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OS X Metal for OS X?
- Thread starter Surfheart
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Sure. But the HD6770M is over 4 ½ years old. To be barely faster than a 4 ½ year old mid-range mobile GPU on a display with 4 times as many pixels isn't going to impress anybody.
Actually - no. With most MacBooks it has gotten to the point where many games simply couldn't be ported even if the maker wanted to. I'm quite worried about Overwatch myself, but there are PC games currently out there with minimum system requirements higher than ANY Mac can deliver except the 27" iMac and Mac Pro.
Also, Apple isn't exactly known for shying away from niches and minorities. During their recovery, their motto was "Think Different", and they were showing off demos of Halo: Combat Evolved and Quake 3 Arena on stage at their conferences. Apple's Macintosh is itself a niche, actually - and a smaller one at that than the gamers.
I'm not asking for enthusiast grade cards.
Apple's job is to make the best computers they can. Making computers with such weak GPU's and CPU's they can barely run their own desktop does not seem to me to be making the best computers they know how to make.
In fact, the new MacBook in particular reminds me strongly of NetBooks - a device category strongly condemned by Apple in the past.
The Mac Pro does deliver good gaming performance, but it doesn't deliver the price. It's at least 3 times more expensive than what a gamer can afford. THAT is enthusiast hardware.
Well - those 100 million are almost all on Steam playing competitive multiplayer games, so I'd say quite a few.
Of course competitive gamers are a minority among gamers, but if we include all the moms playing Minesweeper or stuff like that we go FAR beyond 100 million - possibly all the way to a billion.
Nah I really did mean 4.4. I was asked about 4.4, wasn't I?
OpenGL4.4 contains several explicit D3D calls that simply calls their OpenGL equivalents instead. It makes the porting process trivial to the point of search-and-replace for a large part of it. It'd be beyond awesome to have for developers.
You've already been updated on G-Sync, so not gonna spend any time on that.I am not aware of any extensions that allow OpenGL to skip frames (unless you refer to adaptive sync stuff, which also does not skip frames). Of course, it might be something I have missed. I haven't been following GL too closely in the last few years since I quit moderating the OpenGL forums. At any rate, I would be gad if you could refer me to the extensions you are speaking about, I would like to stay updated
BTW, OS X offers some very good tools for sync control. In particular, it has API that provides you with exact timings for screen refresh events. This allows you to have very fine-grained control over your rendering and animations. I believe Nvidia now actively pushes similar functionality to Windows calling it 'G-sync'
Anyhow, frame-skipping is something that needs to be done when you can't hit the target number of frames. So if it's not possible to push 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor, then you should skip some of the frames to make sure the graphics rendering doesn't fall behind like it would in offline rendering. When sync to v-blank (aka V-Sync) is disabled and you're just drawing like a madman to the screen buffer, everything's fine on OS X. However, when it's enabled, the implementation of kCGLCPSwapInterval or NSOpenGLCPSwapInterval will cause rendering to fall behind.
What you'll often experience is that games will feel like they're periodically slowing down and speeding up when the graphics card can't keep up.
Extensions WGL_EXT_swap_control and GLX_EXT_swap_control do not exhibit this behaviour, but they are not available on the Mac (Unless you wanna use Xorg. Whoo!)
The 2015 Razer Blade has around 1.5 to 2 hours of gaming and 5 hours of internet browsing. This is EXACTLY the same as the 2011 15" MBP Ultimo that I'm currently posting on. I don't really care how big the actual battery is - all I care about is how long it lasts.
If you want to complain how slow your 4.5 year old Macbook is compared to 2015 Laptop, find another forum. Or a doctor
.5 Hours on internet browsing is about half of what you can do on 2015 MBP. Sorry, but laptop is meant to be portable computer, not a brick that you have to plug into the wall to actually use it.
If you want a gaming machine buy a desktop.
End the discussion about how awful in gaming are Apple computers. Its thread about APIs on OSX. Discussion about gaming market as a whole is also IMO allowed here.
Leman, actually there is a lot of competitive gamers. 25 mln of accounts in League of Legends are active accounts. 10 mln of WoW, 5 mln in Starcraft, 8 mln in Diablo 3, 8 mln in Heroes of the Storm, 20 mln in Hearthstone, if we think about whole gaming market on PCs. and a there will be a lot more. People dont realize how big market is Multiplayer market in gaming. I would say that its over 80% of whole market as of right now.
And in future it will be a lot more than that.
Guys, I really don't want to appear needlessly confrontational, but it seems that our definition of 'competitive gaming' differs. I don't see a casual WoW/DOTA2/HT/SC2 player as a competitive gamer. By your definition I am a competitive gamer as well
Maybe a different term like (semi)pro-gamer would be more accurate. At any rate, my previous point is still in effect people playing all these multiplayer games casually are absolutely fine with current Mac hardware. All these games will run on integrated GPUs that are in the modern Mac lineup (maybe by exception of the new MB). I don't want to derail this thread further, so just few short comments on the technical stuff.
DSA and much of the DX emulation stuff became core in 4.5, so I thought you are referring to that. I am not sure what DX calls you are talking about in 4.4, but anyway, that doesn't matter.
The extensions you talk about do not really 'skip' frames, they just stall the presentation (block the rendering thread) until a particular event (number of refresh rates) fires. What you wrote sounded to me like they would cause OpenGL to abort its current rendering. Sorry if I misunderstood you. Anyway, kCGLCPSwapInterval is supposed to do exactly the same.
Apple has some measure of control there. If it's not a good business decision for the developers, they won't port it. Apple has done virtually nothing to encourage ports, so I don't know what you would expect.
Metals
For people who are new to the subject (myself included):
Metal (iOS API) Wikipedia
and user interface chrome redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_interface_and_interaction_design
For people who are new to the subject (myself included):
Metal (iOS API) Wikipedia
and user interface chrome redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_interface_and_interaction_design
I can't help but facepalm at this. I wasn't complaining how slow my 4.5 year old laptop was compared to a new laptop. That would be insanely daft. I was complaining that the new laptops are still as slow as the 4.5 year old laptop. Got it? Not difficult.If you want to complain how slow your 4.5 year old Macbook is compared to 2015 Laptop, find another forum. Or a doctor
5 Hours on internet browsing is about half of what you can do on 2015 MBP. Sorry, but laptop is meant to be portable computer, not a brick that you have to plug into the wall to actually use it.
If you want a gaming machine buy a desktop.
End the discussion about how awful in gaming are Apple computers. Its thread about APIs on OSX. Discussion about gaming market as a whole is also IMO allowed here.
Leman, actually there is a lot of competitive gamers. 25 mln of accounts in League of Legends are active accounts. 10 mln of WoW, 5 mln in Starcraft, 8 mln in Diablo 3, 8 mln in Heroes of the Storm, 20 mln in Hearthstone, if we think about whole gaming market on PCs. and a there will be a lot more. People dont realize how big market is Multiplayer market in gaming. I would say that its over 80% of whole market as of right now.
And in future it will be a lot more than that.
If you want 10 hours of battery life in your machine, that's fantastic - and I fully support your decision to have that kind of power efficiency. It's great. But there are a lot of customers out there who just aren't satisfied with the kind of performance you get out of that, and those are now being completely left out by Apple.
Not everyone wants to game only on desktops. Some of us actually have work and travel a lot, and we like to get our game on in long train trips and stuff like that. With the current line-up, that simply isn't available to us. Transporting your entire desktop is quite difficult and isn't viable, so desktops aren't viable for gamers on the go. Trust me, I know - I go to DreamHack every year and every year it's a pain to transport my PC up there. It's worth it in that particular case, but really...
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You are a competitive gamer indeed. How could you not consider WoW, DotA2, HotS, and SC2 competitive games? That's hilarious!Guys, I really don't want to appear needlessly confrontational, but it seems that our definition of 'competitive gaming' differs. I don't see a casual WoW/DOTA2/HT/SC2 player as a competitive gamer. By your definition I am a competitive gamer as well
Competitive gamer != Professional gamer.
No - it actually became core in 4.4. Look it up. Anyway, doesn't matter at this point. I'm sure that if Apple decides to fix OpenGL, then they'll put in 4.4 and 4.5 at the same time anyway.
But what you describe is basically exactly what skipping frames is. The rendering thread is behind the presentation interval, so we skip a (few) frame(s) to catch back up.
However, this whole thing of "when you're behind" can be implemented in quite a few different ways.
Precisely what the difference between the Apple and non-Apple implementations are I do not know, but it's VERY obvious when you actually play games on a Mac with V-Sync on. You really owe it to yourself to try. It's rather painful actually.
Of course all of this would be solved if Apple implemented freesync/g-sync into their machines... which they totally should! That would be very, very awesome and would be exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from Apple: Presentation is important! Get a picture-perfect and beautiful desktop.
Anyhow, getting back to Metal... I wouldn't expect Metal on desktops. Metal was very specifically built with their own mobile chipsets in mind. However, I do think they'll suppoort Vulkan, which is a lot like Metal actually. I think we'll see Vulkan on the Mac and DX12 on Windows.
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Exactly, Antonis. You got it right. Sure the application can recover from the error if it is well written. That is what Leman described on the OS level for GPU switching and driver errors, just restart it. Vulkan isn't grave dangerous of course, but as Valve's John McDonald said, "We're asking you to juggle chainsaws, but in exchange, we'll give you peak performance." My concern was only with the fact that Apple might leave it out of OS X exactly due to this "lower level" nature. But, we have Metal on our side, which is Apple's own implementation of this low level stuff. So maybe they still have some adventurer's spirit in there.
Plus, since we're giving game developers more power overall, the point of all this is to make Ishayu's post on April 2nd a thing of the past.
This. It's my fear too. Regardless the technical benefits, that all you people in this thread did a great job explain them to everyone, if Vulcan is indeed the future of all the "non-directx" platforms, apple will be alienated in case they choose to opt out.
Of course the fact that they already contributing to this, makes me optimistic
Exactly, Antonis. You got it right. Sure the application can recover from the error if it is well written. That is what Leman described on the OS level for GPU switching and driver errors, just restart it. Vulkan isn't grave dangerous of course, but as Valve's John McDonald said, "We're asking you to juggle chainsaws, but in exchange, we'll give you peak performance." My concern was only with the fact that Apple might leave it out of OS X exactly due to this "lower level" nature. But, we have Metal on our side, which is Apple's own implementation of this low level stuff. So maybe they still have some adventurer's spirit in there.
Plus, since we're giving game developers more power overall, the point of all this is to make Ishayu's post on April 2nd a thing of the past.
That's actually a good point. Apple has the ability to approve things via the app store model with iOS. It is important to note that OSX operates on a much wider range of hardware. This may not be practical until you have integrated graphics in basically everything other than the mac pro.
Also keep in mind that part of the reason Metal's performance looks excellent is that Apple's OpenGL implementations have been terrible over the past 5 years (maybe longer).
I think people are missing something, that has been already written here, in this thread.
Vulkan will bring ease of porting to all platforms that its implemented. Making port from Windows to OSX can be made with a lot less work, cost and effort than before, and can be directly in the development process, just because code would be so similair.
What are the consequences for Apple? Bringing gaming attention to OSX, attracting more clients. Financial benefits for all players involved in the Vulkan idea are ginormous. And that is the biggest benefit for bringing Vulkan to OSX. Would Apple refuse to put their hands on it?
Vulkan will bring ease of porting to all platforms that its implemented. Making port from Windows to OSX can be made with a lot less work, cost and effort than before, and can be directly in the development process, just because code would be so similair.
What are the consequences for Apple? Bringing gaming attention to OSX, attracting more clients. Financial benefits for all players involved in the Vulkan idea are ginormous. And that is the biggest benefit for bringing Vulkan to OSX. Would Apple refuse to put their hands on it?
Yes, and if I understand the benefits of Vulkan, cross-platform support will be easier to implement than with openGL, due to the more predictable driver behavior. In OpenGL, you'd have to implement platform-specific workarounds when one class of GPU doesn't handle some openGL command as well as another, on a certain OS. The simpler Vulkan drivers should minimize these kinds of issues.
Regarding Apple, I suppose they will support Vulkan, since they contributed to the design. In a recent interview, Gabe Newell said that Vulkan "is" supported by all platforms (he used the present, which is weird). Maybe it was wishful thinking from his part, but he mentioned Apple (amongst others) and he may have inside information since Valve is part of Khronos (together with Apple and many others).
Regarding Apple, I suppose they will support Vulkan, since they contributed to the design. In a recent interview, Gabe Newell said that Vulkan "is" supported by all platforms (he used the present, which is weird). Maybe it was wishful thinking from his part, but he mentioned Apple (amongst others) and he may have inside information since Valve is part of Khronos (together with Apple and many others).
Actually, Apple's mobile OpenGL ES 2.0 drivers were on par if not better than similar Android hardware. Apple just seemed to drop the ball on OS X's OpenGL and the GPU manufacturer's drivers didn't optimize OpenGL either. You often would receive similar performance from OpenGL on Windows than on OS X (still worse on OS X but more competitive). No one was really making OpenGL showcases on Windows so they didn't care to optimize it.
Yes, currently the Vulkan API should be extremely clean and simple to implement for drivers since they don't have 10 years of backwards compatibility to manage.
In regards to Valve thinking that Vulkan is supported on all platforms, I don't know how much I'd put stock into that jeanlain (remember you from the old Mac steam release forums). To Valve the only platforms that really matter are Windows and Linux.
Currently, I'm optimistic that Apple will adopt Vulkan for their OS X software. OS X is a much more open platform than iOS and it should support more open platforms APIs. I think that Apple felt that Metal was a contingency if the Khronos group couldn't get their act together and get something done. When Metal was in the planning phase (I'm guessing 2 years ago) I'm sure that was very questionable. Now they seem to be on track with Vulkan and they may not need it anymore. Regardless, having two low-level graphics APIs on iOS is not going to make sense, and as I mentioned earlier Apple loves the control. We'll see if Apple starts ignoring it at WWDC and Metal ends up the way of Objective-C garbage collection.
So, how should we evaluate this ? Is Metal for OS X a blessing or is it going to alienate Mac gaming even more ? I saw some big game creators in the keynote regarding metal, but if Apple jumps off the OpenGL wagon isn't that a bad move in the long term?
I guess it's a good move, regarding that they now partnered with AMD (OpenGL champion from the very beginning as I recall). I guess they're working very closely together to bring even more graphics goodness to our Macs. Can't wait for the next Mac lineup refresher...
There is no Metal yet in OSX officially .
We have to wait for the release of the system, for games to support the API.
However, the fact that it is in OSX, and is functional base of graphical operations in entire system changes a lot. I do mean, its pretty bloody revolution, IMO.
.We have to wait for the release of the system, for games to support the API.
However, the fact that it is in OSX, and is functional base of graphical operations in entire system changes a lot. I do mean, its pretty bloody revolution, IMO.
Probably a neutral move. For devs that want to take advantage of it, it's there. For the devs that are writing in OpenGL, that technology isn't going anywhere. Now if they continue to stay on old versions of OpenGL with their system drivers, that would be an issue, but they've been doing that for years.
I'm going to go ahead and guess that it'll be Heroes of the Storm.
Riot has had a LOT of success adopting League players to Macs (the fact that it's on Mac, more or less flawlessly, has led to an extremely high adoption rate at Universities) and if they want to dethrone League, they need to tackle Mac.
Their Hearthstone OSX application is based on Objective-C so it's more or less flawless as is and SC2/D3 is more or less tapped out user-wise in PC world.
Heroes of the Storm is fresh, new, has lots of new users and it could use the added performance Metal offers.
Essenar, Im pretty sure that Overwatch engine will be built on Mantle(DirectX, Metal, Vulkan) API, and when the system will be offcial, we will get native new versions of every game that Blizzard has.
Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft(maybe finally the client will be fixed...), Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch.
Epic: Unreal Tournament 2015, Fortnite.
EA - only they know, however its now 3 years since they started working on OSX version of Frostbite Engine. Mass Effect on OSX? Possibly
Crytek.
Lets hope that now the gaming on OSX will only explode, because porting from Windows, thanks to Mantle as a functional core for every modern API, is extremely easy.
Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft(maybe finally the client will be fixed...), Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch.
Epic: Unreal Tournament 2015, Fortnite.
EA - only they know, however its now 3 years since they started working on OSX version of Frostbite Engine. Mass Effect on OSX? Possibly
Crytek.
Lets hope that now the gaming on OSX will only explode, because porting from Windows, thanks to Mantle as a functional core for every modern API, is extremely easy.