Render advanced 3D graphics and perform data-parallel computations using graphics processors using Metal.

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Metal: Non-uniform thread groups unsupported in Simulator? Is it?
My app is running Compute Shaders that use non-uniform thread groups. When I run the app in the debugger with a simulator target the app crashes on encoder.dispatchThreads and the error message is: Dispatch Threads with Non-Uniform Threadgroup Size is not supported on this device. Previously the log output states that: Metal Shader Validation is unsupported for Simulator. However: When I stop the debugger and just run the app in the simulator without the debugger attached, the app just runs fine and does not crash. The SwiftUI Preview that also triggers the Compute Shader when preparing data also just runs fine without a crash. I can run and debug on a real device no problem - I just don't have all sizes available. Is there anything I need to check in my lldb/simulator configuration? It obviously does work, just the debugger cannot really deal with it? Any input would be nice as this really slows my down as I have to be extremely careful when debugging on the simulator.
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Mar ’25
Implementing Scalable Order-Independent Transparency (OIT) in Metal
Hi, Apple’s documentation on Order-Independent Transparency (OIT) describes an approach using image blocks, where an array of size 4 is allocated per fragment to store depth and color in a tile shading compute pass. However, when increasing the scene’s depth complexity by adding more overlapping quads, the OIT implementation fails due to the fixed array size. Is there a way to dynamically allocate storage for fragments based on actual depth complexity encountered during rasterization, rather than using a fixed-size array? Specifically, can an adaptive array of fragments be maintained and sorted by depth, where the size grows as needed instead of being limited to 4 entries? Any insights or alternative approaches would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Mar ’25
Why is depth/stencil buffer loaded/stored twice in xcode gpu capture?
I used xcode gpu capture to profile render pipeline's bandwidth of my game.Then i found depth buffer and stencil buffer use the same buffer whitch it's format is Depth32Float_Stencil8. But why in a single pass of pipeline, this buffer was loaded twice, and the Load Attachment Size of Encoder Statistics was double. Is there any bug with xcode gpu capture?Or the pass really loaded the buffer twice times?
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Mar ’25
MetalFx
Recently, I adopted MetalFX for Upscale feature. However, I have encountered a persistent build failure for the iOS Simulator with the error message, 'MetalFX is not available when building for iOS Simulator.' To address this, I modified the MetalFX.framework status to 'Optional' within Build Phases > Link Binary With Libraries, adding the linker option (-weak_framework). Despite this adjustment, the build process continues to fail. Furthermore, I observed that the MetalFX sample application provided by Apple, specifically the one found at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalfx/applying-temporal-antialiasing-and-upscaling-using-metalfx, also fails to build for the iOS Simulator target. Has anyone encountered this issue?
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Mar ’25
How to properly pass a Metal layer from SwiftUI MTKView to C++ for use with metal-cpp?
Hello! I'm currently porting a videogame console emulator to iOS and I'm trying to make the renderer (tested on MacOS) work on iOS as well. The emulator core is written in C++ and uses metal-cpp for rendering, whereas the iOS frontend is written in Swift with SwiftUI. I have an Objective-C++ bridging header for bridging the Swift and C++ sides. On the Swift side, I create an MTKView. Inside the MTKView delegate, I run the emulator for 1 video frame and pass it the view's backing layer for it to render the final output image with. The emulator runs and returns, but when it returns I get a crash in Swift land (callstack attached below), inside objc_release, which indicates I'm doing something wrong with memory management. My bridging interface (ios_driver.h): #pragma once #include <Foundation/Foundation.h> #include <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> void iosCreateEmulator(); void iosRunFrame(CAMetalLayer* layer); Bridge implementation (ios_driver.mm): #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> extern "C" { #include "ios_driver.h" } <...> #define IOS_EXPORT extern "C" __attribute__((visibility("default"))) std::unique_ptr<Emulator> emulator = nullptr; IOS_EXPORT void iosCreateEmulator() { ... } // Runs 1 video frame of the emulator and IOS_EXPORT void iosRunFrame(CAMetalLayer* layer) { void* layerBridged = (__bridge void*)layer; // Pass the CAMetalLayer to the emulator emulator->getRenderer()->setMTKLayer(layerBridged); // Runs the emulator for 1 frame and renders the output image using our layer emulator->runFrame(); } My MTKView delegate: class Renderer: NSObject, MTKViewDelegate { var parent: ContentView var device: MTLDevice! init(_ parent: ContentView) { self.parent = parent if let device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() { self.device = device } super.init() } func mtkView(_ view: MTKView, drawableSizeWillChange size: CGSize) {} func draw(in view: MTKView) { var metalLayer = view.layer as! CAMetalLayer // Run the emulator for 1 frame & display the output image iosRunFrame(metalLayer) } } Finally, the emulator's render function that interacts with the layer: void RendererMTL::setMTKLayer(void* layer) { metalLayer = (CA::MetalLayer*)layer; } void RendererMTL::display() { CA::MetalDrawable* drawable = metalLayer->nextDrawable(); if (!drawable) { return; } MTL::Texture* texture = drawable->texture(); <rest of rendering follows here using the drawable & its texture> } This is the Swift callstack at the time of the crash: To my understanding, I shouldn't be violating ARC rules as my bridging header uses CAMetalLayer* instead of void* and Swift will automatically account for ARC when passing CoreFoundation objects to Objective-C. However I don't have any other idea as to what might be causing this. I've been trying to debug this code for a couple of days without much success. If you need more info, the emulator code is also on Github Metal renderer: https://github.com/wheremyfoodat/Panda3DS/blob/ios/src/core/renderer_mtl/renderer_mtl.cpp#L58-L68 Bridge implementation: https://github.com/wheremyfoodat/Panda3DS/blob/ios/src/ios_driver.mm Bridging header: https://github.com/wheremyfoodat/Panda3DS/blob/ios/include/ios_driver.h Any help is more than appreciated. Thank you for your time in advance.
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Mar ’25