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Vulkan is also very good, and not vendor locked. Vulkan is the sole ray of hope that one day we may have a sane graphics stack that works properly across differ

Vulkan is also very good, and not vendor locked. Vulkan is the sole ray of hope that one day we may have a sane graphics stack that works properly across different platforms. If I'm reading the trend right I might even be able to get rid of my Windows partition during my lifetime. It won't be because Apple decided to make it's own competing standard.

mathnode 9y ago
It's not just Apple. This is what everyone forgets. It's Microsoft, Apple, Sony and Nintendo. Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than OpenGL and Vulkan. It is only CAD still stuck on OpenGL (and the proprietary extensions). Idealism is not the answer to positive end user experience.
- zem 9y ago
  and proprietary apis are not the answer to positive developer experience. time will show whether insisting on your own world-incompatible graphics apis will lead to developers writing custom apps for your platform, or whether they will use whatever lets them release on many platforms at once.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Professional game developers have been choosing proprietary APIs since ever. They were the ones telling Sony that their efforts for having OpenGL ES 1.0 on the PS3 were not worthwhile pursuing. OpenGL ES on the PS3 was barely used beyond prototypes and simple demos.
    - Impossible 9y ago
      Indie titles shipped using OpenGL ES on PS3 and indies got Sony to eventually release an OpenGL wrapper for PS4 as well. If you want decent portability and all your game does is draw alpha blended sprites with simple shaders it could be a win. Questionable how much better that is than either making your game with a portable engine like most indies are doing, or using gnm directly.
    - zem 9y ago
      mobile dev seems a lot more (for want of a better word) grassroots than professional game dev. lower barrier to entry, and a larger set of people who have a good idea they feel they can implement. also phones will probably bring up a lot of uses for a good high-performance graphics api that are not game-related, as people think of more and more things they would like to do with the computer in their pockets.
- errantspark 9y ago
  I don't think that's necessarily true anymore. Vulkan and even OpenGL have shown a lot of promise recently, in real world tests. You may be right that it's simple idealism from my end but I (want to) believe that Vulkan is coming along at the right time/space to gain broad support in the industry. I'm no fan of DX12 either, or NVN or whatever it is that Sony has. The low level nature of MoltenVK and likely the future DX12 <-> Vulkan layer will result in a small enough perf hit that it will make sense for developers to target Vulkan instead of 3 different APIs. Perhaps similar libraries will become available for Sony and Nintendo platforms as well. I hope that the trend will continue and one day I won't have to resort to OpenGl ES in order to write something that's truly cross platform.
- kllrnohj 9y ago
  "Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than [..] Vulkan." [citation needed] Not that they have their own API, but that it's at all better or faster than Vulkan. Remember Vulkan primarily came from AMD's Mantle. It's not the creation of a committee catering to the lowest common denominator. And no, it's not only CAD still stuck on OpenGL. Games use it, too. Most of mobile is also on OpenGL ES. Increasingly more of them use it than they used to, even, as increasingly games are using off-the-shelf engines that are already cross-platform and have an OpenGL back-end. The single largest consumer OS in the world (Android) only supports OpenGL ES & Vulkan, even, with no proprietary graphics API of any kind.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    Actually, most iOS games in recent years have been using Metal, as are most “off the shelf” engines internally.
    - kllrnohj 9y ago
      iOS is not the largest mobile OS, so 100% of iOS could be doing something and it still wouldn't be "most of mobile" ;)
      - AlphaSite 9y ago
        Most mobile users who matter (revenue).
        kllrnohj 9y ago
        Revenue per graphics API would be fascinating, albeit very different, investigation. It would likely also put OpenGL on desktop in a very different light given the professional products still using it.
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        iOS is definitely the most used mobile OS.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  > Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than OpenGL and Vulkan. True but console is a different beast though, it seems you are focused on that not just mobile which was always just OpenGL ES mainly since '07 until Metal entered the arena. On consoles/custom handhelds, they have always had their own frameworks to get the most out of their custom hardware and for lock-in exclusives, to compete and advance their hardware as far as possible for the console lifeline, to sell as many games as possible as the hardware ages as game content is where they made profit. Consoles have modified versions of frameworks or their own like gcm from Sony. They do support standard ones but mostly people use the custom ones to get the most out of the hardware and the hardware makers like that. On desktop, only two essentially in DirectX and OpenGL and was that way for a long time. Portability was fine, DX windows, OpenGL everything else but DX was the major one due to Windows desktop dominance. On mobile, OpenGL ES on the major mobile platforms, iOS and Android, pretty much the only one since '07 until Metal. As I mentioned in other areas, not a huge deal to game developers who aren't building their own engine but portability does matter on desktop and mobile, not just consoles which have reasons for custom rendering engines/toolkits.
johncolanduoni 9y ago
Vulkan also requires a huge amount of code to do relatively simple things, and is much easier to invoke UB with. It was always intended first and foremost for engine developers. Metal is far more appropriate for games that use their own graphics code but aren’t doing anything too special or have time for painstaking optimization. Using Vulkan is like writing your own language runtime over system calls: you have to handle memory allocation and synchronization on your own.
- mellinoe 9y ago
  > > Vulkan also requires a huge amount of code to do relatively simple things IMO, this is a common misconception. Or, at least, the extrapolation of it is. Vulkan might require a lot of code to initialize, and has extra responsibilities related to memory management, synchronization, etc., but in my experience the end product doesn't require significantly more code than other graphics APIs. The up-front cost you pay doesn't translate to increased costs everywhere else, at least not to the same degree. My library supports D3D11, Metal, Vulkan, and OpenGL, and Vulkan is the second-largest backend, but not by a lot (LOC: ~5k Vulkan, ~3.3k D3D11, ~2.5k Metal, 6k OpenGL). LOC is not the best indicator of complexity, to be fair. My OpenGL backend is definitely the most difficult to maintain and the largest, because the API is such a pain to deal with.

mathnode 9y ago

It's not just Apple. This is what everyone forgets. It's Microsoft, Apple, Sony and Nintendo. Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than OpenGL and Vulkan. It is only CAD still stuck on OpenGL (and the proprietary extensions). Idealism is not the answer to positive end user experience.

zem 9y ago
and proprietary apis are not the answer to positive developer experience. time will show whether insisting on your own world-incompatible graphics apis will lead to developers writing custom apps for your platform, or whether they will use whatever lets them release on many platforms at once.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Professional game developers have been choosing proprietary APIs since ever. They were the ones telling Sony that their efforts for having OpenGL ES 1.0 on the PS3 were not worthwhile pursuing. OpenGL ES on the PS3 was barely used beyond prototypes and simple demos.
  - Impossible 9y ago
    Indie titles shipped using OpenGL ES on PS3 and indies got Sony to eventually release an OpenGL wrapper for PS4 as well. If you want decent portability and all your game does is draw alpha blended sprites with simple shaders it could be a win. Questionable how much better that is than either making your game with a portable engine like most indies are doing, or using gnm directly.
  - zem 9y ago
    mobile dev seems a lot more (for want of a better word) grassroots than professional game dev. lower barrier to entry, and a larger set of people who have a good idea they feel they can implement. also phones will probably bring up a lot of uses for a good high-performance graphics api that are not game-related, as people think of more and more things they would like to do with the computer in their pockets.
errantspark 9y ago
I don't think that's necessarily true anymore. Vulkan and even OpenGL have shown a lot of promise recently, in real world tests. You may be right that it's simple idealism from my end but I (want to) believe that Vulkan is coming along at the right time/space to gain broad support in the industry. I'm no fan of DX12 either, or NVN or whatever it is that Sony has. The low level nature of MoltenVK and likely the future DX12 <-> Vulkan layer will result in a small enough perf hit that it will make sense for developers to target Vulkan instead of 3 different APIs. Perhaps similar libraries will become available for Sony and Nintendo platforms as well. I hope that the trend will continue and one day I won't have to resort to OpenGl ES in order to write something that's truly cross platform.
kllrnohj 9y ago
"Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than [..] Vulkan." [citation needed] Not that they have their own API, but that it's at all better or faster than Vulkan. Remember Vulkan primarily came from AMD's Mantle. It's not the creation of a committee catering to the lowest common denominator. And no, it's not only CAD still stuck on OpenGL. Games use it, too. Most of mobile is also on OpenGL ES. Increasingly more of them use it than they used to, even, as increasingly games are using off-the-shelf engines that are already cross-platform and have an OpenGL back-end. The single largest consumer OS in the world (Android) only supports OpenGL ES & Vulkan, even, with no proprietary graphics API of any kind.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Actually, most iOS games in recent years have been using Metal, as are most “off the shelf” engines internally.
  - kllrnohj 9y ago
    iOS is not the largest mobile OS, so 100% of iOS could be doing something and it still wouldn't be "most of mobile" ;)
    - AlphaSite 9y ago
      Most mobile users who matter (revenue).
      - kllrnohj 9y ago
        Revenue per graphics API would be fascinating, albeit very different, investigation. It would likely also put OpenGL on desktop in a very different light given the professional products still using it.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      iOS is definitely the most used mobile OS.
drawkbox 9y ago
> Every big vendor and platform for 3D games and software, has their own graphics API which work better and faster than OpenGL and Vulkan. True but console is a different beast though, it seems you are focused on that not just mobile which was always just OpenGL ES mainly since '07 until Metal entered the arena. On consoles/custom handhelds, they have always had their own frameworks to get the most out of their custom hardware and for lock-in exclusives, to compete and advance their hardware as far as possible for the console lifeline, to sell as many games as possible as the hardware ages as game content is where they made profit. Consoles have modified versions of frameworks or their own like gcm from Sony. They do support standard ones but mostly people use the custom ones to get the most out of the hardware and the hardware makers like that. On desktop, only two essentially in DirectX and OpenGL and was that way for a long time. Portability was fine, DX windows, OpenGL everything else but DX was the major one due to Windows desktop dominance. On mobile, OpenGL ES on the major mobile platforms, iOS and Android, pretty much the only one since '07 until Metal. As I mentioned in other areas, not a huge deal to game developers who aren't building their own engine but portability does matter on desktop and mobile, not just consoles which have reasons for custom rendering engines/toolkits.

johncolanduoni 9y ago

Vulkan also requires a huge amount of code to do relatively simple things, and is much easier to invoke UB with. It was always intended first and foremost for engine developers. Metal is far more appropriate for games that use their own graphics code but aren’t doing anything too special or have time for painstaking optimization. Using Vulkan is like writing your own language runtime over system calls: you have to handle memory allocation and synchronization on your own.

mellinoe 9y ago
> > Vulkan also requires a huge amount of code to do relatively simple things IMO, this is a common misconception. Or, at least, the extrapolation of it is. Vulkan might require a lot of code to initialize, and has extra responsibilities related to memory management, synchronization, etc., but in my experience the end product doesn't require significantly more code than other graphics APIs. The up-front cost you pay doesn't translate to increased costs everywhere else, at least not to the same degree. My library supports D3D11, Metal, Vulkan, and OpenGL, and Vulkan is the second-largest backend, but not by a lot (LOC: ~5k Vulkan, ~3.3k D3D11, ~2.5k Metal, 6k OpenGL). LOC is not the best indicator of complexity, to be fair. My OpenGL backend is definitely the most difficult to maintain and the largest, because the API is such a pain to deal with.