Game Devs Express New Fears Over Future of Mac Gaming as Apple Deprecates OpenGL and OpenCL in macOS Mojave

[Michael Goff]

Valve still makes games?

Not really. They mostly sell other company’s games.

 

[ersan191]

So they wasted a year of development?

I don't understand the question.

 

[Michael Goff]

I don't understand the question.

If they’re just going to work on Vulkan and not touch metal, what was the point of developing VR for Metal? Do we not suspect them to make any VR games for the platform they set up?

 

[czoli]

Why do some think old technology should be supported forever? At some point you have to cut it loose. If you require it, then don't upgrade. Sorry kids. This is how the world works. Even Honda doesn't support your '84 Civic with new parts like fenders anymore.

The only thing that is old is Apple implementation of OpenGL and OpenCL.
[doublepost=1528273058][/doublepost]

If they’re just going to work on Vulkan and not touch metal, what was the point of developing VR for Metal? Do we not suspect them to make any VR games for the platform they set up?

afaik They (APPLE) are not working on Vulkan, somebody else is developing a Vulkan to Metal wrapper.
[doublepost=1528273134][/doublepost]

Isn’t Metal already the only way to have graphics-intensive games on iOS?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-macos-ios-but-no-thanks-to-apple/
[doublepost=1528273258][/doublepost]

FWIW all of Blizzard's recent games already support Metal, so this point is moot.

They had to go Metal because Apple OpenGL implementation became awful as has not been maintained for ages and was always lagging behind in the past years.

Metal is a proprietary API which is cool too but Apple should have embraced finally Vulkan

 

[AndiG]

It is not just about games. It is a kick in the a.. for every software developer.
Why is OpenGL/Vulkan so important?

- Linux, OpenGL/Vulkan
- Embedded Systems -> Linux -> OpenGL/Vulkan
- Qt Framework (cross platform, embedded) -> QML -> OpenGL
- Cross platform development (ui) -> OpenGL/Vulkan
- Great Tools (Blender) -> OpenGL/Vulkan
- Android development -> Vulkan
- Web development -> WebGL -> OpenGL
- ...

And if you don't understand what this has to do with Apple, the Mac has always been a platform developers loved and a lot of stuff was developed on macs.

Wasn't it always the Microsoft way to implement proprietary stuff no one else can use? And now look at it, Microsoft is implementing Linux subsystems (you can install Kali right from the store), adopts Docker, uses REST and angularJS for its cloud and moves fast in the direction of Open Source and Open Standards. And I'm really not a fan of microsoft. But is Tim Cook the new Ballmer and Nadella the new Jobs - is everything upside down right now?

As a developer I'm going to leave the Apple world if Apple leaves the way of supporting open standards.

 

[JGRE]

Metal is more optimized for Mac. The Mac is supporting too many old libraries.The future needs optimization. Anything not optimized can run the Mac experience down. Even now , look at the garbage of Chrome. Apple should make macOS Safari only as well.

Indeed, Apple should drop all old libraries which are not strictly needed. To make macOS Safari only, Apple should put some more effect in it, as there are still a lot of web pages that do not properly work in Safari. Also the HTML-5 score of Safari is still too low.

 

[Queen6]

A far bigger concern than games are scientific applications.

Many programs used in science are developed using open-source, cross-platform technologies. OpenGL is the only viable 3D API available in these cases, even more so when we are talking about X-Windows based applications (which are more common in science than you might think). Dropping OpenGL would immediately cut off Mac users from such applications, as adopting Metal would be unfeasible, if not actually impossible.

To give you some actual reference here: I'm a chemist, and of all the chemistry related applications which in one way or the other have 3D graphics that I use, have used, or know, about 95% would become unuseable without OpenGL. Only two programs, which are actually Mac specific and aren't very wide spread, have a slim chance of being ported to Metal.

Apple clearly has no intention of supporting it's professional community outside of IOS dev's (barely). It's all talk, sale & marketing, truly pathetic...

I made the change, nor was it without it's own issues, however I now have performant hardware and solid software, while Apple depreciates the Mac ever further....

Q-6

 

[FoxMcCloud]

Cant you install Vulcan on macOS now anyway? Isn't it a good thing they're dropping their ancient OpenGL?
Or should they be updating it to the last version?

Either way, Bootcamp for full speed games anyway

 

[Sokratesagogo]

Using Nvidia GeForce NOW on my elderly iMac, playing all the latest PC games very nicely thankyou very much

 

[Colonel Blimp]

So correct me if I'm wrong,
Apple threaten's…

You're wrong. There's no apostrophe in the verb "threatens."

 

[mazz0]

When have Macs EVER been good for gaming?

At least you can use Steam streaming from Windows to Mac.

 

[Janichsan]

Cant you install Vulcan on macOS now anyway? Isn't it a good thing they're dropping their ancient OpenGL?
Or should they be updating it to the last version?

In that order: No. No, as no matter how ancient their OpenGL implementation is, it's an open, widely adopted standard, and it's removal would break countless of applications, not only games. Yes.

 

[JGRE]

It'll be interesting to see what developers do with Metal and Vulkan, but nothing much has changed here. Apple has been behind on OpenGL forever and now they're just making it clear that will never change. Several major game engines already use Metal. Valve seems interested in keeping their games on the Mac, so there seems to be middleware solution in development for the Source engine.

3D modeling and rendering packages all suck, and they suck harder on Mac OS (what worked in Lightwave on Windows would fail in Lightwave on Mac... same for Modo; Blender is intolerable cruelty to anyone other than hardcore geeks, and ZBrush is either the same, not as bad, or worse). There's not much to lose here either.

If developers of scientific software want to stay on the Mac, they will adapt. If they don't want to, they won't. Apple cares pretty much zero percent for small markets. We can only wait and see how it all falls into place over the next six years.

If several major game engines already use Metal, the rest will follow.
[doublepost=1528279092][/doublepost]

Oh, please. Where have I ever lied about claims I've made in the past.

At best, they are cutting off the way developers want to make games in the hopes that they'll get their way. But the only people who suffer will be their own customers (as usual). And if you want to be more cynical they're doing it on purpose because they think gaming should happen on the iToys. After all Timmy can't even figure out why anyone would buy a Mac.

If USB-C ever does become a mainstream standard of course I will happily use it, but i will continue to say Apple was idiotic for eliminating USB-3 on the MBP in 2016. And to be clear, if they'd included both I'd be happy.

I don't want a DVD drive on my current laptop, but it was idiotic of Apple to eliminate them when they did. At the time USB drives were smaller than a DVD and way too expensive to give out. It caused a huge hardship at the time. I complained at the time, and I still say it was a stupid thing to do back then. But technology has moved on and DVDs aren't that useful anymore. The people who say how insightful it was of Apple are the revisionists. And it's an easy game to play; it was so smart of Apple to ditch those clunky old CRTs.

On the other hand when you pretend Apple is so progressive in cutting old tech, you really show how blind you are to Apple. In 2018 they still sell computers with spinning mechanical drives as the primary OS drive. So USB3 is so out of date they need to stop selling it, but spinning drives are okay. How do you reconcile that one in your head?

"I don't want a DVD drive on my current laptop, but it was idiotic of Apple to eliminate them when they did"... so you are actually saying Apple was right, but you weren't ready for this?

 

[Steve121178]

Why does someone have to be 'serious' about gaming? I don't game much, but once in a while I'd like for my $2000 - $3000 all purpose device to be usable for general gaming without having to purchase another device which I'll barely use (looking at you, Xbox One).

The Mac is not a tool for gaming. Never was, never has been & never will be. It would be stupid to rely on a Mac for your gaming needs. Everyone should know that it's not a gaming platform so I'm not sure why we have to have the same old debate all the time.

 

[ersan191]

If they’re just going to work on Vulkan and not touch metal, what was the point of developing VR for Metal? Do we not suspect them to make any VR games for the platform they set up?

OpenVR/SteamVR uses Metal - there's nothing that requires VR games to use Metal to interface with OpenVR. You can render a framebuffer using whatever you want and submit that to OpenVR. There are examples in the OpenVR SDK for using vulkan, opengl, and dx12 to interface with OpenVR (notably, Metal is missing).
[doublepost=1528281270][/doublepost]

If several major game engines already use Metal, the rest will follow

There are only two... Unity and UE4 - fortunately they are the two most popular but as far as I know no other publicly available game engines support Metal. Source, ID Tech 6, CryEngine, Frostbite, Torque, Godot, Anvil, Amazon Lumberyard, HeroEngine, etc. etc. etc. do not, and likely will not. They have all embraced Vulkan for their cross-platform support and there's very little incentive to develop them in Metal. Apple should have supported Vulkan when it came out...

I guess now that they're (most likely) getting macOS ready to run on their A-series chips they can't, or at least shouldn't. Metal is designed from the ground up to squeeze as much juice out of their chips as possible.

Vulkan is on Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, and Sony said they will have it on the Playstation 5 - it's what everyone is going to use in the future... The mac will just continue to not be good for gaming I guess.

 

[geromi912]

Using Nvidia GeForce NOW on my elderly iMac, playing all the latest PC games very nicely thankyou very much

the exactly same as you would on a $200 laptop.

 

[Eightarmedpet]

Although my first reaction was to upcoming ARM-based Macs, this mirrors my thoughts, as well. Since I'm not a gamer, I can pretend that this won't affect me, but I think it portends Macs that feature lower power consumption.

There is a lot of action on my LinkedIn connected to GPU work at Apple at their English R and D centre (An Apple recruiter contacted and connected with me a while back).
[doublepost=1528283786][/doublepost]

Who seriously uses a Mac for gaming anyway? Maybe one or two light titles but trying to go all in is masochism at its finest

Not when paired with an eGPU, but then I have to boot Windows...

 

[decafjava]

the exactly same as you would on a $200 laptop.

Which doesn't run MacOS.

 

[jeremiah256]

The Mac is not a tool for gaming. Never was, never has been & never will be. It would be stupid to rely on a Mac for your gaming needs. Everyone should know that it's not a gaming platform so I'm not sure why we have to have the same old debate all the time.

We are having this discussion today because consumers no longer want nor believe they should have to purchase multiple devices when vendors, especially Apple, continuously brag about how powerful their devices are. In the past (let’s say, 15 years ago), everything was separate. You had a separate device for phone calls, a separate device to watch movies and tv programs, a separate device for music, a separate device for working and a separate device for gaming.

All that has converged. You don’t put a 5K display on an iMac and pretend to be surprised when your customers want their computer, which you advertise as capable of creating 3D and AR games and experiences, to be competitive in gaming.

Fair or not, the expectations are that if people can make films using an iPhone, and your watch can tell people to get their butts and run, not walk, to the emergency room, then a MacBook Pro should be able to keep up with PCs in the gaming category. Not surpass, just keep up. The hardware is there. The will is not.

 

[0388631]

If there are metal games without the MoltenVK wrapper (which apparently has many performance problems), exactly how well do these metal codebase games perform compared to their prior OpenGL version?

 

[geromi912]

Which doesn't run MacOS.

And what are the Mac-only apps that you use frequently vs windows-only apps that many people need?

 

[PastaPrimav]

Why do some think old technology should be supported forever?

I work with a lot of developers, and when someone stands up and immediately begins pining for some legacy technology instead of moving forward with what’s new...oh wait that never happens, because I work with good developers.

 

[miscend]

You can still use OpenGL ES and MoltenVK for iOS.

But for how long? Its a matter of time.

 

[Janichsan]

OpenVR/SteamVR uses Metal - there's nothing that requires VR games to use Metal to interface with OpenVR.

Maybe you are just unclear here, but OpenVR/SteamVR doesn't use any graphics API.

It's just a middleware you can use to connect your game engine with VR hardware. You could employ whatever engine or graphics API you want. The only reason why there are links to Metal on the Mac is because Metal is the only available API there that will give you the necessary performance to properly drive a VR headset.

 

[decafjava]

And what are the Mac-only apps that you use frequently vs windows-only apps that many people need?

I prefer the OS and am willing to give up the larger game choice. The games I do play (much less often than when I was still a student) run just fine on Mac, only two outside of the Mac app store - X-Plane 11 and World of Tanks.