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Vulkan is the vendor-independent derivative of AMD's Mantle, which pre-dates Apple's Metal. There were several proposed new 3D APIs around that time, but ISVs q
by wtallis 7y ago
Vulkan is the vendor-independent derivative of AMD's Mantle, which pre-dates Apple's Metal. There were several proposed new 3D APIs around that time, but ISVs quickly converged around Vulkan. Apple's reticence to adopt or even permit it is worse than Microsoft's continued efforts to push Direct3D.
- jolux 7y agoMetal's first release was 2014, one year after Mantle in 2013. Vulkan's first release wasn't until 2016, and Mantle was proprietary.
- Jasper_ 7y agoThe team that developed Mantle got ignored by AMD management, who then left and subsequently got hired by Apple to develop Metal. Vulkan's release was held up for over a year by AMD management and red tape, which was by then already a year later than Metal's release.
- rleigh 7y agoNone of that matters one iota. I'm not going to spend valuable time and resources on a non-standard graphics API for a platform with anaemic graphics hardware. Instead, I'm going to target Windows and Linux with Vulkan or OpenGL. If I do support MacOS, it will be via MoltenVK, and it will be a second tier platform. From my point of view, by dropping standard OpenGL they have turned their platform into a second-class citizen.
- pjmlp 7y agoThen you will only target Linux. OpenGL and Vulkan only happen to work on Windows via the ICD driver model introduced in OpenGL 1.1, which Microsoft hasn't yet bothered to remove. Instead they aren't supporting it on UWP and Win32 sandbox model, which only allow DirectX. Microsoft's way forward is also to build OpenGL wrappers on top of DirectX like ANGLE. https://github.com/microsoft/angle/wiki https://github.com/microsoft/angle/wiki https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/in-the-works-opencl-and-opengl-mapping-layers-to-directx/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/in-the-works-opencl-a... And then there are the game consoles. Khronos has just messed up providing SDKs that are at the same productivity level as commercial APIs.
- rleigh 7y agoSo long as the API works, I really don't care about the implementation details. I also don't care about Microsoft's UWP and sandboxing stuff. They might have a desire to take the platform in that direction. But I have no obligation to follow, and if they want to retain application developers they won't be able to simply cut us off. We've always got the option of abandoning Windows entirely if they make it too inconvenient and troublesome to develop for. It's not like we don't have a precedent for abandoning MacOS X as a top tier platform for exactly those reasons.
- pjmlp 7y agoYes they will, Windows 10X only allows for sandboxed software. "How Windows 10X runs UWP and Win32 apps" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztrmrIlgbIc&list=PLWZJrkeLOrbZ3CMHpbglE4NyJSEo-_qhr&index=5&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztrmrIlgbIc&list=PLWZJrkeLOr... MSIX https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/overview > Apps that are packaged using MSIX run in a lightweight app container. Yes, Win32 can still choose between both models in current versions, depending on Windows 10X reception, I bet it might eventually change. Sandboxing resistant developers are always free to keep their Windows XP or 7 copy, I guess.