Metal will make iOS the best platform for mobile game developers

Among the many new products presented during 2-hour presentation at the Apple WWDC, Three were specifically designed for game developers: updated SpriteKit, SceneKit and Metal, a new framework, opening the door to improved performance of powerful advanced iOS-games.

Metal gives developers a set of functions that are "closer to the hardware" than to the OpenGL, programming interface, is traditionally used in the iOS (and Mac, Android, and some of the game consoles). This means that developers will have direct control over the graphics part, which will improve performance, because the system itself will consume less resources to process information.

From a practical point of view, for the majority of developers will not change anything, the novelty will affect those who wants to truly "to potter about in the guts" of the code to improve performance graphics. There is a whole industry of creating game engines that developers did not invent the wheel when you create a new project. If Apple will be able to engage these creators of the engines, with their help it can bring to the game Metal iOS-industry.

As it turned out, some teams have already started to build in their engines Metal. The other day the chief specialist Unity3D Aras Prankevichus tweeted that their company already has built Metal in your engine, and all the time it was the fastest transition 3D API.

In his blog, Nat Brown, iOS-developer and consultant for startups, says that the appearance of Metal does not mean that developers will no longer create games for Android. Because most programmers do not even faced with this new framework, because it is built into the engines of other developers. But gamers through some time will notice a much improved graphics in iOS-games. Metal will use the commands that create cursors, frameworks and toolkits for mobile gaming. Such as Unity3D, Unreal Engine and some other companies involved iOS-games.

In fact, the market already have Metal equivalents for other operating systems: Mantle and AMD's DirectX 12 from Microsoft Windows and Xbox. But these companies do not have full control over the ecosystem of devices, and it imposes restrictions on the optimization of each individual equipment. Ryan Smith of Anandtech wrote: "The Apple - good position, because, unlike the others, it has a complete vertical system. Apple is developing its own processors, places on it a electronic circuit and wrote under it their operating system. The only part of the chain, which does not control Apple - this GPU. And then, the last 7 years kupertinovtsy use technology only to Imagination Technologies PowerVR, and it is unlikely that it will change soon. "

When the similarity of iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with the processor A7, and in the near future - A8, Metal need to be optimized only for one set of devices. Because of the variety of products with Android engines, Google will be unable to create a framework, similar to Metal. So, very interesting, as the appearance of Metal impact on the gaming industry as a whole.

via TechCrunch