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Fortunately you can still use Vulkan on iOS and Mac OS through MoltenVK[1], a Vulkan implemention in Metal. [1] https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https:

• _bxg1 8y ago
  Sure, but the whole point of both Vulkan and Metal is to bring out more performance by being lower-level. I'd assume that at least part of that benefit is lost when you use something like this.
  • chuckdries 8y ago
    It's still way faster than opengl in some senarios
    • bilbo0s 8y ago
      Way faster in most scenarios actually. I'll give it that. (Any scenario I've tested anyway.) But it's also more difficult for the lay programmer to use as well.
      • SolarNet 8y ago
        Just use a vulkan implementation of opengl. OpenGL -> Vulkan -> Metal I can feel the performance gains already.
  • opencl 8y ago
    A lot of the point of Vulkan is not having to rewrite your entire graphics stack for every OS you want to target.
    • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Isn't that kind of the point of OpenGL?
      • marcosdumay 8y ago
        Yes, but OpenGL is so outdated that the people that should use it the most (game and 3D application developers) were avoiding it due to a hardware vs. API incompatibility. Vulcan was created to get that same portability, with an API that fits modern hardware.
        • kllrnohj 8y ago
          That isn't remotely true. OpenGL is only outdated on macOS where Apple hasn't updated it for 8 years. OpenGL 4.6 isn't anything like OpenGL 1.0/2.0 even though you can still _run_ those old OpenGL 1.0/2.0 tutorials. You can even do most of the cool stuff of Vulkan in OpenGL via AZDO techniques (example: https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-vulkan https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-vulkan )
          • Const-me 8y ago
            > OpenGL is only outdated on macOS Also on Windows. Apparently, if you want to distribute your software to wide audience, you can only rely on OpenGL 3.0, with minimal set of extensions. Here’s an example: https://github.com/Const-me/GL3Windows#building-and-running https://github.com/Const-me/GL3Windows#building-and-running All the target systems had latest Windows updates, and they all run Direct3D 11 software just fine (I mostly develop for D3D and I test on them). On some systems it works in 10.1 compatibility mode, MS calls that “feature levels”. Not a big deal in practice, the majority of D3D11 stuff still works OK.
            • HelloNurse 8y ago
              No. Both ATI and Nvidia drivers include recent OpenGL versions, so OpenGL support problems are limited to actually not capable hardware. In the old link you offer as example, Intel HD3000 and HD4000 are bad, with bad drivers that lie about OpenGL versions (hence the need to downgrade the client), and fortunately obsolete. Current Intel integrated graphics have improved. And VMware is a virtual machine, not hardware; it should be expected to be terrible.
    • astrange 8y ago
      But you have to rewrite it for every major hardware vendor, or else you won't get the performance you want. GL should always work for the simple case, but instead you need to rewrite to avoid bugs in its many layers. And once you have Vulkan/Metal, industry-specific wrappers are better than the impossible to debug procedural GL junk.
      • sparky_ 8y ago
        I'm not sure I agree with the claim, but even if we take a full rewrite at face value, "every major graphics vendor" for desktop applications is NVIDIA and AMD/ATI. On mobiles, you're probably using Unity or similar middleware and therefore not thinking about bare metal (no pun intended)
        • pjmlp 8y ago
          Actually it is more like every major GPU family, thanks to the extension fest of Vulkan.
    • _bxg1 8y ago
      That's the point of OpenGL; to my understanding, Vulkan is a modernized, lower-level spiritual successor to OpenGL.
• drb91 8y ago
  Why is Apple investing in Metal at all then?
  • bgorman 8y ago
    Same reason Microsoftinvests in DirectX. Lock in software developers and consumers alike.
    • bluedino 8y ago
      Wouldn’t they be better off attracting developers instead of locking them in?
      • kotapi 8y ago
        They could easily jump ship if that isn't the case. If you're working on Metal, your skills aren't much of a use in Microsoft.
    • drb91 8y ago
      I can kind of understand iOS, but it’s not like there’s a thriving graphical computing market worth locking in on the mac side. All major titles already use game engines. They’d just be locking out smaller developers who can’t invest in porting all their shaders: it’s not gonna be worth the effort. Granted, this may also be true for OpenGL.
      • lambda 8y ago
        But iOS is a lot bigger than macOS. You notice that Apple supported OpenGL while they were making most of their money from desktop and laptop sales; but once iOS became so profitable, they decided to go their own way and start pushing Metal. Lock in, or at least getting people to do more iOS first development (helped by lower profits on app store sales on Android, Android fragmentation, etc), helps Apple out a lot. You get the first version of apps and games, or more polished versions of apps and games, on iOS this way.
• partycoder 8y ago
  Too bad it's on Github, Microsoft's new subsidiary. Microsoft spread rumors that they would make OpenGL go through a compatibility layer. Everyone got scared and switched to Direct3D. Now the Khronos group hosts their code in Github (now Microsoft). I hope they move their repos somewhere else.
• sparky_ 8y ago
  Ditto for OpenGL ES (http://moltengl.com/ http://moltengl.com/)