Martin
0
WWDC 2018: Deprecation of OpenGL
Apple announced that they will deprecate OpenGL with macOS 10.14 (Mojave). That was actually quite a shock since I didn't expect that move that fast. Especially if you consider that most games (2D and 3D) use OpenGL today. I'm already curious how many games and apps actually get ported to Metal since it's not a trivial transition.
But for the first "deprecated" just means that Apple won't update OpenGL anymore. That Apple freezes the OpenGL feature set. So investing any further time in OpenGL is just a waste for time.
I've already started work to port the OpenGL code from the legacy profile to the OpenGL core profile (OpenGL 3.x, vertex- and fragment shaders, vertex buffers, etc.). I wanted to make that in between step on the way to Metal since OpenGL 3.x is supported by every Mac with macOS 10.8.5 and newer. The hardware and macOS requirements for Metal are much higher. Especially if you use Metal 2 which requites macOS 10.12.
So moving straight to Metal (or Metal 2) would mean leaving back many Cheetah3D users with older Macs. Something I wanted to avoid but which is more complicated now. So I wished Apple would have given developers some more time for the transition. Especially since it is a transition with many negative side effects.
I can just hope that the rumours about Apple switching to it's own ARM processors are untrue. Because if they are true the complete drop of OpenGL could happen much faster than some might expected.
So Cheetah3Ds future is now obviously Metal. Although the OpenGL 3.x step would have made more sense.
Apple announced that they will deprecate OpenGL with macOS 10.14 (Mojave). That was actually quite a shock since I didn't expect that move that fast. Especially if you consider that most games (2D and 3D) use OpenGL today. I'm already curious how many games and apps actually get ported to Metal since it's not a trivial transition.
But for the first "deprecated" just means that Apple won't update OpenGL anymore. That Apple freezes the OpenGL feature set. So investing any further time in OpenGL is just a waste for time.
I've already started work to port the OpenGL code from the legacy profile to the OpenGL core profile (OpenGL 3.x, vertex- and fragment shaders, vertex buffers, etc.). I wanted to make that in between step on the way to Metal since OpenGL 3.x is supported by every Mac with macOS 10.8.5 and newer. The hardware and macOS requirements for Metal are much higher. Especially if you use Metal 2 which requites macOS 10.12.
So moving straight to Metal (or Metal 2) would mean leaving back many Cheetah3D users with older Macs. Something I wanted to avoid but which is more complicated now. So I wished Apple would have given developers some more time for the transition. Especially since it is a transition with many negative side effects.
I can just hope that the rumours about Apple switching to it's own ARM processors are untrue. Because if they are true the complete drop of OpenGL could happen much faster than some might expected.
So Cheetah3Ds future is now obviously Metal. Although the OpenGL 3.x step would have made more sense.