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Metal has been out and working for two years. And working well. Apple have a graphics API. Microsoft have a graphics API. Sony have a graphics API. Nvidia have
by mathnode 9y ago
Metal has been out and working for two years. And working well.
Apple have a graphics API. Microsoft have a graphics API. Sony have a graphics API. Nvidia have their own libraries and compilers and so do AMD.
- zanny 9y agoAnd developers love rewriting their graphical backends for every target platform, its the best!
- bronxbomber92 9y agoIn reality, for most developers, it is a non-issue to bringup a new graphics API backend. See, for example, Arseny Kapoulkine's experience porting to Metal: http://zeuxcg.org/2016/12/01/metal-retrospective http://zeuxcg.org/2016/12/01/metal-retrospective
- ioquatix 9y agoOne example is not most developers. I'm a developer and I get paid to write hardware accelerated renderers and for the past two years I've been recommending Vulkan.. I'm exclusively using Linux these days for software development. Sometimes it's not about what you're targeting for deployment but the capabilities of the development machine. For example, I do like Xcode, but I can't use it for Vulkan development, even if my ultimate platform isn't macOS/Apple. Apple dropped the ball on Vulkan and I do hope they support it eventually.
- pjmlp 9y agoGood luck using Vulkan on the PS, XBox or 93% of Android devices out there.
- ioquatix 9y agoWe develop server based hardware-accelerated renderers and compositors for web applications, e.g. dynamically generated product images. None of those targets are relevant. Think ImageMagick but done on hardware + 3D geometry in many cases.
- pjmlp 9y agoYes they do, just indies and FOSS devs on HN don't. The software development culture on the games industry is to make use of the best way to squeeze the graphics performance of a given piece of hardware until the last drop of juice. This is an industry that was born from rewriting their whole games for each type of gaming platform they wanted to sell games to, in Assembly. In many cases using a dumb hexdump editor connected over a serial cable. Having an abstraction layer over all graphics API is a minor inconvenience that can be easily done in one month. Plus it is something that is only written once for a specific engine.
- shmerl 9y agoNo, they don't. Because it's not free and wastes their time. You just keep repeating this weird idea, that developers like this balkanized landscape. They don't. No one likes it, except for lock-in freaks who created it to keep cross platform development expensive. > Having an abstraction layer over all graphics API is a minor inconvenience that can be easily done in one month. Quite false. Take a look how long it takes major engines (like Unreal) to implement such abstraction. And how long it takes them to iron out bugs caused by underlying differences. And then try to claim it's a good thing they need to waste all this time. I don't really understand why you personally like this mess.
- pjmlp 9y agoBecause I have the experience in the games industry that you lack. Apparently from the votes I sometimes get, others also share my life experience.
- shmerl 9y agoIf you have experience, you'd know it's time consuming and taxing. You either like this time wasting, or you benefit from this taxation (working for MS?).
- pjmlp 9y agoOnly FOSS devs see it as time consuming and taxing, professional game studios see it as an opportunity to explore hardware performance to the last drop. For anyone with experience in graphics programming, the time to triangle is just like doing hello world or playing fizz buzz. The last time I set my feet inside of a game studio was more than a decade ago, but it started with an S not M, and I still have contacts in the industry.
- pjmlp 9y agoEven Nintendo has their own APIs. They added Vulkan support for Switch, but the actual main graphics API is NVN. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ I bet most professional studios not using a games engine like Unreal or Unity already, will favor NVN. Just like they did with OpenGL ES 1.0 + Cg vs Libgcm on the PS3.
- shmerl 9y agoProfessional studios can have resources to use Vulkan proper. They don't need to waste them on non portable stuff.
- pjmlp 9y agoGiven that they choose not to do it, says a lot.
- shmerl 9y agoAs far as I can see, they choose to do so, contrary to your claims. They prefer to save money, not to waste it on duplicating of effort.
- pjmlp 9y agoReally? 93% of Android devices don't support Vulkan, PS, XBox, UWP don't support Vulkan and Nintendo Switch API is mainly NVN, in spite of having Vulkan support as well. Also this is the list of "great" Vulkan games released thus far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Vulkan_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Vulkan_supp...
- shmerl 9y agoWe were talking about Nintendo, So, who is using NVN and not Vulkan exactly?
- shmerl 9y agoYou described sick balkanized situation of incompatible APIs from lock-in freaks. It's a pretty bad picture.
- mathnode 9y agoAPI's are not lock-ins. They are API's.