Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain. I really don't understand Apple's stubborn refusal to make vulkan drivers. Between Apple and the better performance on SteamDeck, I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx.
Sony's PS3 is an interesting comparison. It had some borderline ridiculous hardware by the standards of console development. I mean that both as a positive in terms of theoretic capability, and as a negative in terms of practical usability. Sony had a huge market, so I think they were banking on developers bending over backwards to build things to the strengths of the PS3 which would be such an undertaking that it'd almost undoubtedly have left the PS3 version of stuff as definitive, and other platforms operating as second class citizens. Unfortunately for them developers took the path of least resistance and ended up doing the exact opposite.
If game devs want to reuse their Vulkan code on Apple device, they can use MoltenVk or the more recent KosmicKrisp.
> Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain.
The problems usually lurk in the graphics drivers, and not in the 3D API layer (e.g. optimization and bug hunting isn't much difference even when your code only supports a single API, and especially Vulkan drivers from different vendors may behave wildly differently on Windows, at least compared to D3D).
> I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx
Lol. That train has left the station long ago (around the time when Stadia was shut down, Vulkan saw a small uptick because of Stadia, but that soon fizzled out). Games need to support multiple 3D APIs anyway once they release on consoles. One or two more for the PC and Mac version doesn't make much of a difference (and most games are built on top of an off-the-shelf-engine anyway).
When a game glitches because of a driver bug, its the game developer that gets the bug reports (and the heat) and often has to isolate the problem to convince the gpu driver-team to fix it.
You may note that I specifically said "PC game developers" Your whole but consoles argument, completely misses the mark.
> When a game glitches because of a driver bug, its the game developer that gets the bug reports (and the heat) and often has to isolate the problem to convince the gpu driver-team to fix it.
Exactly, and having a Vulkan-only codebase won't make that problem go away. And IME it's much more likely to encounter vendor-specific driver issues on Windows Vulkan drivers than for D3D drivers.
Vulkan drivers on Linux are in a much better shape because they are centralized under the MESA project (except NVIDIA's drivers, which also have significant behaviour differences to the MESA drivers, at least in the window system glue).
> You may note that I specifically said "PC game developers" Your whole but consoles argument, completely misses the mark.
Why should a game developer support the tiny Mac market, but ignore the much bigger game console market though? From a business perspective, Mac support simply doesn't make sense, it's too much hassle for too little return (and the hassle isn't about the different 3D API, Metal is actually one of the best parts of the whole Apple developer ecosystem).
The drivers for D3D and Vulkan are separate, so supporting both opens you up to a whole new slew of bugs.
Mesa is largely an Umbrella. While some of the code is shared by in large, AMD works on radv, intel works on vulkan-intel and of course Nvidia work's on its own proprietary driver rather then very limited NVK.
Many games are first released on PC and only ported if they get big enough. So there are no considerations for cross-platform support in the original development.
The problem often stems from the Patent Offices getting caught flat-footed with new tech. When the patent officers don't know enough about the field they are reviewing it is easy for things which are "obvious to experts in the field" or "overly broad" to slip thru and cause major headaches for everyone.
It does not help that things fundamental to the new tech, even though they took real effort to develop, are now exactly those items that are now "obvious to experts in the field" and "overly broad" And then have fun trying to distinguish real fundamentals from items in the form of (existing invention "with a computer") Or whatever the hot new tech of the day is.
A good example(old enough to not matter any more) is the how the Wright brothers invented something fundamentally new, their patent was on how to control an airplane, The problem is, once you see it, it is obvious how to control an airplane. Birds do it, Why should such an simple thing be protected? But conversely. This is a discipline that took the Wrights many years of hard and meticulous work to figure out. Is it morally correct to say "No, we are not going to grant you exploitation rights to this thing you invested so much time and effort developing"?
Most large open-source projects banning AI contributions have been doing it for social and technical reasons, not legal.
As for the copyright infringement angle, it’s well and truly too late for that to be a meaningful problem, socially and politically. It’s easily in “too big to fail” territory now—any striking down of the “fair use” exemption claim would kill the entire industry dead, because every one of them would have to throw away all their models and synthetic data and start again, and that’s geopolitically untenable. They moved too fast for judiciary to regulate them, and I think the window of opportunity for legislature to regulate them closed no later than 2024.
You are wrong about why open-source projects are banning AI contributions. While vibe-coded slop is obviously a pain, many are banning even their own well-known contributors from using A.I to write large parts of code due to legal concerns.
I'm sure the patent/copyright trolls care a lot about the "industry." It is still the early days but eventually they will come on knocking.
A patent is meant to encourage people and companies to share the details of their inventions, instead of keeping them secret. In return the inventors get protection for a certain number of years.
>The modern purposes of patents seem to have shifted a long way from that
I'm not sure if that's true, or if it's more that 1) we hear more about the more egregious stuff and/or 2) something was lost in translation with that stated purpose when the world went digital.
My wife and I both eat the same healthy Mediterranean diet (born in the region)
Yet she is obese. Her body simply doesn't send the "that's enough" signals when it should and she overeats. It is possible to get get fat on a healthy diet, it is just easier with high calorie junk.
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