4 ms·

The paragraph above that is relevant as well. Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows, DX12 is on Windows, Metal is on Mac and iOS. They'd have to have multiple ren

The paragraph above that is relevant as well. Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows, DX12 is on Windows, Metal is on Mac and iOS. They'd have to have multiple renderers written for different APIs to cover all the platforms that they support.

slezyr 9y ago
> Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows And android. I.e. everything but Mac OS, iOS.
- EddieRingle 9y ago
  Plus you can get Vulkan on macOS with MoltenVK.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    I've seen that before, and while it's technically true it's also 100% useless for an open source engine.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      It may be open sourced in the future, there are stakeholders who might be willing to pay for this to happen (Google, for example, might want it for their iOS and Apple deployments).
      - earenndil 9y ago
        Eh, google doesn't really need it. They don't make anything that requires high performance and cross-platform, they don't make games, and chrome is only for android so they don't need to be able to run it on ios.
        microcolonel 9y ago
        Chrome runs on OS X, where GL is deteriorating; they also have Maps and Earth on iOS.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  On Android it is optional for 7+ devices, currently about 13% of market share. It is not available on Sony and Microsoft consoles, UWP apps. On the Nintendo Switch there is NVAPI, which provides even more low level control.
pjmlp 9y ago
On Windows Vulkan is only available to desktop apps.
phire 9y ago
The one problem with that plan, is apple have mostly stopped improving their OpenGL driver in favor of Metal.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Yeah, this really gets my goat. These days MoltenGL and MoltenVK are getting more popular. Good on the Molten* folks for making these layers, but I have a feeling they won't be used very widely unless they're basically free to license. Maybe somebody (Google?) will come around and buy them outright. Even worse, Apple's GL drivers never performed very well to begin with. Their intel drivers have been much slower than Mesa for more than half a decade, and supported fewer (super useful) extensions for about two years.
  - kvark 9y ago
    Molten folks would be happy to be open sourced as long as a sufficient gratification bonus is included. Also, Vulkan Portability initiative is relevant here - https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-announces-the-vulkan-portability-initiative https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-announces-the-vulkan-po...
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    All major engines already support Metal, or are in the process of finalizing it. Middleware makes the actual APIs kind of irrelevant. Also there is no OpenGL or Vulkan on majority of game consoles. Even on Switch, Nintendo still has their own API with much more lowere level control than Vulkan, just in case.
    - kevingadd 9y ago
      This is simply not true. To begin with, the shader languages and bytecode formats are different across OpenGL and Direct3D. Consoles tend to have their own shader pipeline as well. Even if you have great abstractions in your middleware, the capabilities actually provided by the system differ, and you have to consider this. APIs and drivers remain extremely relevant, middleware or not. FWIW the PS3 (among others) actually offered OpenGL, not that you'd want to use it (the implementation was pretty bad - Apple-quality). You can also theoretically run OpenGL code on the PS4 or XBox One if you want to, since they use well-understood AMD GPUs. Fail0verflow has already booted real OpenGL on hacked PS4s (via Mesa, I believe). You can also run OpenGL on some platforms by using ANGLE to emulate specific versions of OpenGL on top of other APIs. So, ultimately the "there is no OpenGL or Vulkan" observation isn't that meaningful - if your codebase is built around OpenGL, that's not necessarily a problem at all. I don't know if I'd bother, but I'd also put money on it being possible to run ANGLE or Mesa GL on top of the PS4 graphics stack (I'm familiar with it).
floatboth 9y ago
> Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows Also on FreeBSD :) https://github.com/myfreeweb/freebsd-ports-dank#mesa-with-vulkan https://github.com/myfreeweb/freebsd-ports-dank#mesa-with-vu...

slezyr 9y ago

> Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows And android. I.e. everything but Mac OS, iOS.

EddieRingle 9y ago
Plus you can get Vulkan on macOS with MoltenVK.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  I've seen that before, and while it's technically true it's also 100% useless for an open source engine.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    It may be open sourced in the future, there are stakeholders who might be willing to pay for this to happen (Google, for example, might want it for their iOS and Apple deployments).
    - earenndil 9y ago
      Eh, google doesn't really need it. They don't make anything that requires high performance and cross-platform, they don't make games, and chrome is only for android so they don't need to be able to run it on ios.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        Chrome runs on OS X, where GL is deteriorating; they also have Maps and Earth on iOS.
pjmlp 9y ago
On Android it is optional for 7+ devices, currently about 13% of market share. It is not available on Sony and Microsoft consoles, UWP apps. On the Nintendo Switch there is NVAPI, which provides even more low level control.

pjmlp 9y ago

On Windows Vulkan is only available to desktop apps.

phire 9y ago

The one problem with that plan, is apple have mostly stopped improving their OpenGL driver in favor of Metal.

microcolonel 9y ago
Yeah, this really gets my goat. These days MoltenGL and MoltenVK are getting more popular. Good on the Molten* folks for making these layers, but I have a feeling they won't be used very widely unless they're basically free to license. Maybe somebody (Google?) will come around and buy them outright. Even worse, Apple's GL drivers never performed very well to begin with. Their intel drivers have been much slower than Mesa for more than half a decade, and supported fewer (super useful) extensions for about two years.
- kvark 9y ago
  Molten folks would be happy to be open sourced as long as a sufficient gratification bonus is included. Also, Vulkan Portability initiative is relevant here - https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-announces-the-vulkan-portability-initiative https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-announces-the-vulkan-po...
- pjmlp 9y ago
  All major engines already support Metal, or are in the process of finalizing it. Middleware makes the actual APIs kind of irrelevant. Also there is no OpenGL or Vulkan on majority of game consoles. Even on Switch, Nintendo still has their own API with much more lowere level control than Vulkan, just in case.
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    This is simply not true. To begin with, the shader languages and bytecode formats are different across OpenGL and Direct3D. Consoles tend to have their own shader pipeline as well. Even if you have great abstractions in your middleware, the capabilities actually provided by the system differ, and you have to consider this. APIs and drivers remain extremely relevant, middleware or not. FWIW the PS3 (among others) actually offered OpenGL, not that you'd want to use it (the implementation was pretty bad - Apple-quality). You can also theoretically run OpenGL code on the PS4 or XBox One if you want to, since they use well-understood AMD GPUs. Fail0verflow has already booted real OpenGL on hacked PS4s (via Mesa, I believe). You can also run OpenGL on some platforms by using ANGLE to emulate specific versions of OpenGL on top of other APIs. So, ultimately the "there is no OpenGL or Vulkan" observation isn't that meaningful - if your codebase is built around OpenGL, that's not necessarily a problem at all. I don't know if I'd bother, but I'd also put money on it being possible to run ANGLE or Mesa GL on top of the PS4 graphics stack (I'm familiar with it).

floatboth 9y ago

> Vulkan is only on Linux and Windows Also on FreeBSD :) https://github.com/myfreeweb/freebsd-ports-dank#mesa-with-vulkan https://github.com/myfreeweb/freebsd-ports-dank#mesa-with-vu...