Developers are concerned as Apple deprecates OpenGL support

[Ulfric]

According to the official "what's new on the mac OS' pagehttps://www.apple.com/macos/mojave-preview/

"Apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will continue to run in macOS 10.14, but these legacy technologies are deprecated in macOS 10.14. Games and graphics-intensive apps that use OpenGL should now adopt Metal. Similarly, apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks should now adopt Metal and Metal Performance Shaders."

As usual this new stance attracted some criticism from developers, partly because Apple doesn't support Vulkan on MacOS

https://twitter.com/samloeschen/sta...ac-gaming-as-apple-deprecates-opengl-support/

https://twitter.com/crypticsea/stat...ac-gaming-as-apple-deprecates-opengl-support/

Alex Austin said more

" Right now I develop games on Windows, and porting to Mac or Linux doesn't take more than a couple hours usually since all my code is portable,But I already had issues with Mac's OpenGL support. It only supports version 2.0 or 3.3, so if you're using 2.0 you can't use any extensions from higher versions, so I had to rewrite all my rendering to use only 3.3. I'm not going to spend any time on Metal because Macs are a pretty small percentage of the market and really probably not worth it even now. I just do it because I try to support fans if I can."

 

[Ritsuka]

Honestly, nothing will change, Apple stopped updating OpenGL five years ago. The only new thing is that now it's official.

 

[Torrijos]

Well While that dev is right gamers will probably suffer a loss of old games (I am pissed about this! Probably Steam lib will be destroyed), but the reality is most Devs go mobile or with 3rd party engines (Unreal, etc) and those are probably running Metal.

 

[rjp1]

Courage

 

[BlueTide]

I'm kinda curious what this does to Maya, Photoshop, some video editing apps and such.

 

[jeanlain]

I'm kinda curious what this does to Maya, Photoshop, some video editing apps and such.

I think the big ones have moved to Metal.

 

[Huntn]

Well While that dev is right gamers will probably suffer a loss of old games (I am pissed about this! Probably Steam lib will be destroyed), but the reality is most Devs go mobile or with 3rd party engines (Unreal, etc) and those are probably running Metal.

Now that would piss me off, ref your Steam comment, if I was dependent on Mac for my gaming needs, but it won't be the first time Mac gamers have taken it in the shorts.

 

[wubsylol]

Within a couple of years, OpenGL (and Direct3D11 for that matter) will be a legacy API on all platforms as more developers realise the performance benefits of such low level abstraction and the ease with which they can develop new backend due to the functional similarities between the three (Vulcan, Metal, D3D12).

We already have MoltenVK on macOS for Vulkan to Metal translation, and there's no reason to think that - if the need arose - MoltenGL couldn't make the leap from OpenGL ES to macOS OpenGL. Hypothetical, but there's still no reason for alarm.

We’re going through a transition process, and so many idiot developers have already thrown their hands up without even looking at the alternatives. Remember 3DFX and Glide? The industry moved on.

 

[Irishman]

Within a couple of years, OpenGL (and Direct3D11 for that matter) will be a legacy API on all platforms as more developers realise the performance benefits of such low level abstraction and the ease with which they can develop new backend due to the functional similarities between the three (Vulcan, Metal, D3D12).

We already have MoltenVK on macOS for Vulkan to Metal translation, and there's no reason to think that - if the need arose - MoltenGL couldn't make the leap from OpenGL ES to macOS OpenGL. Hypothetical, but there's still no reason for alarm.

We’re going through a transition process, and so many idiot developers have already thrown their hands up without even looking at the alternatives. Remember 3DFX and Glide? The industry moved on.

Oh, hell yeah, I remember 3DFX and Glide! My first video card (around $299) had a 3DFX chip on it, and I mostly got it to play Unreal on it back in THE day.