5 ms·
Well whaddaya know, I like the direction this is going with both Apple and Microsoft.
by sondr3 11y ago
Well whaddaya know, I like the direction this is going with both Apple and Microsoft.
- Maarten88 11y agoThe direction is great, I think this shows that closed source programming languages are now definitely a thing of the past. However Apple has some catching up to do. Microsoft has opened .net to Apple platforms and is actively working on open source tools and language implementation for OSX. Apple did not announce Swift for Windows, so Swift will miss out on that part of the market until someone else picks this up.
- jarjoura 11y agoSince it's LLVM based and Google and Microsoft are already porting clang/llvm to Windows, it's only a matter of time before Swift made available.
- shmerl 11y agoI'll second that when Apple and MS will support Vulkan on their OSes and open codecs in their browsers. Or to put it another way, when they'll stop using sickening lock-in to make life harder for everyone.
- pjmlp 11y agoThey support Unreal and Unity. Much better than supporting an API that requires 600 LOC for drawing a triangle and isn't available anywhere besides the reference platforms.
- shmerl 11y agoSupporting particular engines does not equal supporting open standards. It's not any better than zero rated services with ISPs. I.e. why should Apple or MS be gatekeepers for what engine should work and which shouldn't? Apple at least is interested in Vulkan to some degree (they participate in Khronos). Whether it will show up on iOS is another question. But MS didn't show any interest. So claims that they changed their ways are premature.
- pjmlp 11y agoSo they just replaced OpenGL accelerated graphics stack by Metal and are still stuck on OpenGL 4.1 with lousy drivers. Does this sound like a company that will embrace Vulkan, or a company joining the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo?
- shmerl 11y agoThey started working on Metal before they knew AMD will give Mantle to Khronos to make Vulkan. So the open question is, whether Apple will support Vulkan or will sabotage it in order to preserve lock-in. Unlike MS, Apple participates in Khronos Vulkan group if I'm not mistaken. Even Sony does. No idea about Nintendo.
- pjmlp 11y agoBeing part of Kronos doesn't mean they are forced to implement any of their standards. Sony is a good example. The only Khronos stuff they use is WebGL in the PS4 menu and that OpenGL ES 1.0 with Cg shaders for the PS3 that no one used. All studios targeting PS3 favoured LibCGM (http://sandstormgames.ca/blog/tag/libgcm/ http://sandstormgames.ca/blog/tag/libgcm/). But hope is good I guess.
- shmerl 11y agoThey are actually listed as Vulkan participants: https://www.khronos.org/vulkan https://www.khronos.org/vulkan No idea what they actually do, but if they'd add Vulkan support to PlayStation, it would be good for developers. Some Apple developers so far participated in SPIR-V / LLVM related discussions. And MS was notably absent in anything related. As I said, when they'll fix this lock-in mentality, I'll second the claim that they seriously changed for the better.
- greggman 11y agoVulkan is still an abstraction. Most PS4 developers I know would prefer the stuff they already have which is closer to the metal. Something that uses the actual instructions for the PS4 GPU and not some cross platform API that then has to be translated to the actual GPU. Yes, PS4 devs porting to PC would likely like Vulkan over OpenGL or DirectX but PS4 devs on PS4 not so much.
- s73v3r 11y agoI didn't know that one could only use the browser that was installed on the system.
- shmerl 11y agoIn case of Apple's iOS - only browser which uses their engine. Another sick lock-in example.
- s73v3r 11y agoAs far as Vulkan goes, that seems to be on the graphics manufacturers.
- shmerl 11y agoAMD makes chips for Xbox and PlayStation. And they contributed Mantle to Vulkan. But I doubt it's only up to them to actually support it on the corresponding OSes.