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CGSetDisplayTransferByTable no longer working on macOS Tahoe
For an app of mine I use CGSetDisplayTransferByTable to adjust the gamma table of the device. Since macOS Tahoe, these modifications are silently ignored. The display's actual gamma curve remains unchanged despite the API reporting successful completion. I've filed a FB for it a few weeks ago, and would love to figure out what could be causing this. FB18559786
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Aug ’25
Image textures cause runtime crashes - what's the workaround?
I've had no issue calling image files in my .swift files, but they are causing crashes when used in my .SKS files. When I set a sprite texture to an image in the inspector/ editor bar, at runtime when that sprite is being called I get the error: "Cannot get value with size 16. The type encoded as {CGRect={CGPoint=dd}{CGSize=dd}} is expected to be 32 bytes." From my research it has something to do with Apple switching from 32 to 64 bite machines. From chatGPT “SpriteKit under the hood uses NSKeyedUnarchiver to load your .sks file. That unarchiver decodes each archived property by reading a fixed‑size blob of bytes and mapping it into a C struct. In your case it ran into a mismatch”. I am using a 64-bite machine to write my code and 64-bite simulators and physical devices, so there isn't a clear cause of the mismatch. My scenes play fine in Xcode 16's preview window and my code builds, it just crashes at runtime. When I don’t use image textured assets in the SKS file it works fine. It loads animated labels, and plain color squares. I’ve been able to work around this for static things like a sprite with a background texture by. in a normal non-game swift file, writing code like: if let scene = SKScene(fileNamed: "GameScene2") { let bg = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "YourBackgroundImage") bg.position = CGPoint(x: scene.frame.midX, y: scene.frame.midY) bg.zPosition = -1 scene.addChild(bg) } The issue now is I want to make a particle emitter and other non static sprites, but my understanding of their properities isn’t deep enough to create them without the editor. Also when I set SKTexture in a swift file that causes the same runtime crash with the 16/32 error. Could you help me figure out how to fix the bug so I can use the editor again? Otherwise could you help me figure out how to write a workaround like I do for background images? I have a feeling the answer is in writing my own NSKeyedUnarchiver but I don’t know how to make sure it’s called instead of the default one. I've already tried cleaning my code multiple times and deleting and reading sprite nodes. Thank you.
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Aug ’25
Low Power Mode on MacOS 26 Tahoe + Vsync fullscreen limits application to 30 fps
I'm experiencing a specific issue where when using any of the MacOS 26 Tahoe betas with Low Power Mode enabled and using Vsync in fullscreen, my application framerate gets limited to a hard 30 fps. I have not experienced this on any older OS. For example Low Power Mode on 13.6 Ventura with Vsync fullscreen lets my application run at full 60 fps without issues. Is this a bug or a change in behavior of Low Power Mode on Tahoe? My application is 3D, runs at 60 fps and is sensitive to tearing, so I need Vsync and it is mostly utilized in fullscreen. And Low Power Mode is a default for many Macs, so default experience on Tahoe currently is a halved 30 fps. However there also seems to be inconsistencies of on which machines this happens, but older OSes are always fine.
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Aug ’25
PhotogrammetrySession fails with internal errors 4011 / 4012 when using iOS Object Capture (Area Mode) images
Hi all, I’m running into an issue when trying to reconstruct a 3D model using PhotogrammetrySession on macOS from a set of images captured via the iOS Object Capture sample app, specifically in Area mode. When I attempt to create the model from these images (using the raw Images/ folder exported directly from the capture session), I get the following errors: ERROR cv3dapi.pg: Internal error codes (2): 4011 4012 WARN cv3dapi.pg: Internal warning codes (1): 4507 Output error with code = -15 requestError: CoreOC.PhotogrammetrySession.Error.processError I use the "Images" directory directly exported from Object Capture with my iphone 12 pro max (has lidar) set to "area mode" in the object capture app here is an example heic image metadata from the sequence. heif-info Images/00044.869568833.HEIC MIME type: image/heic main brand: heic compatible brands: mif1, MiHE, MiPr, miaf, MiHB, heic image: 3024x4032 (id=49), primary tiles: 6x8, tile size: 512x512 colorspace: YCbCr, 4:2:0 bit depth: 8 thumbnail: 240x320 color profile: nclx alpha channel: no depth channel: yes size: 192x256 bits per pixel: 8 z-near: 1.173828 z-far: 2.552734 d-min: undefined d-max: undefined representation: uniform Z metadata: Exif: 960 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#CameraTrackingState: 4 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#CameraCalibrationData: 1015 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#ObjectTransform: 48 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#ObjectBoundingBox: 48 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#RawFeaturePoints: 832 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#PointCloudData: 23984 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#BundleVersion: 5 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#SegmentID: 4 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2024:ObjectCapture#SessionUUID: 36 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2024:ObjectCapture#CaptureMode: 4 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#Feedback: 4 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#WideToDepthCameraTransform: 48 bytes uri /tag:apple.com,2023:ObjectCapture#TemporalDepthPointClouds: 864026 bytes transformations: angle (ccw): 270 region annotations: none properties: camera intrinsic matrix: focal length: 2813.695557; 2813.695557 principal point: 1522.338502; 2002.843018 skew: 0.000000 camera extrinsic matrix: rotation matrix: -0.695 0.344 -0.632 0.007 -0.875 -0.483 -0.719 -0.340 0.606 Questions: • What do internal error codes 4011 and 4012 refer to? • Is there something specific about Area mode captures that require preprocessing before they’re compatible with PhotogrammetrySession? • Has anyone successfully reconstructed a model from an Area mode session using the stock Apple tools? NOTE: I can provide the folder of images for debugging if that would help!
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Jul ’25
macOS Tahoe Beta 4 disabled __asm keyword for Metal
Hi, developers, I maintain a shipped app that uses string concatenation to construct Metal shader and compile on-device. Beta 4 seems disabled __asm keyword, resulting the compilation failure. The error is: v2/GEMMKernel.cpp:229: error: program_source:23:9: error: illegal string literal in 'asm' __asm("air.simdgroup_async_copy_1d.p3i8.p1i8"); The relevant code is available at https://github.com/liuliu/ccv/blob/unstable/lib/nnc/mfa/v2/GEMMHeaders.cpp#L30 although any __asm will trip this. Please give us guidance on whether this is a regression or this will be something enforced in 26 release. Personally, I would consider this as a bug given it won't impact anything "compiled" shaders. Thanks for your patience reading this!
Topic: Graphics & Games SubTopic: Metal Tags:
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Jul ’25
Distortion Artifacts on VisionOS When Rendering Opaque/Alpha Clipped Foliage in URP (Unity 6.0, Metal)
I'm running into a persistent visual issue while deploying a floral corridor scene to Apple Vision Pro using Unity 6.0 with URP and Metal. The issue only appears on the Vision Pro device — everything looks fine in the Unity Editor. Issue Description When the frame rate drops to around 60–70 FPS, noticeable distortion artifacts appear around the edges of foliage models. It seems like the background meshes (behind the plants) get warped and leak through the edges of the foliage. Although this is most visible around the leaves, even solid objects like standard URP wall or box models show distorted edges when the issue occurs. All the foliage uses Opaque or Alpha Clipping materials. Things I've Tried Changing the foliage materials to Transparent mode —distortion around edges disappears, but using Transparent for a large number of foliage assets is not ideal for performance or sorting complexity. Reducing the number of foliage objects — with only a few plants in the scene and the frame rate staying around 100 FPS, the distortion disappears. However, this isn’t a practical solution for a full environment. Possible Cause? I came across this note in the Unity documentation: "Ensure depth-buffer for each pixel is non-zero - on visionOS, the depth buffer is used for reprojection. To ensure visual effects like skyboxes and shaders are displayed beautifully, ensure that some value is written to the depth for each pixel." Could this be related to the issue? Is it possible that Alpha Clipping with low pixel coverage leads to some pixels not writing to the depth buffer, which then causes problems during Vision Pro’s reprojection or foveated rendering? However, even when I disable Alpha Clipping entirely, the distortion issue still persists, so it may not be solely caused by clipping itself. Project Setup Unity 6.0 (URP) Depth Texture: Enable Using Metal as the graphics backend Running on real Vision Pro hardware (not simulator) Any advice on how to avoid these distortion issues on Vision Pro would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Jul ’25
Struggles with attaching a ModelEntity to the skeleton joints of another ModelEntity
In SceneKit, when creating an .scn file from a rigged model, the framework created an SCNNode for each bone/joint, so you could add and remove child nodes directly to and from joints, and like any other SCNNode, you could access world position and world orientation for each joint. The analog would be for joints to be accessible as child entities of a ModelEntity in RealityKit. I am unable to proceed with migrating my project from SceneKit because of this, as there does not seem to be a way to even access the true world position of a joint with the current jointNames/jointTransforms paradigm. The translation information from the given transforms is insufficient to determine the location of a joint at any given time, and other approaches like creating a GeometricPin for the given joint name and attaching it to another entity do not seem to work. So conveniently being able to attach an item to the hand of a rigged model was trivial in SceneKit and now feels impossible in RealityKit. I am not the first person to notice this, and am feeling demoralized about proceeding with RealityKit with such a critical piece of functionality blocked https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76726241/how-do-i-attach-an-entity-to-a-skeletons-joint-in-realitykit Will this be addressed in some way?
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Jul ’25
BlendShapes don’t animate while playing animation in RealityKit
Hi everyone, I’m running into an issue with RealityKit when trying to animate BlendShapes (ShapeKeys) while a skeletal animation is playing. The model is a rigged character in .usdz format with both predefined skeletal animations and BlendShapes (exported from Blender). The problem: when I play any animation using entity.playAnimation(...), the BlendShapes stop responding. Calling setBlendShapes(...) still logs that weights are being updated, but the visual changes are not visible. The exact same blend shape animation works perfectly when no animation is playing. In SceneKit the same model works as expected: shape keys get animated during animation playback. But not in realitykit Still, as soon as an animation starts, the shape keys don’t animate anymore. Here’s the test project on GitHub that demonstrates the issue clearly: https://github.com/IAMTHEBURT/RealityKitWitnBlendShapesSample The goal is to play facial expressions (like blinking or talking) while a body animation (like waving) is playing. Is this a known limitation in RealityKit? Or is there a recommended way to combine skeletal animations with real-time BlendShape updates? Thanks in advance for any insights.
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Jul ’25
Issues building Unity plug-in project: Cannot locate native library Apple.Core/Apple.GameKit for iOS
I'm having issues getting a well built package from the Apple Unity Plug-in project. When building the my game project in Unity the following error is printed to the console: Apple.Core.AppleNativeLibraryUtility] Cannot locate a Debug or Release Apple.Core native library for iOS. Please ensure that the build invocation (build.py, xcodebuild, or Xcode) compiled cleanly and that the build was configured to support Debug on iOS. As far as I can tell the build did compile cleanly, but I might be missing something. If anyone can see what I'm doing wrong or has any insight it would be greatly appreciated. Setup is the following: macOS Tahoe 26 Beta Xcode-beta Version 26.0 beta 3 (17A5276g) Unity Plug-in branch: 2025-beta1 Unity game project version: 2022.3.60f M1 Macbook Pro The built packages have been imported into the game project through the Unity Package Manager using the tarball option pointing to the built packages from the Unity Plug-in project. The Unity Plug-in project has been built using the build.py file with the following: python3 build.py -m iOS iPhoneSimulator -p Core GameKit CoreHaptics GameController -k all The output is available in the attached file. build-output.txt Here's an image of the NativeLibraries~ folder inside the built Apple.Core package.
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Jul ’25
Metal IR reference
Hello! I'm developing a GPU (shader) language, where I aim to target multiple backends with a common frontend. I wanted to avoid having to round trip through Metal, and go straight to IR just like I have with SPIRV, in order to have a fast and efficient compilation process. I've been looking for a reference page where I can read about Metals IR, and as far as I'm aware, it exists, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Furthermore, if such a reference is available, is there also a toolkit where I can run validation on the output IR, and perhaps even run optimizations, much like spv-tools for SPIRV? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks, Gustav
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Jul ’25
RealityKit generates an excessive amount of logging
During regular use, RealityKit generates an excessive amount of internal logging that is not actionable by third party developers. When developing an iOS RealityKit/ARKit app, this makes the Xcode console challenging to use for regular work. (FB19173812) See screenshots below. Xcode does have an option for filtering out logging from specific SDKs, but enabling this feature to suppress the logging of RealityKit and related SDKs like PHASE is something developers have to do dozens of times each day. After a year of developing a RealityKit app, this process becomes frustrating. If SDKs like Foundation, UIKit, and SwiftUI generated as much logging as RealityKit and related SDKs, Xcode's console would be unusable. Is there any way to disable the logging of RealityKit and PHASE permanently? Thank you for any help you provide.
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Jul ’25
RealityKit and USDZ: Winding Order Issue with Negatively Scaled Meshes
Hi all, I've encountered a potential issue with how the winding order of geometry is handled when their transformations involve negative scaling. I created a simple test asset, a single triangle, to demonstrate this. The triangle's vertices are defined in a counter-clockwise ("right-handed") winding order, and its transform has a negative scale on the X-axis. According to the OpenUSD specification, this negative determinant in the transformation matrix should effectively reverse the winding order of the geometry: However, any given gprim's local-to-world transformation can flip its effective orientation, when it contains an odd number of negative scales. This condition can be reliably detected using the (Jacobian) determinant of the local-to-world transform: if the determinant is less than zero, then the gprim's orientation has been flipped, and therefore one must apply the opposite handedness rule when computing its surface normals (or just flip the computed normals) for the purposes of hidden surface detection and lighting calculations. When I view the asset in tools like Blender or Preview on macOS, it behaves as expected. The triangle's effective orientation is flipped to CW. However, when the same asset is viewed in Reality Composer Pro or with QuickLook on iOS, its effective orientation remains CCW. In other words, the triangle faces the opposite direction. My questions for the community and Apple are: Is this behavior in RealityKit a known issue? If this is a known issue, is there official guidance for DCC tools on how to export USDZ assets to ensure they appear correctly in the Apple ecosystem? Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
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Jul ’25
MetalFX upscaler/denoiser and instant changes
Hi, What's the best way to handle drastic changes in scene charateristics with the new MTLFXTemporalDenoisedScaler? Let's say a visible object of the scene radically changes its material properties. I can modify the albedo and roughness textures consequently. But I suspect the history will be corrupted. Blending visual information between the new frame and the previous ones might be a nonsense. I guess the problem should be the same when objects appear or disappear instantly. Is the upsacler manage these events for us (by lowering blending), or should we use the reactive or the denoise strength mask or something like that to handle them?
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Jul ’25
Background GPU Access availability
I would love to use Background GPU Access to do some video processing in the background. However the documentation of BGContinuedProcessingTaskRequest.Resources.gpu clearly states: Not all devices support background GPU use. For more information, see Performing long-running tasks on iOS and iPadOS. Is there a list available of currently released devices that do (or don't) support GPU background usage? That would help to understand what part of our user base can use this feature. (And what hardware we need to test this on as developers.) For example it seems that it isn't supported on an iPad Pro M1 with the current iOS 26 beta. The simulators also seem to not support the background GPU resource. So would be great to understand what hardware is capable of using this feature!
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Jul ’25
Utilizing Point Cloud data from `ObjectCaptureSession` in WWDC23
I am currently developing a mobile and server-side application using the new ObjectCaptureSession on iOS and PhotogrammetrySession on MacOS. I have two questions regarding the newly updated APIs. From WWDC23 session: "Meet Object Capture for iOS", I know that the Object Capture API uses Point Cloud data captured from iPhone LiDAR sensor. I want to know how to use the Point Cloud data captured on iPhone ObjectCaptureSession and use it to create 3D models on PhotogrammetrySession on MacOS. From the example code from WWDC21, I know that the PhotogrammetrySession utilizes depth map from captured photo images by embedding it into the HEIC image and use those data to create a 3D asset on PhotogrammetrySession on MacOS. I would like to know if Point Cloud data is also embedded into the image to be used during 3D reconstruction and if not, how else the Point Cloud data is inserted to be used during reconstruction. Another question is, I know that Point Cloud data is returned as a result from request to the PhtogrammetrySession.Request. I would like to know if this PointCloud data is the same set of data captured during ObjectCaptureSession from WWDC23 that is used to create ObjectCapturePointCloudView. Thank you to everyone for the help in advance. It's a real pleasure to be developing with all the updates to RealityKit and the Object Capture API.
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2.2k
Jul ’25
How to Apple Unity Plugins
When running my game in the Unity Editor on Windows platform I get an error: DllNotFoundException: GameKitWrapper assembly:<unknown assembly> type:<unknown type> member:(null) Apple.GameKit.DefaultNSErrorHandler.Init () (at ./Library/PackageCache/com.apple.unityplugin.gamekit@0abcad546f73/Source/DefaultHandlers.cs:35) This is because GameKitWrapper dynamically linked library is not available under Windows platform. Besides, "Apple Build Settings" are declared under UNITY_EDITOR_OSX and also not available under Windows platform. Does anyone managed to solve this?
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Jul ’25
Blurry Game Center Achievement Images?
Hey all — I’ve been building out my first set of Game Center Achievements for a game I’m working on, and I’ve run into something odd with the image quality. The specs say to upload icons at 512x512 or 1024x1024@2x. I’ve been uploading 1024x1024 PNGs (without explicitly naming them “@2x” since there’s only one upload slot), assuming that Game Center would just handle the scaling automatically — kind of like how a lot of things are getting more streamlined across platforms lately. But in testing, the icons are showing up a bit blurry, especially in the Game Center interface. It’s not horrible, but it’s definitely softer than I expected — more like low-res than Retina. All my test devices (outside the Simulator) are running iOS 26, so I’m also wondering if this might be a beta-related display bug? Has anyone else run into this? Curious if I’m missing a best practice here, or if I really do need to ensure I’m uploading it with the @2x suffix, or maybe something else entirely? Thanks!
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Jul ’25
Metal useResource vs. MTLFence
Hello, I'm tracking down a bug where useResource doesn't seem to apply proper synchronization when a resource is produced by the render pass then consumed by the compute pass, but when I use MTLFence between the to signal and wait between the render/compute encoders, the artifact goes away. The resource is created with MTLHazardTrackingModeTracked and useResource is called on the compute encoder after the render pass. Metal API Validation doesn't report any warnings/errors. Am I misunderstanding the difference between the two APIs? I dug through the Metal documentation and it looks like useResource should handle synchronization given the resource has MTLHazardTrackingModeTracked but on the other hand, MTLFence should be used to ensure proper synchronization between command encoders. Can someone can clarify the difference between the two APIs and when to use them.
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Jul ’25