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by jsheard 1105 days ago
The mention of MoltenVK implies this isn't DX12-to-Metal, but rather DX12-to-Vulkan-to-Metal. That's probably the best way to leverage existing open source work but jeez, it sounds like a house of cards.
1 comments

That's thanks to Apple's courage.
Hardly any different from game consoles.
Macs are sold as general purpose computers, not fixed function consoles designed to only run appstore select games.
Hardly any different from Windows then.

In case you feel like mentioning Vulkan, it doesn't come in the box, works thanks to plugging into OpenGL ICD driver model and via GPU vendors, not OS vendor, and it isn't supported in all scenarios where DirectX is.

>Hardly any different from Windows then.

How so?

DirectX is the official API, OpenGL and Vulkan only work because of backwards compatibility Microsoft never got rid of ICD ABI they introduced back when OpenGL in Windows NT was a thing.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...

That is how GPU vendor drivers expose OpenGL and Vulkan, via ICD, they aren't even supported on the Windows SDK, it is up to you to get the header files and libraries to link against the DLLs provided by the GPU vendors.

From Windows SDK point of view, OpenGL 1.1 is what is shipped in the box.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/OpenGL/openg...

Even the "OpenGL improvements" introduced in Windows 8 rely on DirectX 3D APIs, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...

There is no support for OpenGL/Vulkan on UWP, XBox, HoloLens, Win32 sandboxes, while OpenGL/Vulkan on WSL are exposed via a DirectX driver wrapper, similar to MoltenVK.

Microsoft doesn't make GPUs.
Yes they do, XBox and Surface devices GPUs are done in collaboration with hardware supplieers.
macOS never really had the ability to run Windows games directly.

Either you ran a native macOS version/port of the game, or you ran a compatibility layer like Crossover, or you ran a Windows VM, or you rebooted into Windows using Boot Camp.