Impact of Apple's decision to deprecate OpenGL

Apple recently announced deprecation of openGL from their iOS and MacOS in their WWDC 2018.
Just wondering, what impact would it have on WebGL and Threejs.

Can someone please enlighten me?

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WebGL implementations are able to target different native 3D APIs e.g. OpenGL ES, OpenGL (Desktop) or Direct3D. It will be necessary for browsers to enhance their WebGL implementation so they are able to work with a Metal based render backend. AFAIK, Google’s ANGLE project already works on Vulkan support.

Ideally, you as a three.js developer won’t notice any difference if Apple is going to remove OpenGL from iOS and macOS. I guess it’s more a problem for game developers who were used to develop directly with OpenGL.

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From Dean Jackson (Apple) on Twitter:

At least for the time being, WebGL is fine. The longer-term implications (will they ship WebGL 2?) are harder to guess at.

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Yup, WebGL on Chome and FF in Windows is running on ANGLE which converts WebGL to DirectX.

Not sure what Edge does, but presumably it converts to DirectX in some way as well.

So, WebGL is already bypassing OpenGL in most (all?) cases on Windows. The same will presumably be done for Metal on Apple devices as well.

The longer-term implications (will they ship WebGL 2?) are harder to guess at.

@donmccurdy I’ve heard a few people on twitter expressing this opinion, but is there any reason why ANGLE or similar systems couldn’t be expanded to support WebGL2?

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but is there any reason why ANGLE or similar systems couldn’t be expanded to support WebGL2?

I think there is a misunderstanding. It’s not sure so far if Safari is going to support WebGL2. Other browser on macOS like Chrome or Firefox already do this.

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Perfect timing :blush:

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It’s a shame Apple is heading in this direction. Especially after fighting so hard to try to oust proprietary technologies, like Flash, only to turn around and embrace their own proprietary technology.

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@marquizzo Related :wink: Add support for USD and USDZ formats · Issue #14219 · mrdoob/three.js · GitHub

@Mugen87 Looks like we have ourselves a good ol’ fashioned format war!

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standards

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That’s why I like JSON. Never bothered to use any other format. :blush:

This is why I love this community. Nice memes, guys :stuck_out_tongue:

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FWIW It’s deprecation, not depreciation. :smiley:

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And that formats name was… Albert Einstein… No wait… I mean GLTF.