[eksu]

OpenGL is quite dated for VR/AR. In the Apple ecosystem they supported OpenGL 4.1 for quite some time before moving to Metal, which was announced 2 years before Vulkan.

If you spent the time developing an in house graphics API since open standards weren’t moving forward, why would you rewrite everything a second time just a few years later? Shouldn’t you expect to get a decade or two out of your existing API and only do the massive rewrite when the benefits become more substantial?

Vulkan & OpenGL applications can translate to Metal with MoltenGL and MoltenVK, respectively.

[andsoitis]

> OpenGL is quite dated for VR/AR.

Vulkan and DirectX are the favored graphics rendering technologies for VR.

Godot supports Vulkan rendering via OpenXR.

To get a vibe for Apple’s general posture in this regard it is worth noting that Vulkan rendering through OpenXR on macOS is technically possible via MoltenVK, but macOS does not have an official OpenXR runtime. You’d need to use third-party workarounds or wait for broader support.

[eksu]

macOS used to have OpenVR support (SteamVR) around 2017 for the HTC Vive, yes, but never any OpenXR runtime as no later hmds had macOS support.

[serbuvlad]

> why would you rewrite everything a second time just a few years later?

Why is this the dichotomy? Why not support both?

[Zambyte]

Money

[freedomben]

> If you spent the time developing an in house graphics API since open standards weren’t moving forward, why would you rewrite everything a second time just a few years later? Shouldn’t you expect to get a decade or two out of your existing API and only do the massive rewrite when the benefits become more substantial?

I have a natural inclination to agree with this thinking, but I think it's important to recognize that this is the sunk cost fallacy at work[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

[bigyabai]

In an ideal world, Apple would have just built DirectX and sold the Xbox too. But you can't look at it from an executive's perspective, you have to look at it from the developer's point-of-view. This insistence on high-investment, low-ROI APIs is why the Mac doesn't have games. If you run the Metal playbook with VR again, you will have developers outright abandon you. We've already seen what happens.

Apple's GPUs support a decent chunk of the Vulkan featureset, you can go boot it up on an M1 with Asahi. Same goes for OpenXR. These are things that Apple neglects because they want to use their customerbase as leverage to market proprietary APIs. This hurts users, because Apple has neither industry-leading standards nor the leverage to force the industry to adapt. And they sure as hell lack the humility to just support both in the name of fair competition.

[p_ing]

APIs are the last reason there aren't 'major' games on macOS. You've got architecture changes; PPC to Intel was a big loss of game compatibility, and then again when x86-32 support was removed from OS X nuked most of a user's Steam library.

And there's the chicken/egg problem of gamers just not being present in large enough numbers on macOS. The platform already has a fairly small marketshare in the overall PC space, the number of gamers are vanishingly much smaller; Steam stats put macOS at 1.58%, less than Linux.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

All of the major game engines support Apple's Metal, so API compat from that perspective isn't an issue.

[bigyabai]

APIs are the exact reason. Why can't you run Proton on MacOS? WoW64 works. Rosetta and Wine work. Is there any technical limitation besides API support preventing the Macbook from working like a Steam Deck?

[p_ing]

Proton relies on Linux sys APIs not available on macOS, but the Porting Toolkit is available. I've been able to "play" Noita on my M2 Air (granted the perf sucks, but that's what I get for owning an Air). This discussion hasn't been centered around kernel APIs, but rather graphics APIs (D3D/Vulkan), if you're going for that "gotcha!".

Crossover is another option, though I have no need to pay for it as I own a Windows PC/consoles.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/gt3fat/proton...

[cosmic_cheese]

It’s more that devs can’t be arsed to write non-mobile games in anything but DirectX unless they’re being paid to (as the console vendors do). Vulkan support is quite rare in commercial games, it’s almost entirely DirectX or Sony/Nintendo’s things. If Apple somehow flipped a switch that turned on Vulkan support, almost nothing would change.

The single biggest things Apple could do to bolster gaming on their platforms is to pay studios to do it or for Apple to license DirectX from MS. Anything else will barely move the needle.

[bigyabai]

> If Apple somehow flipped a switch that turned on Vulkan support, almost nothing would change.

That's not entirely true. Whiskey being depreciated to support Codeweavers was a headline story this week - something that outright would not need to exist if Apple users could run upstream DXVK instead of GPTk.

> pay studios to do it or for Apple to license DirectX from MS.

That doesn't work either! Paying Eidos and Capcom and Hello Games did not start an avalanche of ports. Apple could license DirectX from Microsoft, but they could also just support Vulkan 1.2 and get perfect DX12 coverage through translation.

The bigger point is that the Metal-only route isn't working. We can argue over the merits of Vulkan until the cows come home, but the simple issue is that Metal doesn't get ports. Native APIs on Apple platforms just get ignored.

[orangecat]

The bigger point is that the Metal-only route isn't working.

For macOS, no. For iOS, yes, and that's where Apple makes almost all their revenue. Apple wants your primary target to be iOS. If you decide to do a macOS port, that's nice but not essential. Of course this doesn't work for AAA games, but that's a sacrifice they're happy to make.

[pjmlp]

Ah, I guess that is why Nintendo and Sony also don't have games.

[meindnoch]

>This insistence on high-investment, low-ROI APIs is why the Mac doesn't have games

Yeah, that's why iOS doesn't have any games either. /s