4 ms·

I'm not suggesting they drop Metal to support Vulkan.

by kcb 5y ago

dmitriid 5y ago
So you're suggesting they support two different graphics stacks? Why? Or, rather, what for?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Because there's no reason not to, quite literally every other GPU vendor has supported Vulkan alongside DirectX. Metal has clear and obvious shortcomings, so Apple continuing to expect developers to "just use it" won't ever get them the support that they desperately need, especially now that they're on Apple Silicon. Porting things to ARM is hard, but doable. Creating a second version of your software just to run on Apple devices, that needs to be bug-fixed and maintained separately is a suicide mission. So yes, I am suggesting that they support two different graphics stacks. Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now, they've got the resources to do it, especially as opposed to the developers who'd need to maintain two different versions of their software to compensate.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Because there's no reason not to There are multiple reasons that have already been discussed in this thread > quite literally every other GPU vendor has supported Vulkan alongside DirectX. 1. Apple is not a GPU vendor. 2. There are many systems that don't support Vulkan and potentially never will These have also been discussed here, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29312314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29312314 > Metal has clear and obvious shortcomings So does Vulkan > so Apple continuing to expect developers to "just use it" won't ever get them the support that they desperately need And in the same breath you go ahead an say this: > Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now Something tells me, Apple really doesn't "desperately need" developer support via Vulkan. Let's see, Metal is supported by MacOS, iOS, Apple TV. This is probably more devices than Vulkan supports. > Creating a second version of your software just to run on Apple devices, that needs to be bug-fixed and maintained separately is a suicide mission. You need to do that regardless of Vulkan. Vulkan is not some magical thing that will make your code run on every system in existence. As the linked comment correctly says, Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. --- Edit: It's very much Direct X vs OpenGL discussion all over again. Microsoft stuck to Direct X and eventually provided the API all developers target. OpenGL is basically relegated to the annals of history with very bad memories, as a bad designed-by-committee API that was two steps behind and several steps sideways. See this amazing post down the memory lane: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows/88055#88055 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054... Vulkan will suffer the same fate: designed by committee, consoles and smartphones don't care about it, main API on Windows is Direct X, main API on Apple systems is Metal.
    - kcb 5y ago
      /Shrug I would buy a new MacBook Pro if it supported Vulkan. I am not a game developer. I just want DXVK and Wine to run well for light gaming on my multithousand dollar laptop with high end gpu. Your argument is pretty much Apple shouldn't implement Vulkan because they haven't done it yet. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > I would buy a new MacBook Pro if it supported Vulkan. Apple will surely suffer. > Your argument is pretty much Apple shouldn't implement Vulkan because they haven't done it yet. It's not, and you would know it if you'd actually read it. > https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics The actual link you wanted to provide is this: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards 34% of Androids don't support Vulkan at all
        kcb 5y ago
        Wow! 66% of Android devices support Vulkan. That's amazing. Thanks for finding that.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        Yes. A billion devices don't support Vulkan, and never will. And that's just Android. But yeah, sure tell me how you won't need to create a different version of software just because of Vulkan. Meanwhile, Metal is supported on all Apple devices (starting with A7 chip), and given how "Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now" (your words), they are not in a "desperate need" of developers supporting their systems.
    - dhruvdh 5y ago
      > Let's see, Metal is supported by MacOS, iOS, Apple TV. This is probably more devices than Vulkan supports. What world do you live in? How hard is it to do a quick google search before declaring obvious falsehoods? > You need to do that regardless of Vulkan. Vulkan is not some magical thing that will make your code run on every system in existence. As the linked comment correctly says, Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. How is it that you have time to write all this but not time to even bother reading the linked comment? > Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. Lol.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    You want Apple to support two graphics stacks...so maybe developers with Vulkan-based graphics engines will port games to their platforms. Since obviously it's only the graphics API that makes porting a challenge between platforms. Even with Mac and Linux support in popular engines like Unity and Unreal Mac and Linux as platforms get far less interest for most developers than Windows. That's with essentially push button deployment to alternate platforms. For anyone writing engines where Vulkan vs Direct3D is a material issue support for anything but Windows is minuscule. Photon brings aftermarket support to Linux but little in the way of first party support. Crossover has existed for years and received little interest from developers. Even if Vulkan was fully supported on Apple's platforms there's still all the other hurdles to porting games not the least of which is a totally different CPU architecture. When the reality is developers are uninterested in first party support for non-Windows platforms even on identical hardware with an alternate OS (Linux) I don't see anything to suggest they're going to support a different OS on a different CPU architecture. So you're really suggesting Apple support Vulkan for no benefit of themselves for games that will likely never appear. They should do this when they have millions (or in the realm of) games on their platform already happily running on Metal.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Linux doesn't need first-party support to run the vast majority of Windows games, and neither does MacOS. I won't deny that running x86 code on ARM will likely never be performant enough to enjoy gaming on, but that's Apple's cross to bear.

I'm not suggesting they drop Metal to support Vulkan.

by kcb 5y ago

I'm not suggesting they drop Metal to support Vulkan.

dmitriid 5y ago

So you're suggesting they support two different graphics stacks? Why? Or, rather, what for?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smoldesu 5y ago
Because there's no reason not to, quite literally every other GPU vendor has supported Vulkan alongside DirectX. Metal has clear and obvious shortcomings, so Apple continuing to expect developers to "just use it" won't ever get them the support that they desperately need, especially now that they're on Apple Silicon. Porting things to ARM is hard, but doable. Creating a second version of your software just to run on Apple devices, that needs to be bug-fixed and maintained separately is a suicide mission. So yes, I am suggesting that they support two different graphics stacks. Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now, they've got the resources to do it, especially as opposed to the developers who'd need to maintain two different versions of their software to compensate.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Because there's no reason not to There are multiple reasons that have already been discussed in this thread > quite literally every other GPU vendor has supported Vulkan alongside DirectX. 1. Apple is not a GPU vendor. 2. There are many systems that don't support Vulkan and potentially never will These have also been discussed here, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29312314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29312314 > Metal has clear and obvious shortcomings So does Vulkan > so Apple continuing to expect developers to "just use it" won't ever get them the support that they desperately need And in the same breath you go ahead an say this: > Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now Something tells me, Apple really doesn't "desperately need" developer support via Vulkan. Let's see, Metal is supported by MacOS, iOS, Apple TV. This is probably more devices than Vulkan supports. > Creating a second version of your software just to run on Apple devices, that needs to be bug-fixed and maintained separately is a suicide mission. You need to do that regardless of Vulkan. Vulkan is not some magical thing that will make your code run on every system in existence. As the linked comment correctly says, Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. --- Edit: It's very much Direct X vs OpenGL discussion all over again. Microsoft stuck to Direct X and eventually provided the API all developers target. OpenGL is basically relegated to the annals of history with very bad memories, as a bad designed-by-committee API that was two steps behind and several steps sideways. See this amazing post down the memory lane: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows/88055#88055 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054... Vulkan will suffer the same fate: designed by committee, consoles and smartphones don't care about it, main API on Windows is Direct X, main API on Apple systems is Metal.
  - kcb 5y ago
    /Shrug I would buy a new MacBook Pro if it supported Vulkan. I am not a game developer. I just want DXVK and Wine to run well for light gaming on my multithousand dollar laptop with high end gpu. Your argument is pretty much Apple shouldn't implement Vulkan because they haven't done it yet. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > I would buy a new MacBook Pro if it supported Vulkan. Apple will surely suffer. > Your argument is pretty much Apple shouldn't implement Vulkan because they haven't done it yet. It's not, and you would know it if you'd actually read it. > https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics The actual link you wanted to provide is this: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards 34% of Androids don't support Vulkan at all
      - kcb 5y ago
        Wow! 66% of Android devices support Vulkan. That's amazing. Thanks for finding that.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        Yes. A billion devices don't support Vulkan, and never will. And that's just Android. But yeah, sure tell me how you won't need to create a different version of software just because of Vulkan. Meanwhile, Metal is supported on all Apple devices (starting with A7 chip), and given how "Apple has the most liquid cash out of any company in the world right now" (your words), they are not in a "desperate need" of developers supporting their systems.
  - dhruvdh 5y ago
    > Let's see, Metal is supported by MacOS, iOS, Apple TV. This is probably more devices than Vulkan supports. What world do you live in? How hard is it to do a quick google search before declaring obvious falsehoods? > You need to do that regardless of Vulkan. Vulkan is not some magical thing that will make your code run on every system in existence. As the linked comment correctly says, Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. How is it that you have time to write all this but not time to even bother reading the linked comment? > Vulkan is virtually non-existent outside of PCs. Lol.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  You want Apple to support two graphics stacks...so maybe developers with Vulkan-based graphics engines will port games to their platforms. Since obviously it's only the graphics API that makes porting a challenge between platforms. Even with Mac and Linux support in popular engines like Unity and Unreal Mac and Linux as platforms get far less interest for most developers than Windows. That's with essentially push button deployment to alternate platforms. For anyone writing engines where Vulkan vs Direct3D is a material issue support for anything but Windows is minuscule. Photon brings aftermarket support to Linux but little in the way of first party support. Crossover has existed for years and received little interest from developers. Even if Vulkan was fully supported on Apple's platforms there's still all the other hurdles to porting games not the least of which is a totally different CPU architecture. When the reality is developers are uninterested in first party support for non-Windows platforms even on identical hardware with an alternate OS (Linux) I don't see anything to suggest they're going to support a different OS on a different CPU architecture. So you're really suggesting Apple support Vulkan for no benefit of themselves for games that will likely never appear. They should do this when they have millions (or in the realm of) games on their platform already happily running on Metal.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Linux doesn't need first-party support to run the vast majority of Windows games, and neither does MacOS. I won't deny that running x86 code on ARM will likely never be performant enough to enjoy gaming on, but that's Apple's cross to bear.