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CADisplayLink wrongly capping at 90hz on iPhone 15 Pro
I have a game for iOS where I use CADisplayLink to animate a simulation, and for some reason the animation is not getting the full 120hz on capable devices (like iPhone 15 Pro). When I enable a 120hz refresh target, the animation is capped at only 90hz. This looks terrible because the animation works best when doubled (30, 60, 120, 240, etc). The really bizarre thing is that when I turn on Screen Recording, my frame rate instantly jumps to 120, and everything looks perfectly smooth. My game has never looked better on iPhone! When recording is stopped, the animation drops back down to 90 fps. What in the world is going on? [displayLink setPreferredFrameRateRange:CAFrameRateRangeMake(100,240,120)]; //Min. Max, Preferred [displayLink addToRunLoop:[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode]; (Also, CADisableMinimumFrameDurationOnPhone is set to True in info.plist)
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514
Aug ’24
What triggers Game Mode?
What are the specific characteristics that trigger Game Mode in an iOS game? I have several casual SpriteKit games in the App Store but only one of them triggers Game Mode. What does GCSupportsGameMode do when set to true? Will it trigger Game Mode or will the OS still decide by itself?
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504
Sep ’24
Dynamic loading various USDZ files
I have various USDZ files in my visionOS app. Loading the USDZ files works quite well. I only have problems with the positioning of the 3D model. For example, I have a USDZ file that is displayed directly above me. I can't move the model or perform any other actions on it. If I sit on a chair or stand up again, the 3D model automatically moves with me. This is my source code for loading the USDZ files: struct ImmersiveView: View { @State var modelName: String @State private var loadedModel = Entity() var body: some View { RealityView { content in if let usdModel = try? await Entity(named: modelName) { print("====> \(modelName) : \(usdModel) <====") let bounds = usdModel.visualBounds(relativeTo: nil).extents usdModel.scale = SIMD3<Float>(1.0, 1.0, 1.0) usdModel.position = SIMD3<Float>(0.0, 0.0, 0.0) usdModel.components.set(CollisionComponent(shapes: [.generateBox(size: bounds)])) usdModel.components.set(HoverEffectComponent()) usdModel.components.set(InputTargetComponent()) loadedModel = usdModel content.add(usdModel) } } } } I only want the 3D models from the USDZ files to be displayed later, and later on, to be able to move them via gestures. Moving the models is step 2. First, I need to make sure the models are displayed correctly. What have I forgotten or done wrong?
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570
Aug ’24
Can't link metal-cpp to C++ framework in Swift Mac app
I have a very simple Mac app with just a MTKView in it which shows a single color. I want to move the rendering code to C++. For this I created a C++ framework target which interoperates with the Swift code - main project target. I am trying to link metal-cpp library to the C++ framework target using these instructions. Approach described in this article works with simple C++ Mac console apps. But in my mixed Swift/C++ project Xcode cannot find Foundation/Foundation.hpp (and probably other headers) to include into the C++ header. I inserted metal-cpp folder into my project and added it to C++ target's header search paths, as written in the instructions.
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650
Jun ’24
Metal UIView to transform what's behind it
I'm trying to create a custom Metal-based visual effect as a UIView to be used inside an existing UIKit-based interface. (An example might be a view that applies a blur effect to what's behind it.) I need to capture the MTLTexture of what's behind the view so that I can feed it to MTLRenderCommandEncoder.setFragmentTexture(_:index:). Can someone show me how or point me to an example? Thanks!
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430
Aug ’24
Cannot Display MTKView on a sheeted view on macOS15
I use xcode16 and swiftUI for programming on a macos15 system. There is a problem. When I render a picture through mtkview, it is normal when displayed on a regular view. However, when the view is displayed through the .sheet method, the image cannot be displayed. There is no error message from xcode. import Foundation import MetalKit import SwiftUI struct CIImageDisplayView: NSViewRepresentable { typealias NSViewType = MTKView var ciImage: CIImage init(ciImage: CIImage) { self.ciImage = ciImage } func makeNSView(context: Context) -&gt; MTKView { let view = MTKView() view.delegate = context.coordinator view.preferredFramesPerSecond = 60 view.enableSetNeedsDisplay = true view.isPaused = true view.framebufferOnly = false if let defaultDevice = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() { view.device = defaultDevice } view.delegate = context.coordinator return view } func updateNSView(_ nsView: MTKView, context: Context) { } func makeCoordinator() -&gt; RawDisplayRender { RawDisplayRender(ciImage: self.ciImage) } class RawDisplayRender: NSObject, MTKViewDelegate { // MARK: Metal resources var device: MTLDevice! var commandQueue: MTLCommandQueue! // MARK: Core Image resources var context: CIContext! var ciImage: CIImage init(ciImage: CIImage) { self.ciImage = ciImage self.device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() self.commandQueue = self.device.makeCommandQueue() self.context = CIContext(mtlDevice: self.device) } func mtkView(_ view: MTKView, drawableSizeWillChange size: CGSize) {} func draw(in view: MTKView) { guard let currentDrawable = view.currentDrawable, let commandBuffer = commandQueue.makeCommandBuffer() else { return } let dSize = view.drawableSize let drawImage = self.ciImage let destination = CIRenderDestination(width: Int(dSize.width), height: Int(dSize.height), pixelFormat: view.colorPixelFormat, commandBuffer: commandBuffer, mtlTextureProvider: { () -&gt; MTLTexture in return currentDrawable.texture }) _ = try? self.context.startTask(toClear: destination) _ = try? self.context.startTask(toRender: drawImage, from: drawImage.extent, to: destination, at: CGPoint(x: (dSize.width - drawImage.extent.width) / 2, y: 0)) commandBuffer.present(currentDrawable) commandBuffer.commit() } } } struct ShowCIImageView: View { let cii = CIImage.init(contentsOf: Bundle.main.url(forResource: "9-10", withExtension: "jpg")!)! var body: some View { CIImageDisplayView.init(ciImage: cii).frame(width: 500, height: 500).background(.red) } } struct ContentView: View { @State var showImage = false var body: some View { VStack { Image(systemName: "globe") .imageScale(.large) .foregroundStyle(.tint) Text("Hello, world!") ShowCIImageView() Button { showImage = true } label: { Text("showImage") } } .frame(width: 800, height: 800) .padding() .sheet(isPresented: $showImage) { ShowCIImageView() } } }
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356
Sep ’24
MTKTextureLoader loading texture error on visionOS2.0
hello everyone. I got a texture loading error on visionOS 2.0: Can't create texture(Error Domain=MTKTextureLoaderErrorDomain Code=0 "Pixel format(MTLPixelFormatInvalid) is not valid on this device" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Pixel format(MTLPixelFormatInvalid) is not valid on this device, MTKTextureLoaderErrorKey=Pixel format(MTLPixelFormatInvalid) is not valid on this device} But this texture can load correctly on visionOS1.3. I don't know what happen between visionOS1.3 and visionOS2.0. The texture is a ktx file which stores cubemap that encoding in astc6x6hdr. And the ktx texture has a glInternalFormat info: GL_COMPRESSED_RGBA_ASTC_6x6. I wonder if visionOS2.0 no longer supports astc6x6hdr cubemap format, or there is something wrong with my assets.
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Sep ’24
Particle burst with exact amount of particles
Hello dear forum, I need to emit an exact amount of particles from a SCNParticleSystem in a burst (this is for an UI effect). This worked for me perfectly in the scene editor by setting the birthrate to the amount and emission duration to 0. Sadly when I either load such a particle system from a scene or creating it by code, the emitted particles are sometimes one less, or one more. The first time I run it in the simulator, it seems to work fine but then amount of particles varies as described. video: https://youtube.com/shorts/MRzqWBy2ypA?feature=share Does anybody know how to make this predictable? Thanks so much in advance, Seb
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448
Sep ’24
Reality Composer Pro 2.0 shader graphs can't be loaded on visionOS 1
Using Reality Composer Pro 2.0, I created a simple shader graph that displays a texture on an unlit surface: On visionOS 2 beta, I can successfully use ShaderGraphMaterial(named:from:in:) to load that shader graph material and assign it to a model entity. However, on visionOS 1.2 and earlier, either in Simulator or on the device, ShaderGraphMaterial(named:from:in:) fails and I see the following logged to the console: If, using Reality Composer Pro 1.0, I experimentally open the same project and delete and recreate exactly the same nodes above, then ShaderGraphMaterial(named:from:in:) works as expected on visionOS 1.2. Is it a known issue that Reality Composer 2 can't be used with visionOS 1? Is this intentional behavior? I've submitted feedback as FB14828873, including a sample project and repro steps. If possible, I would appreciate guidance from an Apple engineer, like "This is a known issue for [list of node types]" or "Reality Composer Pro 2 is not supported for visionOS 1 development, please refer to [documentation]" or "We recommend [workaround]." Thank you.
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842
Aug ’24
Transferring Apps with iCloud KVS
Hi All! I'm being asked to migrate an app which utilizes iCloud KVS (Key Value Storage). This ability is a new-ish feature, and the documentation about this is sparse [1]. Honestly, the entire documentation about the new iCloud transfer functionality seems to be missing. Same with Game Center / GameKit. While the docs say that it should work, I'd like to understand the process in more detail. Has anyone migrated an iCloud KVS app? What happens after the transfer goes through, but before the first release? Do I need to do anything special? I see that the Entitlements file has the TeamID in the Key Value store - is that fine? <key>com.apple.developer.ubiquity-kvstore-identifier</key> <string>$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)$(CFBundleIdentifier)</string> Can someone please share their experience? Thank you! [1] https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/transfer-an-app/overview-of-app-transfer
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1.6k
May ’23
Error "No Apple native plug-in libraries found." when importing freshly built plugins into Unity
I just built Core and GameKit without errors. The command line I used was the following: python3 build.py -p Core GameKit -m macOS -c "Apple Development ID (redacted)" When importing these packages into Unity, as soon as the editor refreshes I get these errors: DllNotFoundException: GameKitWrapper assembly:<unknown assembly> type:<unknown type> member:(null) And DllNotFoundException: AppleCoreNativeMac assembly:<unknown assembly> type:<unknown type> member:(null) And Apple Unity Plug-ins] No Apple native plug-in libraries found. Were the libraries built with the build script (build.py), xcodebuild, or Xcode? Was any output generated from the build script/tool? Were there any errors or issues? Please check to ensure that libraries (.a, .framework, or .bundle files) were created and saved to each plug-in's "NativeLibraries~" folder. I made sure that the libraries were saved to this NativeLibraries folder. I made sure to update xcode, python, npm and Unity to the latest version, got the most recent commity from Github (Sept. 17th) but the errors persist. The errors also occur right as the game starts in a built player. Also occurs in a blank Unity project, where I tested both 2022.3.17f and 2022.3.48f. The versions I was trying to import was Core 3.1.4 and GameKit 3.0.0. Same issue with Core 3.1.3 and Gamekit 2.2.2. Last version I tried that works was Core 1.05 and GameKit 1.04. I haven't seen anyone else encounter this on these forums so I'm guessing that I'm personally doing something wrong rather than there being an issue with the plugins themselves, but what am I doing wrong?
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558
Sep ’24
Why is the speed of metal shading kernel so slow?
Hi, I am recently writing metal shader language to parallelize the algorithms to accelerate the speed of it. I created a simple example to show the acceleration result of it. Since Rust is used in our algorithm, so I used metal-rs as the wrapper to execute the MSL kernels from rust side. In this example, I am calculating the result of two arrays, and kernel looks like: kernel void two_array_addition_2( constant uint* a [[buffer(0)]], constant uint* b [[buffer(1)]], device uint* c [[buffer(2)]], uint idx [[thread_position_in_grid]] ) { c[idx] = a[idx] + b[idx]; } in the main.rs, you can see a function called execute_kernel() , this function has all it needs to execute the kernel in MSL (such as commandEncoder, piplelineState, etc). use core::mem; use metal::{Buffer, MTLSize}; use objc::rc::autoreleasepool; use std::time::Instant; use two_array_addition::abstractions::state::MetalState; fn execute_kernel( name: &str, state: &MetalState, input_a: &Buffer, input_b: &Buffer, output_c: &Buffer, ) -> Vec<u32> { // assert!(input_a.len() == input_b.len() && input_a.len() == output_c.len()); // let len = input_a.len() as u64; let len = input_a.length() as u64 / mem::size_of::<u32>() as u64; // 1. Init the MetalState // - we inited it // 2. Set up Pipeline State let pipeline = state.setup_pipeline(name).unwrap(); // 3. Allocate the buffers for A, B, and C // - we allocated outside of this function let mut result: &[u32] = &[]; autoreleasepool(|| { // 4. Create the command buffer & command encoder let (command_buffer, command_encoder) = state.setup_command( &pipeline, Some(&[(0, input_a), (1, input_b), (2, output_c)]), ); // 5. command encoder dispatch the threadgroup size and num of threads per threadgroup let threadgroup_count = MTLSize::new((len + 256 - 1) / 256, 1, 1); let thread_per_threadgroup = MTLSize::new(256, 1, 1); // let grid_size = MTLSize::new(len, 1, 1); // let threadgroup_count = MTLSize::new(pipeline.max_total_threads_per_threadgroup(), 1, 1); command_encoder.dispatch_thread_groups(threadgroup_count, thread_per_threadgroup); command_encoder.end_encoding(); command_buffer.commit(); command_buffer.wait_until_completed(); // 6. Copy the result back to the host let start = Instant::now(); result = MetalState::retrieve_contents::<u32>(output_c); let duration = start.elapsed(); println!("Duration for copying result back to host: {:?}", duration); }); result.to_vec() } The performance of the result is kinda interesting to me. This is the result: $ cargo run -r This is expected to run for a while... please wait... Generating input arrays... Generating input arrays... Generating output array... Generating expected output... Duration for allocating buffers: 2.015258s Executing 1st kernel (1)... Duration for copying result back to host: 5.75µs Executing 1st kernel (2)... Duration for copying result back to host: 542ns Executing 2nd kernel (1)... Duration for copying result back to host: 1µs Executing 2nd kernel (2)... Duration for copying result back to host: 458ns Duration expected: 183.406167ms Duration for 1st kernel (1): 1.894994875s Duration for 1st kernel (2): 537.318208ms Duration for 2nd kernel (1): 501.33275ms Duration for 2nd kernel (2): 497.339916ms You have successfully run the kernels! The speed is slower when executing in the MSL kernel, while I reckon of the dataset is quite big ($2^{29}$) The first kernel execution takes more time to launch. Is there any way to optimize the MSL in this case? And in most case, when you design the algorithm into parallelism, what would be the concerns? The machine I am using is M1 Pro with 14-core GPU and 16 GB memory. Does anyone have idea / explanation for why these happen? Thank you
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345
Sep ’24
Can't link metal-cpp to Modern Rendering With Metal sample
There is a sample project from Apple here. It has a scene of a city at night and you can move in it. It basically has 2 parts: application code written in what looks like Objective-C (I am more familiar with C++), which inherits from things like NSObject, MTKView, NSViewController and so on - it processes input and all app-related and window-related stuff. rendering code that also looks like Objective-C. Btw both parts are mostly in .mm files (Obj-C++ AFAIK). The application part directly uses only one class from the rendering part - AAPLRenderer. I want to move the rendering part to C++ using metal-cpp. For that I need to link metal-cpp to the project. I did it successfully with blank projects several times before using this tutorial. But with this sample project Xcode can't find Foundation/Foundation.hpp (and other metal-cpp headers). The error says this: Did not find header 'Foundation.hpp' in framework 'Foundation' (loaded from '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX15.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks') Pls help
1
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357
Sep ’24
Having problems with the game porting toolkit
So I'm installing the toolkit but during the process the terminal just gives me this: Last 15 lines from /Users/quiqu/Library/Logs/Homebrew/game-porting-toolkit/01.configure: --enable-win64 --with-gnutls --with-freetype --with-gstreamer CC=/usr/local/opt/game-porting-toolkit-compiler/bin/clang CXX=/usr/local/opt/game-porting-toolkit-compiler/bin/clang++ checking build system type... x86_64-apple-darwin23.5.0 checking host system type... x86_64-apple-darwin23.5.0 checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for gcc... /usr/local/opt/game-porting-toolkit-compiler/bin/clang checking whether the C compiler works... no configure: error: in /private/tmp/game-porting-toolkit-20240928-16869-7g5o5t/wine64-build': configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables See config.log' for more details If reporting this issue please do so to (not Homebrew/brew or Homebrew/homebrew-core): apple/apple quiqu@Quiques-Laptop ~ % please if someone could help I have a tournament this weekend and I need this to work
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638
Sep ’24
Options to have MSAA in Tile-Based Deferred Renderer
Hi folks, I'm working on a Tile based Deferred renderer, similar to this Apple example. I'm wondering how to add MSAA to the renderer, and I see two choices: Copy the single-sampled texture at the end of the GBuffer/Lighting render pass to a multi-sampled texture and resolve from that Make all render targets (GBuffer) multi-sampled and deal with sampling/resolving all intermediate textures as well as the final, combined texture. Which is the proper approach, and are there any examples of how to implement it? Thanks!
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278
Sep ’24