Hi adamio, I have not really looked into the Apple Metal API.

> The question is (considering you going for a major rewrite) Wouldn't it be a better
> investment for the long term to adapt Metal instead of OpenGL?

Well, it would not be good for future additional cross platform considerations - the Metal API is proprietary to Apple and is unlikely to be supported on other operating systems like Linux for example.

Also I would not be surprised if they will only make it available on pretty new versions of OSX, it's unlikely to be back ported to old versions. So that would make it a bad choice for compatibility even with OSX since it would prevent MoI from running on many versions of OSX currently in use...

So those are some big compatibility limiting problems that I would see with that strategy. Those are big enough problems that my first impression is that it would not make sense to target it instead of OpenGL for current considerations.

- Michael

Hi Michael, Correct Metal It's not OS independent, Apple FINNALLY taking control of the their low-level 3D API on their platform putting Nvidia and others where Apple wants them… as just another potential chip vendor. Something that Microsoft has been doing successfully for year with Direct3d…

By now we all know that "open standards" is an UTOPIA (at list in this case). For example Nvidia’s OpenGL is complete and functional, everybody else’s is crippled and inconsistent in random ways, that’s hardly a standard.

Also note that The khronos Group is ditching OpenGL in favour of VULKAN which I guess will have the same destiny as openGL IMO.

Anyway for year end users & developer been putting pressure on Apple for better drivers support etc.
Their answer is Metal and it look very attractive.

Now the ball is now in the developer court :)

Some examples from early adapters.

The Foundry demoing Metal in MODO at approx. 11:00
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=603

Adobe, demoing Metal in Illustrator and AfterEffects at approx. 1:32
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=102

Michael just to be clear I not asking you to go the extra mile and support Metal ( which I think would be great :) I am just thinking out loud.

Hi adamio, it's still early yet to know what will happen with Vulkan - that's another additional factor that makes it kind of unwise for me to jump in with Metal support right now.

But definitely the biggest barrier for me is actually OS X support - meaning all the already released versions of OS X. From what I have seen so far, Metal will only be supported on 10.11, probably not on any previous version. So if I were to only target that for the graphics API to use, MoI would not be usable on earlier OS X versions at all. That's an extremely significant disadvantage compared to targeting OpenGL, which does work on all versions of OS X.

If you can find out if Metal will be supported on earlier versions of OS X, that could make it a lot more interesting for me to look into.

re:
> Some examples from early adapters. <...>

Well, I hope you're aware that the Foundry and Adobe have considerably more developers working for them than I do. That makes it feasible for them to work on Metal as a side engine instead of their only supported one. Please keep in mind that I'm only one single person doing all the development work for MoI and that makes it difficult for me to do exploratory side work, I need to focus my efforts on the main line work that will be used by the most people.

- Michael

>If you can find out if Metal will be supported on earlier versions of OS X, that could make it a lot more interesting for me to look into.

According to Apple OS X adoption rate is very high, 55% of all mac are running the latest OS X. I thing you shouldn’t worry about that, after all upgrading OS X does cost $0.

Also Rav Dhiraj from the GPU software division states at 8'40"
Metal is supported by all Macs introduced since 2012. (Nvidia, AMD and Intel)
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=603


>Well, I hope you're aware that the Foundry and Adobe have considerably more developers working for them than I do. That makes it feasible for them to work on Metal as a side engine instead of their only supported one. Please keep in mind that I'm only one single person doing all the development work for MoI and that makes it difficult for me to do exploratory side work, I need to focus my efforts on the main line work that will be used by the most people.

Michael I am well aware of that and thats one of the reasons of me proposing Metal, (once the initial transition and teething pains are past) will actually be easier to maintain, with less time worrying about various driver and hardware compatibility issues.

Hi adamio,

> According to Apple OS X adoption rate is very high, 55% of all mac are running the
> latest OS X. I thing you shouldn’t worry about that, after all upgrading OS X
> does cost $0.

That's not enough for me not to worry about it - that leaves 45% of the Mac user base unable to run the software. That's a lot.

I currently have some MoI users running on 10.6 right now. I'm still hoping to support that on v4 but I'm not entirely sure if that will happen or not, it's possible I may need to require 10.7 minimum. But certainly jumping to require 10.11 is a very long way off from what I'm shooting for.


> Also Rav Dhiraj from the GPU software division states at 8'40"
> Metal is supported by all Macs introduced since 2012. (Nvidia, AMD and Intel)
> https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=603

But only when it's running 10.11, is that correct? No support on any currently released version of OS X, even 10.10 ?

- Michael

But only when it's running 10.11, is that correct? No support on any currently released version of OS X, even 10.10 ?

> Correct is an El Crappy situation for users running old OS...

OS X v10.11 Developer Beta supports the following Macs:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)

Well that makes it an easy choice not to worry about targeting it for the time being. I need an API that will be supported by 10.7 at a minimum.

Requiring 10.11 just to run MoI is a no-go.

- Michael

As a Linux user, obviously a native version would be ideal, but I'm happy as long as I can at least continue to run it with Wine.

Too bad that 64 bit wine is only able to run 64 bit windows binaries (here on my Linux there are no 32bit libraries at all, so unable to run moi3d). Hopefully v4 will be 64bit binary, too.

I think most distros include Wine compiled with both 32 bit and 64 bit enabled. I know that's true on Ubuntu and its derivatives (Mint, Elementary, etc.). I read that CentOS and RHEL only include 64 bit Wine, which I don't think is considered stable anyway, so that seems kind of silly to me.

Ohh, a 64bit version , that would make my day :).

Thanks for update Michael.

Hi Michael,

I was wondering if you are using Visual Studio 2012, or 2013, or 2015? As C++ compiler with Qt5...

I would guess that the commercial version of Qt5 cost $ ?


- Brian

Hi Brian,

> I was wondering if you are using Visual Studio 2012, or 2013, or
> 2015? As C++ compiler with Qt5...

I'm using Visual Studio 2013 and XCode 4.6.3 for the new rewrite. Previous versions were done using Visual Studio 2003.


> I would guess that the commercial version of Qt5 cost $ ?

I'm using the open source Qt version. There is a commercial version of Qt but also the open source version can be used for commercial projects as well since a few years ago they switched the license to LGPL instead of only GPL.

- Michael

> Later on in v4 I'll be doing some experiments with using different geometry libraries and see if it will be feasible to get filleting done by some other library.

yummy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Helo Michael,
In v4, is there any chance for possibility to access Moi3d-Script-API through COM interface ?

HI EDDI, re:

> In v4, is there any chance for possibility to access Moi3d-Script-API through COM interface ?

No, probably not too likely at least at first - one of the things that I've been working on for v4 is to actually eliminate the internal use of COM in MoI altogether since it's a Windows specific mechanism.

What is it that you're trying to do where that would be useful?

- Michael

Helo Michael,
>>What is it that you're trying to do where that would be useful?
Simply.
Not everyone wants to be programming in JScript, for me, with no experience in JScript, that makes it very limited.

>> It's a Windows specific mechanism.
Yes, powerful Windows API, dll calls, dll create, executable files, gui, predefined commands (as a single line), UDF's, familiar IDE and other scope for combination with the Moi3d-Api.

So I see no disadvantage to have this access in Moi3d.

Thanks Michael.
I'll have to try out a super simple C++ or javascript, or ? program with the free Visual Studio Community 2013 :-)
Looks like it is nearly equivalent to the pro version ($), and has something called Blend.

- Brian

Hi eddi,

> So I see no disadvantage to have this access in Moi3d.

The major disadvantage is that I'm trying to move MoI to have a cross-platform code base, but COM is a Windows only mechanism.

So it just does not work to have MoI be targeted as a cross platform program but also heavily based on COM at the same time - all the stuff for doing COM things only works under Windows and not on Mac.

It is a major focus of all the work I'm doing on the v4 rewrite to avoid platform specific code as much as possible, so more stuff for COM is not likely to happen anytime soon, sorry.

I do want to enhance stuff related to scripting in MoI in the future but that effort will be totally focused just on JavaScript language scripting, I do not expect to support other languages for scripting Moi anytime soon.

Maybe sometime in the future I can reintroduce a COM translation layer back into MoI just for the Windows version but I don't know when or even if that will happen.

Basically JavaScript is the only targeted scripting language for Moi, if you don't want to learn JavaScript then I'm sorry but you won't be able to do Moi scripting at least anytime soon.

- Michael