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Ehh I'm gonna press Doubt on the "significantly easier to use" part. Vulkan is still easier than Metal,

Have to tried using either? Vulkan requires you to write pages and pages of convoluted boilerplate just to do the most basic stuff. I mean, performing the most fundamental of operations like creating a texture or binding resources to a shader need a dozen or two API calls, juggling multiple objects, and copying data back and forth.

as Metal lacks a lot of features Vulkan does.

Which features would those be?
 
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This seems like conjecture, what features is Metal missing?

Well for starters Vulkan is open source, so you can squeeze a lot more potential out of it. Metal is not, you are at the mercy of what Apple adds to it and you will like it. It's why MoltenVK is not the be all end all solution to making Mac ports like people think it is, as all it does is translate Vulkan to Metal, but you're still at the mercy of Metal's limitations.

Vulkan is easily crossplatform across not just Windows, but Linux, and game consoles. Metal is limited to just Mac and iOS. OpenGL was crossplatform which made Mac ports a lot easier, but since Apple killed OpenGL in 2018, that makes things even more needlessly complicated

Vulkan offers a lot higher performance than Metal does. Metal holds your hand a lot while Vulkan leaves you responsible for everything. If you're a smaller fledgling developer you might prefer Metal, but if you're a lot more experienced than there's only so far Metal can take you, and if you want to go farther in pushing graphical fidelity well TOUGH

Metal 3 was a big step in the right direction, especially since it added upscaling technology as Apple's answer to DLSS and FSR, but it is still leagues behind Vulkan. Metal works perfectly for iOS and iPadOS, but on a Mac where you have a lot more power to work with and aren't limited to a small form factor, then Metal is severely limiting.
 
Well for starters Vulkan is open source, so you can squeeze a lot more potential out of it. Metal is not, you are at the mercy of what Apple adds to it and you will like it. It's why MoltenVK is not the be all end all solution to making Mac ports like people think it is, as all it does is translate Vulkan to Metal, but you're still at the mercy of Metal's limitations.

Vulkan is not open source. It's a specification developed by the committee, with a bunch of optional extension for advanced functionality. Sure, with Metal you are at the mercy of how Apple wants to do things, but with Vulkan you are at the mercy of the committee AND the driver implementors. Not to mention that Vulkan needs to target a wide class of hardware, which means making compromises.

A simple example: Vulkan has raytracing and mesh shaders as optional extensions, but they are implemented on only 3-4% devices according to the gpuinfo database. With Metal, you have them on all recent Macs.

OpenGL was crossplatform which made Mac ports a lot easier, but since Apple killed OpenGL in 2018, that makes things even more needlessly complicated

Oh boy. OpenGL was notoriously different to debug and optimise. You had to test and optimise separately for bunch of different platforms and drivers if you wanted good performance. It's probably easier to port a mid-complexity game from DX12 to Metal than to write an OpenGL version that runs decently on all platforms.

Vulkan offers a lot higher performance than Metal does.

This is simply not true.

Metal holds your hand a lot while Vulkan leaves you responsible for everything. If you're a smaller fledgling developer you might prefer Metal, but if you're a lot more experienced than there's only so far Metal can take you, and if you want to go farther in pushing graphical fidelity well TOUGH

This is also not true. Yes, Metal holds your hand. But you can tell it not to hold your hand and do the low-level memory and synchronisation management yourself. Vulkan simply doesn't give you any choice. Need to allocate a bunch of simple images on a non-performance-critical path? Good luck with your low-level allocations and DMA transfer setup. I mean, even C has malloc().


Metal 3 was a big step in the right direction, especially since it added upscaling technology as Apple's answer to DLSS and FSR, but it is still leagues behind Vulkan [..] Metal is severely limiting.


I would be curious to hear a concrete reason why you think Metal is limiting or what features Metal lacks. So far you have been speaking in very vague terms. If this is about low-level control, well, Metal has had it for a while.

In fact, I can probably give you at least half a dozen features that Metal has and Vulkan doesn't. Although I admit that I am not up to date with the latest Vulkan extensions.
 
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NMS out now!!!

Steam now, Mac App Store later.


No Man's Sky just dropped for Mac on Steam. Mac App Store version to come soon.

A bit surprising they released it now but they have another "surprise" to show on Monday. :)

The Steam release is great. Free access for previous owners and free update to Mac with Crossplay and Crosssave. Someone wrote their PC saves work all fine on Mac. :)
 
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A bit surprising they released it now but they have another "surprise" to show on Monday. :)

The Steam release is great. Free access for previous owners and free update to Mac with Crossplay and Crosssave. Someone wrote their PC saves work all fine on Mac. :)
I wonder if it is the iOS version (not saying the VR version isn't coming).
 
Not much to comment on, to be honest, except that it’s great to see developers slowly embracing Metal to its fullest. Would have probably taken them less than 8 months too if the engine were designed with cross-API considerations previously either. The moral of the story is that Metal is every bit as capable as DX12 or Vulkan, and significantly easier to use. Let’s hope we see more of these efforts going forward.

Regarding ELEX II itself… I would buy it if only it didn’t look so incredibly bland…

Haven't seen you around much so I appreciate your inputs, as always. :)
 
Okay uhh, we got breaking news

Last year's best indie game Stray is getting a Mac port


Maybe Homy is onto something. Maybe Apple actually is serious about making Mac gaming a thing.
 
Looks like VR is already there for Mac as well. Support for Intel Macs too. They've done lots of work.
Well, the screenshot shows that the games supports macOS and VR, not necessary both at the same time. :p
 
Oh my god...

HOW DOES PERSONA 5 ROYAL RUN?! I NEED TO KNOW
No idea, absolutely not my type of game. But Steam says it's DX11? Is that correct? If so, is it not working in current Crossover already?
I’d be interested in any info on the shopping spree. Some evidence if possible, thanks. I know they’ve given direct dev support
Same as always. It's been discussed in and around Cupertino for a while now and people go in and out of Apple again, including Kojima. Keep your eyes (and more important ears) open at WWDC next week if you're not there already.
 
That is weird, as in it already supports VR on PC, does that flag not show up on macOS if the game does support VR on the PC version?
Well, the screenshot shows that the games supports macOS and VR, not necessary both at the same time. :p

Skärmavbild 2023-06-01 kl. 22.27.47.png


No mention of Apple's headset on Steamdb. We'll see on Monday.
 
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