Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac

Two years and a few days since the Vulkan 1.0 release is now marked by a new significant milestone for this cross-platform graphics/compute API... It's not a new Vulkan release today, but Vulkan is now available on Apple's iOS and macOS platforms! Here are the details with the embargo just expiring on Vulkan now on macOS/iOS but still without the official support from Apple.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=26057

[eydee]

Until Apple releases an update that breaks it.

[elldekaa]

Whaoou nice!! Thanks Valve =)

[davidbepo]

hope this makes more game developers use vulkan

[johanb]

The Vulkan master plan: If platforms try to have platform exclusive graphics APIs, write a vulkan layer for that API

Would be nice to see benchmarks between Metal+MoltenVK vs Vulkan as well as DX12+MoltenVK vs Vulkan

[FireBurn]

This might be the kick required to get Mac to support Vulkan natively

[UpsetingFact]

Good, but it requires Apple fanboys to drop Metal, which only a few of them will do.

[GruenSein]

The Vulkan master plan: If platforms try to have platform exclusive graphics APIs, write a vulkan layer for that API

Would be nice to see benchmarks between Metal+MoltenVK vs Vulkan as well as DX12+MoltenVK vs Vulkan

How can you run a native Vulkan benchmark on a platform that made MoltenVK and such necessary in the first place? You might never find out if possible differences are due to the Vulkan-to-Metal/DX12 translation or the platformspecific drivers since you always have to change both when comparing.

[cybertraveler]

This is extremely good news for GNU/Linux gaming.

With recent, heavy focus on cross platform game development, this will probably make Vulkan a very attractive alternative to and compliment of OpenGL and may eventually result in cross-platform engine devs dropping support for DirectX 12. If Vulkan can be efficiently and accurately mapped to DirectX 12 and Metal, this makes Vulkan the obvious target for cross-platform games/engines.

Valve are genius. This open sourcing of MoltenVK is like a precision strike against a weak spot in Microsoft.

There is now a huge list of cutting-edge, game engines and game development studios that are cross platform. Supporting GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, phones, consoles and Windows is becoming easy. This coupled with the fact that Microsoft are decreasing freedom and increasing spying on their Windows platform, makes it more likely that gamers are going to switch away from Windows in the future.

Steam + snaps/flatpaks + cross-platform game engines + Wayland + high quality, open source, graphics drivers + Vulkan & OpenGL is going to make GNU/Linux a more viable gaming platform than it ever has been before. We're not there yet but a very strong foundation is being built.

[HenryM]

Until Apple releases an update that breaks it.

-Intentionally.


In the 25 years I've dealt with Apple stuff, the one consistent trend I have noticed is voluntary incompatibility...

that, and marketing.