OS X "El Capitan" Aims To Offer Better Performance, Metal Graphics

How much will that impact the development of Vulkan?

My guess:

The thing is Metal is here, DX12 is just over a month away and Vulkan is still MIA - as I said in another thread I'll be surprised now if we see a public API release at Siggraph which means it could be more than 6 months after that when it finally drops.

I was certainly interested in it but as we've got closer to Win10 release I'm now thinking I'll focus my attention towards D3D12 and wait to see what state Vulkan is in as/when it appears...

Meh. Metal has already been here on iOS for over a year so its no surprise to see it coming to MAC. Also I like the idea of MetalKit providing an easy framework to get Metal projects up and running.
The things that got my interest were GemeplayKit, ReplayKit and ModelIO.

Well that's Apple! As always they try to control as much as they can. They're worse than Microsoft in the early days and we all know that ms didn't even respect laws to succeed in business. So we end up with Vulkan, DX12 and Metal, well then cheers.

Thats a harsh reaction to making an API available on more platforms then it was before... what do you suggest they do? Keep using old OpenGL? Wait for Vulcan to arrive? Implement DX12?

I think it would be pretty nice if there was just one api for everything microsoft and just one api for everything apple.

Of course, it would be even nicer with just one api, that also worked on everything else, but not that bad situation...

I think Apple is using Metal and these other Objective C frameworks, like spritekit, scenekit as a trojan horse to trick developers into locking in their games to Apple platforms. It's only later on the developer releases that they can make a lot of money on other platforms, but they don't have to resources to re-write the game.

Which would be true if you even could make a lot of money on 'other platforms'. Most studies I've seen show iOS users are more likely to part with cash than Android users so despite lower market share you can make more money there... although mobile dev is pretty much a death march right now with most people not making any money at all so...

Thats a harsh reaction to making an API available on more platforms then it was before... what do you suggest they do?

Well I would be happy it if they would opensource the whole api etc.. Downloading/installing Mac like Ubuntu on my chosen hardware and not

the other way round.

I think Apple is using Metal and these other Objective C frameworks, like spritekit, scenekit as a trojan horse to trick developers into locking in their games to Apple platforms. It's only later on the developer releases that they can make a lot of money on other platforms, but they don't have to resources to re-write the game.

Or you can just abstract everything out other then the super low level stuff to C++ (or super fancy and some kind of script engine) and not lock yourself into a single platform. Granted I don't know a super large pool of professional mobile developers but I don't know any that actually use any anything like SpriteKit to make a game when it's going to be cross platform to begin with.

Already mentioned that Metal has been out since iOS 8. Pretty expected that it would come to Mac at some point since both platforms share so much in common. Besides, Khronos isn't well known for being timely or on point with their releases. Doesn't make much business sense to rely on something like that for what is a core part of the OS.

Which would be true if you even could make a lot of money on 'other platforms'. Most studies I've seen show iOS users are more likely to part with cash than Android users so despite lower market share you can make more money there... although mobile dev is pretty much a death march right now with most people not making any money at all so...

You seemed to have forgotten about Steam, but your logic is all wrong. Even if Android makes less than iOS, a game on Android *and* iOS makes more than just iOS

Well I would be happy it if they would opensource the whole api etc..

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Every time that happens, the whole project falls 'behind the times' ...

... but your logic is all wrong. Even if Android makes less than iOS, a game on Android *and* iOS makes more than just iOS

I think you'll find your logic is a bit wonky here.

You've already said Apple give you a bunch of libs to work with, add to that a lower number of device and OS combinations to target you've got a relatively easy target area to hit to get your game out.

Android development, however, is a clusterfuck of bullshit and hate and generally takes more effort than the iOS version and for less return. Maybe it's a little better if you stay in Java land but if you are complaining about Apple's stuff then its logical to assume your theoretical developer is using C++ to at least cross platform as much as possible, at which point... ahahahahahahahaha.

So unless you are CERTAIN your Android version will make back the extra to cover the costs of development it might not be worth it. Higher revenue doesn't always equal higher profit after all.

However, as noted, mobile is a death march with most games and apps making basically nothing and certainly not enough to survive on, so even if you target both unless you've got a killer app AND you get lucky then you are unlikely to make any money regardless of where you publish your stuff.

It'll be interesting to see if Metal ends up being more than a stop-gap solution. Apple needs Metal (or something like it) now, GL/GL ES is holding back the performance of their desktop and mobile platforms, and Microsoft is about to address this across their entire ecosystem of devices (Phone, tablet, PC, and Xbox). But Metal, unless it evolves, isn't nearly the thouroughly-modern API that D3D12 is or Vulkan will be -- I've heard it compared to being a cleaned-up Direct3D9/not-quite-10, with proprietary compute shaders tacked on -- its maybe something a little akin to the Xbox 360 API (in function, not form) I might guess.

I think Metal on the desktop is about near-term need, and about convergence between OSX and iOS. As anounced, they've already ported some or their core media libraries in El Capitan to Metal, which means they've got greater source-code parity between OSX and iOS now. I'd wager, also, that we'll either see a converged iOS/OSX in the future (as Microsoft has done) or at the very least, the ability for iOS apps to run on the OSX desktop. But Metal as it is won't close the gap between where they are now and what D3D12/Vulkan will enable, as Metal isn't a great fit for modern PC GPUs, even though its more modern than classic OpenGL/ES and Direct3D 11.

I think Apple is using Metal and these other Objective C frameworks, like spritekit, scenekit as a trojan horse to trick developers into locking in their games to Apple platforms. It's only later on the developer releases that they can make a lot of money on other platforms, but they don't have to resources to re-write the game.

For anybody writing a cross platform game they wouldn't use Spritekit or SceneKit they would either use a cross platform engine or role their own engine which could use Metal on Apple stuff, DirectX on Microsoft stuff and GL / Vulcan on other platforms.
Spritekit and Scenekit are just for hobbyist developers or Apple app developers who want to have a go at writing games and multimedia without having to stray too far from the Objective|C / Swift technologies that they already know.

There are also ways of still using Apple technologies on other platforms such as AppPortable and also Microsofts recent announcement that they would be porting all of Apples APIs so that developers can run their iOS apps on Windows 10.

As for making a "lot" of money on other platforms this is simply not true. They could make "some" money on other platforms and that "some" amount of money could actually be cancelled out by the risks developing for the other platforms.

Every time that happens, the whole project falls 'behind the times' ...

For me anything OS related and not being open source, is a obsolete thing of the past.

For me anything OS related and not being open source, is a obsolete thing of the past.

So no DX12 for you then.

I'm sure Apple will be crying themselves to sleep on a pile of money that you think Metal is obsolete.

This metal announcement is pretty bad for Khronos...
Last year, console/non-mobile AAA game engines needed to support:
D3D(Xbox/Windows), G*M(Playstation), GL(Linux/Mac).
Next year, console/non-mobile AAA game engines will need to support:
D3D(Xbox/Windows), G*M(Playstation), Vulcan(Linux), Metal(Mac).

So, GL will be dead (in that space), and Vulcan will be relegated to "the Linux API"...

Hopefully Apple decide to support GL4 and Vulan on Mac, as well as Metal, to give options to developers.

For me anything OS related and not being open source, is a obsolete thing of the past.

So no DX12 for you then.

Or DX11, or DX9, or OpenGL, or OpenGL|ES, or Vulkan...

Oh sorry, you can use OpenGL on Linux on Intel hardware

I'm sure Apple will be crying themselves to sleep on a pile of money that you think Metal is obsolete.

Well they have the money to share freaks around them.

Personally I choose my hardware, assemble my PC and only maybe have a CD with whatever OS to go with and not the other way round.-

If I would for ex. like Austin Meyer provide OpenGL apps for osx, I would sue them one billion for not providing the latest 4.5 ogl and now even more...

Every time that happens, the whole project falls 'behind the times' ...

For me anything OS related and not being open source, is a obsolete thing of the past.

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I could go into a long rant of how outdated ( and obtuse ) many features of open source OS es are, however it would derail this topic into yet another OS flame war.

This metal announcement is pretty bad for Khronos...
Last year, console/non-mobile AAA game engines needed to support:
D3D(Xbox/Windows), G*M(Playstation), GL(Linux/Mac).
Next year, console/non-mobile AAA game engines will need to support:
D3D(Xbox/Windows), G*M(Playstation), Vulcan(Linux), Metal(Mac).

So, GL will be dead (in that space), and Vulcan will be relegated to "the Linux API"...

Hopefully Apple decide to support GL4 and Vulan on Mac, as well as Metal, to give options to developers.

Khronos/Vulkan also has the related problems that;
- Metal is here now
- DX12 docs are here now, beta is now and will be main stream release next month
- Vulkan has no spec, no beta and no release date and when last shown (GDC) had 'TBD' bits in the API and given it was based on Mantle I'm left thinking 'what the hell?'

Honestly, unless they release something at SIGGRAPH its starting to look like, once again, they have managed to screw up and miss the boat... I was all for Vulkan, looking forward to it, but as time has passed and I've read things I'm less certain we'll see it this year and my attention and focus has swung towards D3D12 once more.