10 ms·

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

by _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    Yes, but OpenGL is so outdated that the people that should use it the most (game and 3D application developers) were avoiding it due to a hardware vs. API incompatibility.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 OpenGL is only outdated on macOS where Apple hasn't updated it for 8 years.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 OpenGL is only outdated on macOS Also on Windows.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.
        Const-me 8y ago
        > Intel HD3000 and HD4000 are bad, with bad drivers that lie about OpenGL versions Technically that’s probably true. However, if you drop support of Intel GPUs, your GL4+ software will no longer run on a huge count of older Windows laptops people are still using. For many kinds of software this is a bad tradeoff. That’s exactly why all modern browsers implement WebGL on top of Direct3D, and overwhelming majority of multi-platform games and 3D apps use D3D when running on Windows. > VMware is a virtual machine, not hardware; it should be expected to be terrible. It’s only terrible for OpenGL. The virtual GPU driver uses host GPU to render stuff, and it runs D3D11-based software just fine. I don’t use it for gaming but it’s nice to be able to use a VM to reproduce and fix bugs in my software caused by outdated OS, windows localizations, and other environmental factors.
- 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.

by _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.
        Const-me 8y ago
        > Intel HD3000 and HD4000 are bad, with bad drivers that lie about OpenGL versions Technically that’s probably true. However, if you drop support of Intel GPUs, your GL4+ software will no longer run on a huge count of older Windows laptops people are still using. For many kinds of software this is a bad tradeoff. That’s exactly why all modern browsers implement WebGL on top of Direct3D, and overwhelming majority of multi-platform games and 3D apps use D3D when running on Windows. > VMware is a virtual machine, not hardware; it should be expected to be terrible. It’s only terrible for OpenGL. The virtual GPU driver uses host GPU to render stuff, and it runs D3D11-based software just fine. I don’t use it for gaming but it’s nice to be able to use a VM to reproduce and fix bugs in my software caused by outdated OS, windows localizations, and other environmental factors.
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.