Apple to drop OpenGL support

Started by pokoy, July 31, 2018, 05:44:18 AM

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pokoy

Just read the news that Apple plans to drop OpenGL and OpenCL in favor of its Metal framework. I'm not on MacOS but I guess this has an effect on TG on Mac in the future?

Oshyan

#1
It will, yes. We are aware of the change and in discussion internally with what we need to do in the future. Our current understanding though is that OpenGL is not being actively removed, rather it is deprecated, and so we are hopeful that things won't break for a while since we use fairly simple OGL functionality in current versions of Terragen. We will continue to test on newer versions of OS X and will do our best to keep the Mac version working smoothly, but it's definitely a frustrating thing to have to deal with.

- Oshyan

WAS

Was a long time coming. Their API hadn't been updated in years, and their support for it is an embarrassment. This will do nothing but hurt Mac even more, as it will now be pushing students away instead of embracing them. Proprietary crap is coming back with a vengeance when the world needs to embrace open standards.

I have already heard that this is just support that is ending, and even with their new frameworks, there will be a wrapper that should allow smooth transition. Similar to how there is a DX wrapper for WebGL (windows).