Delve into the world of graphics and game development. Discuss creating stunning visuals, optimizing game mechanics, and share resources for game developers.

All subtopics
Posts under Graphics & Games topic

Post

Replies

Boosts

Views

Activity

Is there any future for screensavers on macOS?
I haven't been looking at screensavers for a long time because of Apple's lack of will (or resources?) to provide a public version of the private modern SDK used by Apple for a very long time now. I'm now looking at the Screen Saver pane in System Settings (the What-If version of System Preferences in an alternate universe where all screens are in portrait mode). In macOS Sequoia, it seems like 3rd party screensavers are not welcome considering that they are relegated to the "Other" section at the bottom of the list and you have to click Show All to start seeing 3rd party screen savers. I also had a quick look at macOS Tahoe Beta 3 and it looks like that all the real screensavers are gone (3rd party and the ones from Apple: Hello, Message, Flurry, etc.) or at least it requires to be a Nobel Prize to find them (and the Search field is not useful). I tried to install a 3rd party screen saver on macOS Tahoe Beta 3, it doesn't show up in the list. To summarize: No public access to modern APIs AFAIK. UI that is hostile to 3rd party screen savers on macOS Sequoia. Apparently only screensavers that are slideshows or movies curated by Apple in macOS Tahoe b3. Hence the question: Is there any future for screen savers on macOS? Because if there's none, I won't waste my time trying to update some old screen savers.
3
0
549
Aug ’25
Unable to find intelgpu_kbl_gt2r0 slice or a compatible one in binary archive
Unable to find intelgpu_kbl_gt2r0 slice or a compatible one in binary archive 'file:///System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IconRendering.framework/Resources/binary.metallib' available slices: applegpu_g13g, applegpu_g13s, applegpu_g13d, applegpu_g14g, applegpu_g14s, applegpu_g14d, applegpu_g15g, applegpu_g15s, applegpu_g15d, applegpu_g16g, applegpu_g16s, applegpu_g17g, applegpu_g15g, applegpu_g15s, applegpu_g15d, applegpu_g16s Is it related to performance of applications in macOS 26.2 on Intel Macs?
3
0
201
4d
Core Text incremental redraw glitch: overlapping glyphs during editing
During editing in Pages (or Word) I am getting these glitches (see attachment). Started after the last update to Mac OS 26.3 (beta) Also removed 2 recent instalments (Blackhole audio driver and kDrive/Infomaniak, but trouble is still there. 27" iMac 2020 (Intel) i7 3,8 Ghz AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB 24 GB RAM macOS Tahoe 26.3 (=beta) Tried restart in safe mode, checked fonts. Talked to aissistent to get a solution, but no ...) Thx for any advice, Pieter (not a developer so please kee pit simple 🙏🏻)
3
0
272
6d
How does the automatch feature work in Game Kit?
I'm developing a turn based game. When I present the GKTurnBasedMatchmakerViewController players can opt in for automatch instead of selecting a specific friend as opponent. How exactly does the matching work if a player doesn't specify anything explicitly? Does Game Center send push notifications in a round robin fashion to all friends and the first one to accept is then matched as opponent? Is this documented somewhere?
3
0
366
2w
App Freezes on iPadOS 26.x - GPU Metal Errors
I work on a Qt/QML app that uses Esri Maps SDK for Qt and that is deployed to both Windows and iPads. With a recent iPad OS upgrade to 26.1, many iPad users are reporting the application freezing after panning and/or identifying features in the map. It runs fine for our Windows users. I was able to reproduce this and grabbed the following error messages when the freeze happens: IOGPUMetalError: Caused GPU Address Fault Error (0000000b:kIOGPUCommandBufferCallbackErrorPageFault) IOGPUMetalError: Invalid Resource (00000009:kIOGPUCommandBufferCallbackErrorInvalidResource) Environment: Qt 6.5.4 (Qt for iOS) Esri Maps SDK for Qt 200.3 iPadOS 26.1 Because it appears to be a Metal error, I tried using OpenGL (Qt offers a way to easily set hte target graphics api): QQuickWindow::setGraphicsApi(QSGRendererInterface::GraphicsApi::OpenGL) Which worked! No more freezing. But I'm seeing many posts that OpenGL has been deprecated by Apple. I've seen posts that Apple deprecated OpenGL ES. But it seems to still be available with iPadOS 26.1. If so, will this fix (above) just cause problems with a future iPadOS update? Any other suggestions to address this issue? Upgrading our version of Qt + Esri SDK to the latest version is not an option for us. We are in the process to upgrade the full application, but it is a year or two out. So, we just need a fix to buy us some time for now. Appreciate any thoughts/insights....
3
0
523
Dec ’25
Request: Allow Game Mode to be enabled locally for non-game App Store categories
Hi Apple team, Game Mode was introduced in iOS 18. To activate Game Mode, an app must include specific key-value pairs in its *.plist and be categorized as a "Game" on the App Store. My app (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voidlink/id6747717070) works primarily as a self-hosted game streaming (PC->iPhone/iPad) client. Game Mode provides clear benefits in terms of latency and frame rate stability, but it can currently only be activated when running via Xcode or TestFlight. I am an individual iOS developer based in China, where an additional government license is required for apps to be listed under the "Game" category on the App Store. Obtaining such a license is very difficult for independent developers, so my app has been categorized under "Utilities" instead.(If move the app to game category, it will disappear from Chinese App Store immediately) Expectation / Suggestion: Please consider making Game Mode available as a local, user-controllable option on iOS18/26+, such as through a system “App Pool” where users can choose which apps to enable Game Mode for, regardless of App Store category. This would greatly benefit use cases like streaming clients, benchmarking tools, and remote play utilities, without requiring developers to reclassify their apps as “Games” on App Store.
3
1
748
Nov ’25
CAMetalLayer nextDrawable crash
Hi , My application meet below crash backtrace at very low repro rate from the public users, i do not see it relate to a specific iOS version or iPhone model. The last code line from my application is calling CAMetalLayer nextDrawable API. I did some basic studying, suppose it may relate to the wrong CAMetaLayer configuration, like frame property w or h <= 0.0 bounds property w or h <= 0.0 drawableSize w or h <= 0.0 or w or h > max value (like 16384) Not sure my above thinking is right or not? Will the UIView which my CAMetaLayer attached will cause such nextDrawable crash or not ? Thanks a lot Main Thread - Crashed libsystem_kernel.dylib __pthread_kill libsystem_c.dylib abort libsystem_c.dylib __assert_rtn Metal MTLReportFailure.cold.1 Metal MTLReportFailure Metal _MTLMessageContextEnd Metal -[MTLTextureDescriptorInternal validateWithDevice:] AGXMetalA13 0x245b1a000 + 4522096 QuartzCore allocate_drawable_texture(id<MTLDevice>, __IOSurface*, unsigned int, unsigned int, MTLPixelFormat, unsigned long long, CAMetalLayerRotation, bool, NSString*, unsigned long) QuartzCore get_unused_drawable(_CAMetalLayerPrivate*, CAMetalLayerRotation, bool, bool) QuartzCore CAMetalLayerPrivateNextDrawableLocked(CAMetalLayer*, CAMetalDrawable**, unsigned long*) QuartzCore -[CAMetalLayer nextDrawable] SpaceApp -[MetalRender renderFrame:] MetalRenderer.mm:167 SpaceApp -[FrameBuffer acceptFrame:] VideoRender.mm:173 QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLinkItem::dispatch_(CA::SignPost::Interval<(CA::SignPost::CAEventCode)835322056>&) QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLink::dispatch_items(unsigned long long, unsigned long long, unsigned long long) QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLink::dispatch_deferred_display_links(unsigned int) UIKitCore _UIUpdateSequenceRun UIKitCore schedulerStepScheduledMainSection UIKitCore runloopSourceCallback CoreFoundation __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopDoSource0 CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopDoSources0 CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopRun CoreFoundation CFRunLoopRunSpecific GraphicsServices GSEventRunModal UIKitCore -[UIApplication _run] UIKitCore UIApplicationMain
3
0
368
Jul ’25
MetalFx
Recently, I adopted MetalFX for Upscale feature. However, I have encountered a persistent build failure for the iOS Simulator with the error message, 'MetalFX is not available when building for iOS Simulator.' To address this, I modified the MetalFX.framework status to 'Optional' within Build Phases > Link Binary With Libraries, adding the linker option (-weak_framework). Despite this adjustment, the build process continues to fail. Furthermore, I observed that the MetalFX sample application provided by Apple, specifically the one found at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalfx/applying-temporal-antialiasing-and-upscaling-using-metalfx, also fails to build for the iOS Simulator target. Has anyone encountered this issue?
3
0
830
Mar ’25
What good is NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied?
If I create a bitmap image and then try to get ready to draw into it, like so: NSBitmapImageRep* newRep = [[NSBitmapImageRep alloc] initWithBitmapDataPlanes: nullptr pixelsWide: 128 pixelsHigh: 128 bitsPerSample: 8 samplesPerPixel: 4 hasAlpha: YES isPlanar: NO colorSpaceName: NSDeviceRGBColorSpace bitmapFormat: NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied | NSBitmapFormatThirtyTwoBitBigEndian bytesPerRow: 4 * 128 bitsPerPixel: 32]; [NSGraphicsContext setCurrentContext: [NSGraphicsContext graphicsContextWithBitmapImageRep: newRep]]; then the log shows this error: CGBitmapContextCreate: unsupported parameter combination: RGB 8 bits/component, integer 512 bytes/row kCGImageAlphaLast kCGImageByteOrderDefault kCGImagePixelFormatPacked Valid parameters for RGB color space model are: 16 bits per pixel, 5 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast 32 bits per pixel, 10 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNone|kCGImagePixelFormatRGBCIF10|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 128 bits per pixel, 32 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents 128 bits per pixel, 32 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents See Quartz 2D Programming Guide (available online) for more information. If I don't use NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied as part of the format, I don't get the error message. My question is, why does the constant NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied exist if you can't use it like this? If you're wondering why I wanted to do this: I want to extract the RGBA pixel data from an image, which might have non-premultiplied alpha. And elsewhere online, I saw advice that if you want to look at the pixels of an image, draw it into a bitmap whose format you know and look at those pixels. And I don't want the process of drawing to premultiply my alpha.
3
0
155
Jun ’25
iOS Metal system delayed one Vsync period to really display the frame on the screen
View Layout Add the following views in a view controller: Label View A, with a subview of the same size: MTKView A View B, with a subview of the same size: MTKView B Refresh Rates of Each View The label view refreshes at 60fps (driven by CADisplayLink). MTKView A and B refresh at 15fps. MTKView Implementation Details The corresponding CAMetalLayer's maximumDrawableCount is set to 2, changed to double buffering. The scheduling mechanism is modified; drawing is not driven by the internal loop but is done manually. The draw call is triggered immediately upon receiving a frame. self.metalView.enableSetNeedsDisplay = NO; self.metalView.paused = YES; A new high-priority queue is created for drawing, instead of handling it on the main queue. MTKView Latency Tracking The GPU completion time T1 is observed through the addCompletedHandler callback of the CommandBuffer. The presentation time T2 of the frame is observed through the addPresentedHandler callback of the currentDrawable in MTKView. Testing shows that T2 - T1 > 16.6ms (the Vsync period at 60Hz). This means that after the GPU rendering in MTLView is finished, the frame is not actually displayed at the next Vsync instruction but only at the Vsync instruction after that. I believe there is an extra 16.6ms of latency here, which I want to eliminate by adjusting the rendering mechanism. Observation from Instruments From Instruments, the Surface presentation aligns with the above test results. After the Metal encoder finishes, the Surface in Display switches only after the next-next Vsync instruction. See the image in the link for details. Questions According to a beginner's understanding, after MTKView's GPU rendering is finished, the next Vsync instruction should officially display (make it visible). However, this is not what is observed. Does the subview MTKView need to wait for another Vsync cycle to be drawn to the actual display buffer? The label updates its text at 60fps, so the entire interface should be displayed at 60fps. Is the content of MTKView not synchronized when the display happens? Explanation of the Reasoning Behind Some MTKView Code Details Changing from the default triple buffering to double buffering helps reduce the latency introduced by rendering. Not using MTKView's own scheduling mechanism but using manual triggering of the draw method is because MTKView's own scheduling mechanism is driven by CADisplayLink. Therefore, if a frame falls within a Vsync window, it needs to wait for the next Vsync window to trigger the draw operation, which introduces waiting latency.
3
0
573
Dec ’25
PDFKit Page Rerender
I'm experiencing an issue with PDFKit where page.removeAnnotation(annotation) successfully removes the annotation from the page's data structure, but the PDFView no longer updates automatically to reflect the change visually. Issue Details: The annotation is removed (verified by checking page.annotations.count) The PDFView display doesn't refresh to show the removal This code was working correctly before and suddenly stopped working No code changes were made on my end
3
1
841
Dec ’25
You cannot debug in simulator
I can't create any breakpoint in my Xcode after I upgraded to macOS 15.4 macOS: Version 15.4 (24E248) visionOS Simulator: 2.3 Xcode: Version 16.2 (16C5032a) My app works well without any breakpoints. But if I create any breakpoint it shows me this: Couldn't find the Objective-C runtime library in loaded images. Message from debugger: The LLDB RPC server has crashed. You may need to manually terminate your process. The crash log is located in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and has a prefix 'lldb-rpc-server'. Please file a bug and attach the most recent crash log.
3
5
461
Apr ’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.
3
3
329
Jul ’25
Issue with FBX import -- models are ultra small
When importing FBX animations (generated by Cinema 4d or Blender) the models come in very far way and cannot resize or zoomed in. I have tried every setting from both programs to no avail. Is there a secret to providing the right export options? When importing without animations/and rigging the model imports fine and correct size. But once motion is included, something is awry. I also tried changing base units in Converter, but did not work. I have attache my model heirarchy in C4D as well as the imported result. It appears the animation is imported, as I can see it move, but can barely see it :)
3
0
593
Feb ’25
Bug Report - Incorrect trackingAreaIdentifier in visionOS 26 Hover Effect Sample Code
Description: In the official visionOS 26 Hover Effect sample code project , I encountered an issue where the event.trackingAreaIdentifier returned by onSpatialEvent does not reset as expected. Steps to Reproduce: Select an object with trackingAreaID = 6 in the sample app. Look at a blank space (outside any tracking area) and perform a pinch gesture . Expected Behavior: The event.trackingAreaIdentifier should return 0 when interacting with a non-tracking area. Actual Behavior: The event.trackingAreaIdentifier still returns 6, even after restarting the app or killing the process. This persists regardless of where the pinch gesture is performed
3
0
282
Jul ’25
How to use MetalPeformancePrimitives
I am trying to learn the new Metal Peformance Primitives APIs. I have added the MetalPeformancePrimitives framework and included the header in my shader code as per documentation #include <MetalPeformancePrimitives/MetalPeformancePrimitives.h> Unfortunately, Xcode complains that the header cannot be found. How do I include it properly? I am using Xcode 26 on Tahoe. The MetalPeformancePrimitives framework is present on my machine and I can inspect the headers in the filesystem.
3
1
746
Oct ’25
Xcode Playground - The LLDB RPC server has crashed.
I am trying to learn Metal development on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro (Sequoia 15.3.1) on Xcode Playground, but when I write these two lines of code: import Metal let device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice()! I get the error The LLDB RPC server has crashed. Any ideas as to what I can do to solve this? I have rebooted the machine and reinstalled Xcode...
3
0
524
Mar ’25
RealityKit captureHighResolutionFrame from session is broken on iOS26?
A bit of background on what our app is doing: We have a RealityKit ARView session running. During this period we place objects in RealityKit. At some point user can "take photo" and we use session.captureHighResolutionFrame to capture a frame. We then use captured frame and frame.camera.projectPoint to project my objects back to 2D Issue we found is that on devices that have iOS26, first photo user takes and the first frame received from session.captureHighResolutionFrame gives incorrect CGPoint for frame.camera.projectPoint. If user takes the second photo with the same camera phostion, second frame received from session.captureHighResolutionFrame gives correct CGPoint for frame.camera.projectPoint I notices some difference between first and subsequent frames that i believe is corresponding with the issue. Yaw value of camera (frame.camera.eulerAngles.y) on first frame is not correct ( inconsistent with any subsequent frame) I also created a small example app and i followed Building an Immersive Experience with RealityKit example to create it. The issue exists in this app for iOS26, while iOS18.* has consistent values between first and subsequent captured frames. Note: The yaw value seems to differ more if we start session in portrait but take photo in landscape. Example result for 3 captured frames: Frame captured with yaw: 1.4855177402496338 Frame captured with yaw: -0.08803760260343552 Frame captured with yaw: -0.08179682493209839 Example code: class CustomARView: ARView, ARSessionDelegate { required init(frame: CGRect) { super.init(frame: frame) } required init?(coder decoder: NSCoder) { fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")} func setup() { let singleTap = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(handleTap)) addGestureRecognizer(singleTap) } @objc func handleTap(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) { Task { do { let frame = try await session.captureHighResolutionFrame() print("Frame captured with yaw: \(Double(frame.camera.eulerAngles.y))") } catch { } } } } struct CustomARViewUIViewRepresentable: UIViewRepresentable { func makeUIView(context: Context) -> some UIView { let arView = CustomARView(frame: .zero) arView.setup() return arView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIViewType, context: Context) { } } struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { CustomARViewUIViewRepresentable() .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity) .ignoresSafeArea() } }
3
1
624
Sep ’25