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Error: apple/apple/game-porting-toolkit 1.1 did not build
My MacBook Air M1 has installed Mac OS Sonoma 14.3.1, and I tried to install game-poring-toolkit tonight. After the step which it requires me to input the command "brew -v install apple/apple/game-porting-toolkit", Terminal ran for minutes. But at the end this error appeared: Error: apple/apple/game-porting-toolkit 1.1 did not build. I don't know anything about coding and software. Could someone please tell me what cause this error and how to fix it after you read my post? I will appreciate your help!
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Dec ’24
Unable to compile Core Image filter on Xcode 26 due to missing Metal toolchain
I have a Core Image filter in my app that uses Metal. I cannot compile it because it complains that the executable tool metal is not available, but I have installed it in Xcode. If I go to the "Components" section of Xcode Settings, it shows it as downloaded. And if I run the suggested command, it also shows it as installed. Any advice? Xcode Version Version 26.0 beta (17A5241e) Build Output Showing All Errors Only Build target Lessons of project StudyJapanese with configuration Light RuleScriptExecution /Users/chris/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/StudyJapanese-glbneyedpsgxhscqueifpekwaofk/Build/Intermediates.noindex/StudyJapanese.build/Light-iphonesimulator/Lessons.build/DerivedSources/OtsuThresholdKernel.ci.air /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/Shared/iOS/CoreImage/OtsuThresholdKernel.ci.metal normal undefined_arch (in target 'Lessons' from project 'StudyJapanese') cd /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/StudyJapanese /bin/sh -c xcrun\ metal\ -w\ -c\ -fcikernel\ \"\$\{INPUT_FILE_PATH\}\"\ -o\ \"\$\{SCRIPT_OUTPUT_FILE_0\}\"' ' error: error: cannot execute tool 'metal' due to missing Metal Toolchain; use: xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/StudyJapanese/error:1:1: cannot execute tool 'metal' due to missing Metal Toolchain; use: xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain Build failed 6/9/25, 8:31 PM 27.1 seconds Result of xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain (after switching Xcode-beta.app with xcode-select) xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain Beginning asset download... Downloaded asset to: /System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_MetalToolchain/4d77809b60771042e514cfcf39662c6d1c195f7d.asset/AssetData/Restore/022-19457-035.dmg Done downloading: Metal Toolchain (17A5241c). Screenshots from Xcode Result of "Copy Information" Metal Toolchain 26.0 [com.apple.MobileAsset.MetalToolchain: 17.0 (17A5241c)] (Installed)
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Pink Screen with VideoMaterial in ARKit
Hi everyone, I'm developing an ARKit app using RealityKit and encountering an issue where a video displayed on a 3D plane shows up as a pink screen instead of the actual video content. Here's a simplified version of my setup: func createVideoScreen(video: AVPlayerItem, canvasWidth: Float, canvasHeight: Float, aspectRatio: Float, fitsWidth: Bool = true) -> ModelEntity { let width = (fitsWidth) ? canvasWidth : canvasHeight * aspectRatio let height = (fitsWidth) ? canvasWidth * (1/aspectRatio) : canvasHeight let screenPlane = MeshResource.generatePlane(width: width, depth: height) let videoMaterial: Material = createVideoMaterial(videoItem: video) let videoScreenModel = ModelEntity(mesh: screenPlane, materials: [videoMaterial]) return videoScreenModel } func createVideoMaterial(videoItem: AVPlayerItem) -> VideoMaterial { let player = AVPlayer(playerItem: videoItem) let videoMaterial = VideoMaterial(avPlayer: player) player.play() return videoMaterial } Despite following the standard process, the video plane renders pink. Has anyone encountered this before, or does anyone know what might be causing it? Thanks in advance!
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May ’25
vImageConverter_CreateWithCGImageFormat Fails with kvImageInvalidImageFormat When Trying to Convert CMYK to RGB
So I get JPEG data in my app. Previously I was using the higher level NSBitmapImageRep API and just feeding the JPEG data to it. But now I've noticed on Sonoma If I get a JPEG in the CMYK color space the NSBitmapImageRep renders mostly black and is corrupted. So I'm trying to drop down to the lower level APIs. Specifically I grab a CGImageRef and and trying to use the Accelerate API to convert it to another format (to hopefully workaround the issue... CGImageRef sourceCGImage = `CGImageCreateWithJPEGDataProvider(jpegDataProvider,` NULL, shouldInterpolate, kCGRenderingIntentDefault); Now I use vImageConverter_CreateWithCGImageFormat... with the following values for source and destination formats: Source format: (derived from sourceCGImage) bitsPerComponent = 8 bitsPerPixel = 32 colorSpace = (kCGColorSpaceICCBased; kCGColorSpaceModelCMYK; Generic CMYK Profile) bitmapInfo = kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault version = 0 decode = 0x000060000147f780 renderingIntent = kCGRenderingIntentDefault Destination format: bitsPerComponent = 8 bitsPerPixel = 24 colorSpace = (DeviceRBG) bitmapInfo = 8197 version = 0 decode = 0x0000000000000000 renderingIntent = kCGRenderingIntentDefault But vImageConverter_CreateWithCGImageFormat fails with kvImageInvalidImageFormat. Now if I change the destination format to use 32 bitsPerpixel and use alpha in the bitmap info the vImageConverter_CreateWithCGImageFormat does not return an error but I get a black image just like NSBitmapImageRep
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1.3k
Aug ’25
VRAM not freeing in Elite Dangerous
So I've been trying out GPTK with Elite Dangerous Horizons game and it looks like from what I can tell. The VRAM keeps going up until it goes over the limit where it drops the FPS to 1-3 FPS and then crashes the game. From the Performance HUD I can see that it looks like when using GPTK, the VRAM usage just keeps climbing and I never saw it drop down at all. I did some limited testing, and from that I think I can conclude that it is probably not a VRAM leak, but it might be caching it. The reason for this is because I noticed that if I went back to the area that I've been before. It won't increase the VRAM usage. So either there is something wrong with the freeing VRAM memory part, or it could be that GPTK might not be reporting the right amount of VRAM available to use? So maybe that's why it keeps allocating VRAM until it went out of memory and crashed the game. Just to test, I did try running the game with DXVK+MoltenVK combo, and I can see that it works just fine. VRAM is being freed up when it's no longer used. Is this a known issue in some games?
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Apr ’25
SceneKit app randomly crashes with EXC_BAD_ACCESS in jet_context::set_fragment_texture
Every now and then my SceneKit game app crashes and I have no idea why. The SCNView has a overlaySKScene, so it might also be SpriteKit's fault. The stack trace is #0 0x0000000241c1470c in jet_context::set_fragment_texture(std::__1::basic_string<char, std::__1::char_traits<char>, std::__1::allocator<char>> const&, jet_texture*) () #27 0x000000010572fd40 in _pthread_wqthread () Does anyone have an idea where I could start debugging this, without being able to consistently reproduce it?
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Nov ’24
Swift Package with Metal
Hi, I've got a Swift Framework with a bunch of Metal files. Currently users have to manually include a Metal Lib in their bundle provided separately, to use the Swift Package. First question; Is there a way to make a Metal Lib target in a Swift Package, and just include the .metal files? (without a binary asset) Second question; If not, Swift 5.3 has resource support, how would you recommend to bundle a Metal Lib in a Swift Package?
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Mar ’25
GameKit Access Point causes camera background image in ARKit to be black in iOS 18 beta only
I have an AR game using ARKit with SceneKit that works just fine in iOS 17. In the iOS 18 betas, the AR background image shows black instead of showing the real world. As a result there's no tracking and obviously the whole game is useless. I narrowed down the issue to showing the Game Center Access Point. My app has ViewController 1 (VC1) showing the main menu and that's where I want to show the GC Access Point. From there you open VC2 which shows a list of levels. Selecting any level will open VC3 which has the ARScene. Following is the code I use to start Game Center in VC1: GKLocalPlayer.local.authenticateHandler = { gcAuthVC, error in let isGameCenterReady = (gcAuthVC == nil) && (error == nil) if let viewController = gcAuthVC { self.present (viewController, animated: true, completion: nil) } if error != nil { print(error?.localizedDescription ?? "") } if isGameCenterReady { GKAccessPoint.shared.location = .topLeading GKAccessPoint.shared.showHighlights = true GKAccessPoint.shared.isActive = true } } When switching to VC2 I run GKAccessPoint.shared.isActive = false so that the Access Point will no longer show in any of the following VCs. I tried running it in VC1, VC2, and again in VC3 - it doesn't change anything. Once I reach VC3, the background is black. If in VC1 I don't run GKAccessPoint.shared.isActive = true, so I don't activate the access point, the behavior is as follows: If I wait until after the Game Center login animation completes and closes on its own and then I proceed to VC2 and VC3, the camera image will show correctly If I quickly move to VC2 before the Game Center login animation has completed, so my code will close it by setting active = false, and then I continue to VC3, I will see the black background problem. So it does look like activating the access point and then de-activating it causes the issue. BTW, if I activate the access point and leave it on in all VCs, the same black background issue persists. Other than that, when I'm in VC3 with the black background and I switch to another app (so my game moves to the background), when it returns to the foreground, the camera suddenly shows the real world correctly! I tried to manually reset the AR session by pausing and restarting it, but that didn't change anything. Also, when I check with the debugger, it looks like when the app comes back to the foreground it also doesn't run the session start code. But something does seem to reset itself so I wonder what that is. Maybe I could trigger the same manually in my cdoe??? I repeat that everything works just fine in iOS 17 and below. This problem only started with the iOS 18 beta (currently on beta 5, but it started in some of the previous betas as well). So could this be a bug in iOS 18? As a workaround I could check the iOS version and if it's iOS18 not activate the access point, hoping that the user will not jump to VC2 too quickly, and show my own button which will open Game Center. But I'd rather give the users the full experience with their own avatar and the highlights showing up. Plus, certainly some users will move quickly to VC2 and that will be an awful experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Mar ’25
OpenGL ES support on Apple Silicon Simulators
Hey folks, I have a legacy game that is running OpenGL ES - and it no longer works on the simulators that are running Apple Silicon, ie iPhone 15 Pro, or the 13" iPads. And yes, i'm also running on Apple Silicon (M1 Max). The apps work fine on the actual devices, but the simulator crashes on any glDrawElements with a stack that looks like the following: I have not yet seen an announcement about this not working but i've seen mention in other apps of stopping to support GL (https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-native/issues/2351) Can anyone shed some light? I'm obviously going to try to fix it, or find a recent sample app from which to start to see what might be up. Or move to metal, but i hadn't bargained for that level of effort atm ;) Any suggestions appreciated!
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2.5k
Mar ’25
RealityKit visionOS anchor to POV
Hi, is there a way in visionOS to anchor an entity to the POV via RealityKit? I need an entity which is always fixed to the 'camera'. I'm aware that this is discouraged from a design perspective as it can be visually distracting. In my case though I want to use it to attach a fixed collider entity, so that the camera can collide with objects in the scene. Edit: ARView on iOS has a lot of very useful helper properties and functions like cameraTransform (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/arview/cameratransform) How would I get this information on visionOS? RealityViews content does not seem offer anything comparable. An example use case would be that I would like to add an entity to the scene at my users eye-level, basically depending on their height. I found https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/realityrenderer which has an activeCamera property but so far it's unclear to me in which context RealityRenderer is used and how I could access it. Appreciate any hints, thanks!
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5.1k
Dec ’24
PingFang.ttc font file is missing in iOS 18.0
I'm an iOS developer, and I've been testing our app in iOS 18.0 Beta. I noticed that there's a problem with the font rendering, and after troubleshooting, I've found out that it's caused by the removal of the PingFang.ttc font in 18.0. I would like to ask the reason for removing this font file and which font should be used to display Chinese in the future? My test device is an iPhone 11 Pro and the system version is iOS 18.0 (22A5297). I have also tested Beta 1 and it has the same issue. In previous versions of the system, the PingFang font is located in this directory /System/Library/Fonts/LanguageSupport/PingFang.ttc. But in iOS 18.0, the font file in this directory has become Kohinoor.ttc, and I've tested that this font can't display Chinese either. I traversed the following system font directories and could not find the PingFang.ttc font file. /System/Library/Fonts/AppFonts /System/Library/Fonts/Core /System/Library/Fonts/CoreAddition /System/Library/Fonts/CoreUI /System/Library/Fonts/LanguageSupport /System/Library/Fonts/UnicodeSupport /System/Library/Fonts/Watch Looking for answers, thanks for the help!
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5.7k
Apr ’25
Using the same texture for both input & output of a fragment shader
Hello, This exact question was already asked in this forum (8 years ago) but I can't find a definitive answer: Does Metal allow using the same color texture as both an input and output (color attachment) of a fragment shader? Is the behavior defined somewhere? I believe this results in undefined behavior under both DirectX and OpenGL, so I'd assume the same for Metal, but then why doesn't Metal warn me about this as it does on some many other "misconfigurations"? It also seems to work correctly in my case, as I found out by accident. Would love to get a clarification! Thanks ahead!
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1.2k
Nov ’24
Metal texture allocated size versus actual image data size
Hello. In the iOS app i'm working on we are very tight on memory budget and I was looking at ways to reduce our texture memory usage. However I noticed that comparing ASTC8x8 to ASTC12x12, there is no actual difference in allocated memory for most of our textures despite ASTC12x12 having less than half the bpp of 8x8. The difference between the two only becomes apparent for textures 1024x1024 and larger, and even in that case the actual texture data is sometimes only 60% of the allocation size. I understand there must be some alignment and padding going on, but this seems extreme. For an example scene in my app with astc12x12 for most textures there is over a 100mb difference in astc size on disk versus when loaded, so I would love to be able to recover even a portion of that memory. Here is some test code with some measurements i've taken using an iphone 11: for(int i = 0; i &lt; 11; i++) { MTLTextureDescriptor *texDesc = [[MTLTextureDescriptor alloc] init]; texDesc.pixelFormat = MTLPixelFormatASTC_12x12_LDR; int dim = 12; int n = 2 &lt;&lt; i; int mips = i+1; texDesc.width = n; texDesc.height = n; texDesc.mipmapLevelCount = mips; texDesc.resourceOptions = MTLResourceStorageModeShared; texDesc.usage = MTLTextureUsageShaderRead; // Calculate the equivalent astc texture size int blocks = 0; if(mips == 1) { blocks = n/dim + (n%dim&gt;0? 1 : 0); blocks *= blocks; } else { for(int j = 0; j &lt; mips; j++) { int a = 2 &lt;&lt; j; int cur = a/dim + (a%dim&gt;0? 1 : 0); blocks += cur*cur; } } auto tex = [objCObj newTextureWithDescriptor:texDesc]; printf("%dx%d, mips %d, Astc: %d, Metal: %d\n", n, n, mips, blocks*16, (int)tex.allocatedSize); } MTLPixelFormatASTC_12x12_LDR 128x128, mips 7, Astc: 2768, Metal: 6016 256x256, mips 8, Astc: 10512, Metal: 32768 512x512, mips 9, Astc: 40096, Metal: 98304 1024x1024, mips 10, Astc: 158432, Metal: 262144 128x128, mips 1, Astc: 1936, Metal: 4096 256x256, mips 1, Astc: 7744, Metal: 16384 512x512, mips 1, Astc: 29584, Metal: 65536 1024x1024, mips 1, Astc: 118336, Metal: 147456 MTLPixelFormatASTC_8x8_LDR 128x128, mips 7, Astc: 5488, Metal: 6016 256x256, mips 8, Astc: 21872, Metal: 32768 512x512, mips 9, Astc: 87408, Metal: 98304 1024x1024, mips 10, Astc: 349552, Metal: 360448 128x128, mips 1, Astc: 4096, Metal: 4096 256x256, mips 1, Astc: 16384, Metal: 16384 512x512, mips 1, Astc: 65536, Metal: 65536 1024x1024, mips 1, Astc: 262144, Metal: 262144 I also tried using MTLHeaps (placement and automatic) hoping they might be better, but saw nearly the same numbers. Is there any way to have metal allocate these textures in a more compact way to save on memory?
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2.7k
Mar ’25
SceneView selective draw since concurrency
I have used SceneKit for several years but recently have a problem where a scene with fewer than 50 nodes is partially drawn, i.e., some nodes are, some aren't, and greater than 50 nodes are always draw correctly. This seems to have happened since concurrency was introduced. (w.r.t. concurrency, I had been using DispatchQueue successfully before then.) Since all nodes (few or many) are constructed and implemented by the same functions etc. I'm baffled. When I print the node hierarchy all nodes are present whether few or many. SceneView() has [.rendersContinually] option selected. Every node created (few or many) has .opacity = 1.0, .isHidden = false I haven't tried setting-back the compiler version as that is not a long term solution, and I know the same code worked fine then.
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685
Feb ’25
New GameSave API fails, "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application."
I've been playing with the new GameSave API and cannot get it to work. I followed the 3-step instructions from the Developer video. Step 2, "Next, login to your Apple developer account and include this entitlement in the provisioning profile for your game." seems to be unnecessary, as Xcode set this for you when you do step 1 "First add the iCloud entitlement to your game." Running the app on my device and tapping "Load" starts the sync, then fails with the error "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." I have no idea how to troubleshoot this. Every other time I've used CloudKit it has Just Worked™. Halp‽ Here is my example app: import Foundation import SwiftUI import GameSave @main struct GameSaveTestApp: App { var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { GameView() } } } struct GameView: View { @State private var loader = GameLoader() var body: some View { List { Button("Load") { loader.load() } Button("Finish sync") { Task { try? await loader.finish() } } } } } @Observable class GameLoader { var directory: GameSaveSyncedDirectory? func stateChanged() { let newState = withObservationTracking { directory?.state } onChange: { Task { @MainActor [weak self] in self?.stateChanged() } } print("State changed to \(newState?.description ?? "nil")") switch newState { case .error(let error): print("ERROR: \(error.localizedDescription)") default: _ = 0 // NOOP } } func load() { print("Opening gamesave directory") directory = GameSaveSyncedDirectory.openDirectory() stateChanged() } func finish() async throws { print("finishing syncing") await directory?.finishSyncing() } }
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Sep ’25
Does anyone know if HDR video is supported in a RealityView?
I have attempted to use VideoMaterial with HDR HLS stream, and also a TextureResource.DrawableQueue with rgba16Float in a ShaderGraphMaterial. I'm capturing to 64RGBAHalf with AVPlayerItemVideoOutput and converting that to rgba16Float. I don't believe it's displaying HDR properly or behaving like a raw AVPlayer. Since we can't configure any EDR metadata or color space for a RealityView, how do we display HDR video? Is using rgba16Float supposed to be enough? Is expecting the 64RGBAHalf capture to handle HDR properly a mistake and should I capture YUV and do the conversion myself? Thank you
7
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1.5k
Oct ’24
GKLocalPlayer.authenticateHandler not called on iOS 26 when Game Center auth overlay is shown
Hi — we’re testing our app on iOS 26 and ran into strange behavior with GKLocalPlayer.local.authenticateHandler. GKLocalPlayer.local.authenticateHandler = { [weak self] viewController, error in // additional code } What happens: When we assign authenticateHandler on iOS 26 and the user is not signed in to Game Center, the system shows a full-screen Game Center overlay asking the user to sign in. If the user taps Cancel, nothing further happens — the closure is not invoked again, so we don’t receive an error or any callback. The app never learns whether the auth was cancelled or failed. In previous iOS versions the closure was called (with viewController / error as appropriate) and the flow worked as expected. What we tried: Verified authenticateHandler is being set. Checked GKLocalPlayer.local.isAuthenticated after the overlay dismisses — it’s unchanged. Observed system logs: a com.apple.GameOverlayUI scene is created and later removed (so the auth overlay is shown by the system). Confirmed the same code works on earlier iOS versions. :thinking: Question: Has anyone seen authenticateHandler not being invoked on iOS 26 when the Game Center auth overlay is presented? Could this be a behavioral change in iOS 26 (overlay runs in a separate system process), or a bug? Any suggested workarounds to reliably detect that the user cancelled the sign-in (for example: listening for willResignActive / didBecomeActive, watching for a system overlay, or saving/presenting the viewController manually)? Thanks in advance for any advice — we’d appreciate pointers or suggested diagnostics ?
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