Unlike pervious years, there are no sessions, or anything, for SceneKit.
Are we supposed to go to Unity and (ugh) C#?
Was there some sort of fallout with the SceneKit group?
Was it written in Obj-C so it's a forgotten stepchild?
Is Apple only interested in USDZ support?
Reality Composer seems like a rudimentary editor for iPad and iPhone.
No new features or editor improvements.
Seems like it's been dropped in the hold with OpenGL.
There's been time invested. Apple, guidance please?
I think SceneKit hasn't been abandoned, but the lack of updates and dedicated sessions this year is certainly discouraging. It seems they are currently focusing on ARKit and Metal.
I'm on the pre-planning stage for a 3D iOS/macOS game, and my intention was to use SceneKit, since it's a really nice high-level native framework (except for the editor, ugh!). But now, I'm seriously considering Unity.
It would be nice to know if Apple has any plans to support Scene Kit in the future with new additions, improved editor, more sample code, etc.
No updates in 2 years + both SpriteKit & SceneKit weren't that great anyway + not many developers were using them since most would use Metal or Unity = left for dead
Same request for Apple.
Will we be able to use a RealityKit Scene instance in an SCNView to create an immersive experience (as opposed to an AR experience)?
I also saw the lack of WWDC 2019 sessions regarding SceneKit (or SpriteKit) as a cause for alarm. My company is pretty heavily invested in a project using both. Switching to Metal seems ruled out to us (just given how low-level it is) - and switching to Unity is something we don't want to do, and something Apple should be motivatived to discourage....
I want to echo the request in this thread that someone from Apple should provide some reassurance. Obviously, we don't need to worry about SceneKit (or SpriteKit) going away any time in the next few years - which is a long time for software - but it would be really great if someone at Apple could indicate that teams remain committed to the frameworks, and that improvements, not just bug fixes, will continue.
SceneKit is referenced in a number of AR and 3D related technologies and USD is deeply integrated into SceneKit. Scenes can be exported to USDZ. USD PBR material options, such as "clear coat", have been added, etc. While this isn't a major new rendering or animation feature, like motion blur or vertex skinning, it makes SceneKit a first class way to render USD content.
Core data hasn't seen many updates lately, but that doesn't mean it's "dead."
They may have added ClearCoat and a few associated parts, but having no documentation for it,
other than that it exists, doesn't fill one with confidence. All of the new SceneKit additions have empty
documentation. How much effort would it have taken to include a few lines explaining their function?
Are there any Apple developers on the other end of the line actually working on SceneKit any more?
After years of WWDC video classes, examples, along with major updates, suddenly going to nothing
this year just seems strange, specially with Apple Arcade coming. Seems like Scene/Sprite Kit would
be at the heart of several of those "indie" games. Did Apple see it all move to Unity, Unreal, or private
custom engines and Apple internally threw in the towel? Are we getting Newton-ed or OpenDoc-ed?
Poor way to treat your developers. What happens when AR goes out of fashion? (and it might, soon)
USD is cool, but you can't make a game out of loading AR furniture and dinosaurs running around in
Apple Park, and looking at them with an iPhone camera. AR does nothing to sell more Macs.
Do they think there will be some big market for selling USD/AR objects in the AppStore like they say they
will be doing with fonts? The Oculus Rift nudged another blip in VR history, but interest is fading again.
I'm using SceneKit to make a 3D game for iOS/iPadOS. I'm praying that Apple continues its support, otherwise I'm stuck dealing with making everything again from scratch with a commercial game engine.
No updates to SceneKit this year, either. I think Apple is subtly telling us to move to RealityKit, even for 3D-only (non-AR) games...
You are welcome to use either framework to build your app, RealityKit or SceneKit. We have no preference either way, and you should evaluate which one works best for your app. SceneKit is supported on platforms like watchOS and tvOS, while RealityKit is not. Additionally, SceneKit has a more customizable rendering pipeline. On the other hand, RealityKit is a more modern framework built for rendering AR content. So each framework has its strengths and weaknesses.
It is unfortunate that SceneKit appears to be abandoned. It would have been nice to get for example raytracing capabilities added into SceneKit. Feels like that would have been a fairly natural fit. I have always really liked SceneKit and want to thank the Apple engineers that worked on it. It is such a well designed system, especially for getting started quickly. When using plain OpenGL back in the days, the most painful painful and frustrating part of a project was often to get to the point when you could see a first triangle (or other 3D object) on screen. SceneKit made that so much faster and better by having smart defaults for automatic camera and light configuration. I think it probably fell short in its ambition to become a game engine able to compete with Unity, Unreal etc. I think the share of full-fledged games created in SceneKit compared to those engines has got to be tiny. But for just displaying some objects in 3D, making them look great and animating them in simple ways SceneKit still is fantastic.
PS: Using SCNMaterialProperty.contents from type-safety obsessed Swift always amuses and delights me 😄 That's got to be one of the most promiscuous APIs Apple offers.
I agree with @ppix, it's a shame that SceneKit and SpriteKit look to be abandoned (not officially, but it's pretty clear they're not getting much love going forward). With a little more building out and some more comprehensive documentation, these could have been a prefect balance of ease of use and performance. Being able to use them in Swift was wonderful (although I started using them in Obj-C).
But yeah, thanks for these APIs, as imperfect as they were, they were great for a while. I found them very useful for writing utility apps, such as for touchscreens used in broadcast.
I hope they revive SceneKit a bit when they eventually release whatever AR/VR project they have hidden away. It would be a shame to have to make games using non-native tools for what ever they release.
Having to use non-native tools for making anything is never a good experience
There was a WWDC21 session for SceneKit where they talked about adding game controllers: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10081/
They also updated the demo Fox code so that it can run on M1 Macs now.