, without any drawbacks right?

There are always drawbacks. You need to keep the framework for each API for as long as you support it. Apple doesn’t want to support OpenGL anymore and that’s a good thing. Developers don’t get to tell Apple what is on Apples platform. 

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

So no, removing support for OpenGL does not make the OS more efficient, nor does it allow Apple to do more.

It objectively does make the OS more efficient, Metal is a technologically superior API for what Apple uses it for. It’s also significantly more modern. And it does allow Apple to do more, the more aspects of the OS that is under 1st party control, the better the end user experience can be.

 

That’s just how Apple works. 

[DrMacintosh]

12 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

So, basically it's better for Apple to pull more of their dictator bs, and it's better simply because of what Apple uses it for rather than what a developer wants to do?  How exactly is it better for the end user?

Users get programs written to take advantage of modern APIs that use the power of their computers effectively, unlike older technologies like OpenGL. 

 

If the developers don’t want to add support for Metal they can choose not to and just accept that their applications will stop working on the Mac in the future.

 

Just like how 32Bit applications will stop working on the Mac soon, programs that run with old graphics APIs will stop working. That’s just the way it is. 

[DrMacintosh]

5 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

And, that will bite them in the ass as usual.

They don't care, they don't need to care.