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> They'll never admit it. Admit what? That they had their own API before anyone even thought about Vulkan? That they have Metal running on one of the most popu

• talldayo 2y ago
  Admit that Metal isn't enough. People were more willing to write a DirectX translation framework for Vulkan than Mac users were willing to write one for Metal. And now with Game Porting Toolkit we basically have confirmation that nothing has been stopping Mac users from playing DirectX games with DXVK besides... working Vulkan drivers. So it would be nice to see Apple's explanation for being so insular. Especially when their "solution" is repackaged and relicensed free software that we've all been using for years.
  • troupo 2y ago
    > Admit that Metal isn't enough. By what criteria? > People were more willing to write a DirectX translation framework for Vulkan than Mac users were willing to write one for Metal. There were significantly more games playable on Mac than for Linux for years, even after Vulkan's introduction. Apple hurt gaming on Mac by dropping 32-bit support and changing CPU architectures significantly more than any fantasy about not supporting Vulkan (which is really not supported by most major platforms, and isn't supported by game developers either). And it wasn't some vague nebulous people willing to write a DirectX translation framework. It was Steam pursuing its business strategy (and doing an amazing job of it). Before steam not a single person could be bothered to get off their asses and do a similar job for any platform.
    • talldayo 2y ago
      > By what criteria? ...games? Isn't that what we're talking about? How Apple suffers from spurning the gaming industry, and does absolutely nothing to improve the scenario? > There were significantly more games playable on Mac than for Linux for years > Apple hurt gaming on Mac by dropping 32-bit support and changing CPU architectures significantly more than any fantasy about not supporting Vulkan Oh, well this is just wrong. Box86 had "solved" the x86 -> ARM translation path before Apple Silicon even existed, albeit slowly. The 32-bit depreciation was bad, but wasn't a dealbreaker for applications like WINE; there is a working codepath for WOW64 in WINE today. Once again; the OP's post is about how they currently have games working on Linux that are flat-out unplayable on MacOS. Whether you want to blame fantasy features or not, Apple has clearly made some sort of arbitrary limitation on the userland capabilities that has stopped developers from doing this in MacOS and forced them onto Linux. Seems to me that the pretty clear difference is in the title of the article; Asahi supports Vulkan 1.3, MacOS does not. > Before steam not a single person could be bothered to get off their asses and do a similar job for any platform. Before Steam, there was no incentive to develop it. But people most certainly did do the same, job for multiple platforms. Codeweavers wrote several D3D translation layers over the years, WINE had multiple old and slow DX drivers (DirectX-D3DX9) that semi-worked, and even without that you could still run most titles through software acceleration. And look; if Steam goes rogue and decides to drop support for all platforms but Android Wear, we don't really have to worry that much. The important work is upstreamed in DXVK and distributed by multiple parties, not just Valve. Frankly, the biggest advantage Valve still holds over the community is how smoothly their UI goes from clicking "play" to launching the game. I struggle to imagine a situation where Valve goes full-Monty and the community suffers for it.
      • troupo 2y ago
        > ...games? Isn't that what we're talking about? I'm struggling to remember when Apple last truly cared about gaming on Macs > How Apple suffers from spurning the gaming industry Ah yes. Apple truly deeply suffers. In which reality? > Oh, well this is just wrong. Box86 had "solved" the x86 -> ARM translation path before Apple Silicon even existed, albeit slowly 1. No idea what Box86 is 2. Slowly means it didn't solve it 3. The actual reality and not some fantasy is that after dropping 32bit support hundreds of games otherwise supported on Macs became unavailable/unplayable on Steam. There were literally significantly more games available for Macs than for Linux. Even after Vulkan was released. The parity changed only after Valve released Proton(2018) and MacOS dropped support for 32-bit apps (2019). Come on, this is not some ancient history. This happened just 5 years ago. I, a gamer, lived through it. And was basically forced to go ahead and myself a Windows PC because I couldn't game on the Mac anymore. And this had nothing to do with Metal, or Apple not supporting Vulkan. > Asahi supports Vulkan 1.3, MacOS does not. Neither does Xbox, or Playstation, or the iPhone. Windows only has native support for DirectX and delegates Vulkan support to the GPU vendors. There's also Android where support became mandatory in 2019, and Switch (no idea when they added support, but I've seen people mention you should go to the native SDK and skip Vulkan for performance). Truly an amazing API that so few platforms or even developers people care about: https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ > Before Steam, there was no incentive to develop it. Steam was released in September 2003 Vulkan 1.0 was released in February 2016 People going out of their way to root for Vulkan seem to have a very tenuous grasp on reality, or recent history, or both. > And look; if Steam goes rogue and decides to drop support for all platforms but Android Wear All this is beside the point, or is even orthogonal to the point. The only reason Proton exists, and works as well as it does, is because Valve sees business value in it. That's it. Had Valve seen business value in having a translation layer for DX->Metal, we would've had it as well. They don't (for good business reasons), and the amazing opensource community bitches about Apple instead of doing the work that they couldn't be arsed to do in the first place.
• kelnos 2y ago
  Metal was released in June 2014[0], and Vulkan development started a month later, in July 2014[1]. You can interpret that in a few different ways: perhaps Khronos saw Metal's release, went "oh shit, we need to do something", and scrambled to start development of a new API over the next month. Or maybe Khronos (and Valve and others) were already talking about something new for some time before that, and only got a fire lit under themselves after Apple's Metal release. Or maybe the two aren't related at all. Yes, it took a further two years for any kind of reasonable Vulkan support to be out there, but either way, I think it's a bit disingenuous to say Apple was a trailblazer with absolutely no peer here. Regardless, the gaming situation on macOS is still... not great. Certainly some game developers have adopted Metal, but overall the main target is still DirectX, and I feel like contemporary/modern OpenGL (ES?) still probably leads Metal. Hell, at this point, Vulkan might have seen more general adoption than Metal has. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_(API)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_(API)#History [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan#History
  • troupo 2y ago
    > Metal was released in June 2014[0], and Vulkan development started a month later, in July 2014[1]. > > You can interpret that in a few different ways There are no two interpretations. Metal was released before Khronos even had their "kick off meeting". The official introduction of Khronos didn't happen until 2015. Vulkan 1.0 was released in 2016. Prior to 2014 there was no Vulkan, and no idea of Vulkan. Sevral companies (AMD among them) tried to peddle their own proprietary APIs as a potential future direction after OpenGL. And yes, Khronos scrambled to have a modern API after both Microsoft and Apple ended up having one. > Yes, it took a further two years for any kind of reasonable Vulkan support to be out there No. It took two more years to just release version 1. And even in 2024 it's somewhat laughable to talk about "reasonable Vulkan support" when the major gaming platforms (Windows, Xbox, Playstation) don't support it (Windows supports DX natively, and Vulkan support is left to the whims of GPU vendors). The actual support for Vulkan is declining: https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ > I think it's a bit disingenuous to say Apple was a trailblazer with absolutely no peer here. The trailblazer was Microsoft. What is disingenuous is to pretend that Vulkan was anywhere at the forefront or that Apple had to pay any attention to it, or that Apple is somehow in the wrong for not supporting it. > Hell, at this point, Vulkan might have seen more general adoption than Metal has. Of course it doesn't. Because iOS exists, supports Metal, and is a major gaming platform