Just saw this. Could be cool?
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/08/apple-announces-metal-for-os-x/ [macrumors.com] :wink:

i don't know the metal api but when it's not compatible to open gl api or vulkan then i have the feeling the efforts for the tool developers are getting more complex. so i find it's bad news.

It can be good news for new apps as Vulkan isn't here yet.

It wouldn't be surprising to see focused applications like Pixelmator, Affinity Design, and DaVinci Resolve adopt the framework.

Jack Greasley from The Foundry revealed that they've already implemented Metal within Modo, and the process took four weeks.

Chronon
Jack Greasley from The Foundry revealed that they've already implemented Metal within Modo, and the process took four weeks.

Unfortunately for anyone who has kept track of Foundry recently knows you have to wait to get it into the hands of users, then the bug-fest and reality sets in. It's pop-culture software development; glitz & tokenism.

Houdini seems pretty picky when it comes to graphics cards on OSX as it is, maybe something like this might actually make it more reliable…

Yes - it should help in theory if Houdini is rewritten to use it. Keep in mind that nothing is stopping Apple fixing OpenGL today that would help solve all this too.

Anyone can test El Capitan if you sign up to a developer account or wait till next month for the public beta.

Hmmm, actually I might test out the beta, now that I have a spare machine…

Brief talk with Greasely on RGB HQ:

Metal is designed to perform the same functions as modern OpenGL and OpenCL combined so could be considered a direct replacement.

http://www.rgbhq.com/blog/foundryosx-metal [rgbhq.com]

Chronon
Jack Greasley from The Foundry revealed that they've already implemented Metal within Modo, and the process took four weeks.

While the initial investment to make the port may be cheap, the maintenance associated with keeping it running is harder to quantify. A cross-platform App like Houdini would then require two separate codepaths for OpenGL and Metal, which then need to be maintained and tested. I'd be interested to see how this works out for Modo.

On the other hand, Apple's OpenGL implementation is so buggy that it might actually be less work to have a Metal port. However, their newer GL3.2 core profile was supposed to be clean and robust, and that hasn't panned out (and the GL4.1 features are pretty much a disaster). At this point, I'm far more interested in seeing a robust graphics API on OSX - then we can talk performance

The good news is once it's ported to Metal then it'll run on iOS devices 8)

MartybNz
The good news is once it's ported to Metal then it'll run on iOS devices 8)

Why make detours? Port it straight to WebGL instead.

Hey I checked out El Capitan (beta 1) by the way.
I didn't notice any difference in performance with the standard OpenGl. Houdini is still glitchy on my MBPro 17

Works fine on the newer MBPro 15 though so that's good.

mantragora
Why make detours? Port it straight to WebGL instead.

Maybe WebGL is dead on iOS from now…

Model I/O is interesting. It has AO/GI baking, voxelisation, auto UVs and is the part of the Os that displays .abc files in the Finder.

'Managing 3D Assets with Model I/O'
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=602 [developer.apple.com]

Another issue with Metal currently is that GPU compute will be limited to OpenCL 1.2 compatible hardware. That may be a spanner in the works for Houdini shifting to OpenCL 2+

peteski
Works fine on the newer MBPro 15 though so that's good.

Nice! Is it running the same as before or better on MBPro 15?

Oh sorry (I worded that badly), I'm running the MBPro 15 on Yosemite. Too scared to test on that as it's my main machine now.
As far as Houdini goes it seems to be working fine though (which is great because it was my main reason for upgrading).

MartybNz
Maybe WebGL is dead on iOS from now…

Whaaat? But isn't it Jobs himself said that HTML5 is the THING and everybody should use it?

mantragora
Whaaat? But isn't it Jobs himself said that HTML5 is the THING and everybody should use it?

it was always the target to get marked shares. when your eco system uses open standards its easy for developers to work on different operating system. when you close the eco system the indie developers have to chose one platform. the html5 message was just to bring the developers to apple. on that time html5 was still in development stage so the dev tried html5 on mobile noticed its slow and started to learn object-c (horrible language).

btw. even this video i cant view it as a stream i have to use a safari browser hey we are in 2015!: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=602 [developer.apple.com]

mantragora

MartybNz
The good news is once it's ported to Metal then it'll run on iOS devices 8)

Why make detours? Port it straight to WebGL instead.

With Metal I'll be able to use Houdini on my Apple watch…

Metal is basically, as far as I understand it, Apple's DirectX 12. And both their most prominent feature is: it only works on a single platform. So if you want to stay multi-platform, stick to OpenGL. And since of the three techs, only OpenGL is available on Linux, this kind of rules out the other two. Unless you have way too much development resources on your hand, then you could start to build three versions for each platform. But that's going to be a pain to support.