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Threadgroup memory for fragment shader
Hello I am trying to get thread group memory access in fragment shader. In essence, I would like to have all the fragments in a tile to bitwiseOR some value. My idea was to use simd_or across the SIMD group, then make each SIMD group thread 0 to atomic or the value into thread group memory. Finally very first thread of the tile would be tasked with writing the value down to texture with write access. Now, I can allocate the thread group memory argument to the fragment function all right. MTLRenderEncoder has setThreadgroupMemoryLength call, which I am using the following way [renderEncoder setThreagroupMemoryLength: 16 offset: 0 atIndex:0] Unfortunately, all I am getting is the following error (runtime assertion) -[MTLDebugRenderCommandEncoder setThreadgroupMemoryLength:offset:atIndex:]:3487: failed assertion Set Threadgroup Memory Length Validation offset + length(16) must be <= threadgroupMemoryLength(0).` What I am doing wrong? How I can get thread group memory in the fragment shader? I know I could use tile shading and compute function but the problem is that here I really like to use fragment stuff. Will be grateful for help.
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116
Apr ’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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605
Mar ’25
Achievement Banners Not always Showing
When running on my iPhone SE3 under IOS 18.4.1, achievement banners show as expected. The same code running on my iPad Air2 under IOS 15.8.4, achievement banners do not show, but they are accepted (as shown in the GameCenterViewController). The banners also don't show when running the simulator under iPhone 16 Pro Max under IOS 18.2 or simulator under iPhone SE3 under IOS 18.3. I haven't tried others. [Note that I clear the achievements each run during test so that I can duplicate this]
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118
May ’25
ProjectiveTransformCameraComponent with custom matrix
I'm looking to create an effect on iOS that tracks the user's face position with ARKit and shifts nearer/more prominent geometry in the scene around while more "distant" geometry stays fixed to the XY plane - making it look like the geometry on screen "sticks out" I've managed to implement most of this successfully, but it's not perfect when using PerspectiveCameraComponent in RealityKit because as I shift the camera (and change its field of view based on the user's distance) the backplane changes its orientation (it's always orthogonal to camera's direction). I've tried adopting ProjectiveTransformCameraComponent instead. The idea is that the camera shifts around the scene, mirroring the user's head's position, looking at (0,0,0) and the back plane is adjusted to be parallel with the X,Y plane (animation replicated in Blender below). However, I can't manage to set up ProjectiveTransformCameraComponent with an appropriate matrix or update its transform property in a RealityKit System correctly. I also tried setting many simpler projection matrices as described in a number of guides on camera projection matrices on the internet and all I get is a blank view. Does anyone have some guidance on what the projection matrix that ProjectiveTransformCameraComponent expects is meant to look like or how I would go about accomplishing my goal?
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144
Jun ’25
ARView [.showStatistics] doesn't work on Xcode Canvas
Hi, I can't see RealityKit statistics on Xcode Canvas using: arView.debugOptions = [.showStatistics] The statistics only show on a physical device, not Xcode live canvas with #Preview. Testing in Xcode 26.0.1 (17A400) on Tahoe 26.0.1 (25A362). Use case: I'm using RealityKit as a non-AR 3D engine. Xcode Canvas is useful for live iterations. Is this expected behavior? How can I see FPS on Xcode canvas? SKView for example shows all debug options on both Xcode Canvas and physical devices.
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465
Oct ’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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579
Mar ’25
Metal triangle strips uniform opacity.
I have this drawing app that I have been working on for the past few years when I have free time. I recently rebuilt the app in Metal to build out other brushes and improve performance, need to render 10000s of lines in realtime. I’m running into this issue trying to create a uniform opacity per path. I have a solution but do not love it - as this is a realtime app and the solution could have some bottlenecks. If I just generate a triangle strip from touch points and do my best to smooth, resample, and handle miters I will always get some overlaps. See: To create a uniform opacity I render to an offscreen texture with blending disabled. I then pre-multiply the color and draw that texture to a composite texture with blending on (I do this per path). This works but gets tricky when you introduce a textured brush, the edges of the texture in the frag shader cut out the line. Pasted Graphic 1.png Solution: I discard below a threshold fragment float4 fragment_line(VertexOut in [[stage_in]], texture2d<float> texture [[ texture(0) ]]) { constexpr sampler s(coord::normalized, address::mirrored_repeat, filter::linear); float2 texCoord = in.texCoord; float4 texColor = texture.sample(s, texCoord); if (texColor.a < 0.01) discard_fragment(); // may be slow (from what I read) return in.color * texColor; } Better but still not perfect. Question: I'm looking for better ways to create a uniform opacity per path. I tried .max blending but that will cause no blending of other paths. Any tips, ideas, much appreciated. If this is too detailed of a question just achieve.
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115
Mar ’25
GPTK did not build error
Hey there, I tried to install GPTK again, since I had to reinstall the OS for irrelevant reasons. But every time I try to install the tool kit, it gives me theError: apple/apple/game-porting-toolkit 1.1 did not build error. Before that error occired, I had the Openssl error, which I fixed with the rbenv version of openssl. Is there any way to fix this error? Down bellow you'll find the full error message it gave me. The specs for my Mac are (if they are helpful in any way): M1 Pro MBP 14" with 16GB Ram and 512GB SSD. Thanks! ``Error: apple/apple/game-porting-toolkit 1.1 did not build Logs: /Users/myuser/Library/Logs/Homebrew/game-porting-toolkit/00.options.out /Users/myuser/Library/Logs/Homebrew/game-porting-toolkit/01.configure /Users/myuser/Library/Logs/Homebrew/game-porting-toolkit/01.configure.cc /Users/myuser/Library/Logs/Homebrew/game-porting-toolkit/wine64-build If reporting this issue please do so at (not Homebrew/brew or Homebrew/homebrew-core): https://github.com/apple/homebrew-apple/issues```
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724
Mar ’25
Query GPU metrics
Hello! I'm a developer working on a plugin for the Elgato Stream Deck, called GPU Metrics. The plugin currently only works on Windows but I'd like to bring it to macOS. However, based on forum posts I've read (and StackOverflow) there isn't a very clear path to query GPU metrics like usage, temperature, used GPU memory, and power consumption. There are some tools out there that do similar things, but I wanted to see what would be the recommendation from Apple's engineering team to get this data via a public API. Requirements: Access GPU utilization, temperature, memory usage, power usage C/C++ based API for querying the metrics so I can expose the data to JavaScript via Node Addon No need to compatibile with Intel-based Macs, as Apple silicon will be fine for now Plugin GitHub Thank you! Noah
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141
May ’25
How to verify with the appropriate signing authority that Apple signed the public key
Hello I trying to implement authentication via apple services in unity game with server made as another unity app On client side I succesfully got teamPlayerID signature salt timestamp publicKeyUrl According to this documentation https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamekit/gklocalplayer/fetchitems(foridentityverificationsignature:)?language=objc I have to Verify with the appropriate signing authority that Apple signed the public key. As I said my server is special build of unity project So now I have this kind of C# programm to check apple authority over public certificate i got from publicKeyUrl TextAsset textAsset; byte[] bytes; textAsset = Resources.Load&lt;TextAsset&gt;("AppleRootCA-G3"); bytes = textAsset.bytes; rootCert.ChainPolicy.ExtraStore.Add(new X509Certificate2(bytes)); textAsset = Resources.Load&lt;TextAsset&gt;("AppleRootCA-G2"); bytes = textAsset.bytes; rootCert.ChainPolicy.ExtraStore.Add(new X509Certificate2(bytes)); textAsset = Resources.Load&lt;TextAsset&gt;("AppleIncRootCertificate"); bytes = textAsset.bytes; rootCert.ChainPolicy.ExtraStore.Add(new X509Certificate2(bytes)); rootCert.Build(cert); Where cert is X509Certificate2 object I ge from publicKeyUrl AppleIncRootCertificate AppleRootCA-G2 AppleRootCA-G3 is certificates I got from https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/ But it is not work Anytime rootCert.Build(cert); return false Why it is not work? May be I build keychain using wrong root CA cert? Or whole approach incorrect? Please help
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151
Jun ’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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375
Mar ’25
RealityKit - How to change camera target in response of a touch event?
Hello, I’m porting my UIKit/SceneKit app to SwiftUI/RealityKit and I’m wondering how to change the camera target programmatically. I created a simple scene in Reality Composer Pro with two spheres. My goal is straightforward: when the user taps a sphere, the camera should look at it as the main target. Following Apple’s videos, I implemented the .gesture modifier and it is printing the tapped sphere correctly, but updating my targetEntity state doesn’t change anything, so the camera won't update its target. Is there a way to access the scene content at that level? Or what else should I do? Here’s my current code implementation: Thanks!
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319
Sep ’25
How do I control a SwiftUI TextField with a game controller?
I've coded a text-adventure game in SwiftUI. (My game has no graphics or sound effects.) My app already supports keyboard navigation; I would like to add support for game controllers on iPhone. I can't figure out how to do it. I especially can't see any way to allow controller users to enter text in a TextField. I've read https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamecontroller/supporting-game-controllers and it's all about button events. There's no reference to SwiftUI at all in that documentation, or any input-method editing at all. The only mention of "keyboard" is about treating the keyboard itself as if it were a game controller providing button events. How do I implement this?
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3w
How to add and remove child entities to a rigged entity in RealityKit?
I am currently using RealityKit (perspective camera) to render a character in my swiftUI app. The character has customization such as clothing items and hair and all objects are properly weighted to the rig. The way the model is setup in Blender is like so: Groups of objects that will be swapped (ex: Shoes -> Shoes objects) and an armature. I then export it to usdc with all objects active. This is the resulting hierarchy: Before exporting for the animation (armature modifier applied), I simply had to store the Model entities and swap them in but now when I export with the Armature Modifier applied, so that animations get exported, the ModelComponent gets flattened to the armature and swapping entities and applying new materials to them is no longer as simple. Here's a demo blend file and usdc export with a setup like mine, having an animated bone to swing a cube and sphere, to be swapped so that only one is visible https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/be2q6qcztc83z7c4gj1w0/AMapxWc_ip2KZ8oTOYDUMv8?rlkey=rcdaggcxq06dyen09mw5mqmem&st=bnc0d7j0&dl=0 This is how I'm loading the entity and removing a part, with the demo files import SwiftUI import RealityKit struct SwapDemoView: View { var body: some View { RealityView { content in let camera = PerspectiveCamera() camera.transform.translation = SIMD3(x: 0, y: 0.1, z: 3) guard let root = try? await Entity(named: "simpleSwapDemo") else { fatalError("simpleSwapDemo.usdc is not present") } print(root) // Get initial hierarchy guard let cube = root.findEntity(named: "Cube") else { fatalError("Entity cube doesn't exist") } cube.removeFromParent() // <-- Cube is still visible after removal print(root) // Get hierarchy to confirm removal of cube let resource = root.availableAnimations[0] root.playAnimation(resource.repeat()) content.add(root) content.add(camera) } .background(.white) } } And this is what the entity hierarchy looks like in RealityKit before cube removal ▿ 'root' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ AnimationLibraryComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Armature' : ModelEntity, children: 2 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ ModelComponent ⟐ SkeletalPosesComponent ⟐ AnimationLibraryComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Armature' : Entity ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Primitives' : Entity, children: 2 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Sphere' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Sphere' : Entity ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Cube' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Cube' : Entity ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform And here's the hierarchy after removal ▿ 'root' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ AnimationLibraryComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Armature' : ModelEntity, children: 2 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ ModelComponent ⟐ SkeletalPosesComponent ⟐ AnimationLibraryComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Armature' : Entity ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Primitives' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Sphere' : Entity, children: 1 ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform ▿ 'Sphere' : Entity ⟐ SynchronizationComponent ⟐ Transform And this is the result: What's the best practice here? Should animation be exported separately and then applied to the skeleton? If so, how is that achieved? I'm not really sure how to proceed here.
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146
May ’25
Metal HUD Logging issue
Hi I've noticed one issue in Metal HUD, but I'm not sure if it is a bug in the Metal HUD or if there is a purpose for this behavior. Metal HUD has an option to send the data to system log in raw format where the numbers are like metal-HUD: ,,,,,..., https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/monitoring-your-metal-apps-graphics-performance/ If the HUD is displayed, it works just fine, but it seems that when the HUD is hidden (with shift-F9), it still send the data to system log, but the numbers are the same all the time and are not updated while is still being updated. I would expect that it should log the data no matter if the HUD is displayed or not, this of course leads to incorrect FPS calculations Here is an example of the system log entries when the HUD is not visible:
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113
May ’25
Metal 4 Argument Tables
I am puzzled by the setAddress(_:attributeStride:index:) of MTL4ArgumentTable. Can anyone please explain what the attributeStride parameter is for? The doc says that it is "The stride between attributes in the buffer." but why? Who uses this for what? On the C++ side in the shaders the stride is determined by the C++ type, as far as I know. What am I missing here? Thanks!
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1k
Jan ’26
Metal and Swift Concurrency
Hi, Introducing Swift Concurrency to my Metal app has been a bit challenging as Swift Concurrency is limited by the cooperative thread pool. GPU work is obviously not CPU bound and can block forward moving progress, especially when using waitUntilCompleted on the command buffer. For concurrent render work this has the potential of under utilizing the CPU and even creating dead locks. My question is, what is the Metal's teams general recommendation when it comes to concurrency? It seems to me that Dispatch or OperationQueues are still the preferred way for Metal bound tasks in order to gain maximum performance? To integrate with Swift Concurrency my idea is to use continuations that kick off render jobs via Dispatch or Queues? Would this be the best solution to bridge async tasks with Metal work? Thanks!
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1.1k
Apr ’25