I'll post the link again since you apparently DID NOT read it: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/06/17/wwdc-unity-metal-tessellation-demo/
Apparently, Metal supports compute shaders. Now, the ball is in Frontier's backyard.
Engineers Engineers needs a branch for Mac users in stations
- Thread starter Ludo Madrid
- Start date
I'll post the link again since you apparently DID NOT read it: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/06/17/wwdc-unity-metal-tessellation-demo/
Apparently, Metal supports compute shaders. Now, the ball is in Frontier's backyard.
I believe that the next iteration of the Mac native OS, Sierra (which is not officially released yet) has improvements to Metal.
Metal Feature Sets
(Hope it makes sense to some, I can't understand a word of it)
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It's not that black & white. "Metal supports compute shaders in some unspecified manner" isn't the same as "Metal supports compute shaders in a way that gives acceptable results in a specific project".... that's why I said in the very paragraph you picked out:
and in the following post said:
There's absolutely no point linking Unity3D blogs and going "Well Unity has support so some developers can come up with a use for it in their projects, so Frontier can".
Software doesn't work that way. Especially when you have a engine developed to target one situation as that's how it was at the time, and then a company goes and buggers about further, cuts supporting what they had supported and the whole situation ends up making continued support more of a headache to approach in a practical manner for existing software.
That's why I didn't bother to read your link in relation to if it's viable for Frontier to utilise, as it doesn't really contribute anything at all to Elite Dangerous and what is and isn't practical.
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It is conceivable that what wasn't possible with the first iteration of OS X Metal may be possible with the second iteration that comes with the release of Sierra.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
There's also quite a difference with a larger company supporting Metal on their Engine (and therefore getting their engine to be the defacto one) vs a smaller development house supporting their own proprietary game on same platform....
Yes Metal has a large base now with iOS and tvOS and macOS etc but unless Frontier feel that they're missing out on a significant portion of their own revenue potential because they won't rewrite their entire engine core onto a new API standard they won't.
Time vs Effort vs Reward... its tough but i don't see it changing .... Seems like Frontier are already barely keeping up with their own release schedules let alone undertaking a major rewrite which would take away from their core team a lot of highly skilled and specialised coders.
Yes Metal has a large base now with iOS and tvOS and macOS etc but unless Frontier feel that they're missing out on a significant portion of their own revenue potential because they won't rewrite their entire engine core onto a new API standard they won't.
Time vs Effort vs Reward... its tough but i don't see it changing .... Seems like Frontier are already barely keeping up with their own release schedules let alone undertaking a major rewrite which would take away from their core team a lot of highly skilled and specialised coders.
'Once OS X has been updated to support OpenGL compute shaders, or other technical options are available to us, we will certainly be very keen on supporting that platform.'
Time vs Effort vs Reward vs Reputation.
Time vs Effort vs Reward vs Reputation.
It'd be awesome to play ED on my Apple TV, though!
Just to get back to the OP - there isn't any reason the effect of the engineers functionality shouldn't be accessible to people on mac's - without Horizons. Tweaking your ship could be implemented easily in the game.
Hehe, or sell that filth and buy a real computer?
(Just kidding of course)
Apple should just stop releasing out of date computers that simply look nice.
The computers are fine, it's just the version of open gl that isn't. Metal their own graphics API doesn't cut the mustard either from what I can gather.
Well, Horizons and the engineers were part of the 2.1 update, which was a paid update. I understand that Frontier needs money to keep developing and adding features. It wouldn't make sense if they were making paid features suddenly free to those who didn't pay for the upgrade. So, I respect that. But, for those of us who did purchase the Horizons updates and the Lifetime Expansion Pass, it would be nice to have access to engineers and not having to reboot in Bootcamp each time.