Future of Flame development on MacOS

[alan_okey]

How will Apple's deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL in favor of Metal impact future development of the Flame family of products on MacOS?

https://developer.apple.com/macos/whats-new/

[joelosis]

im gonna assume here that apple would have given autodesk and its many software vendors fair warning on this decision and that the team is working on the transition, the performance increase should hopefully make flame more on par with the linux experience, however the elephant in the room is graphics drivers and amd vega or beta web drivers for nvidia gpus.

[fred.warren · Accepted solution]

Hello alan_okey,

There is currently no plan to modify our offering on the mac platform. Our development team is looking into different possibilities to continue delivering the Flame, Flare and Flame Assist products on mac in the future.

Please accept this as a solution if you feel your question has been answered.

fred

[AndyDill]

It's also possible that things turn into a more Windows-like system where the graphics card drivers provide openGL updates, in which case it wouldn't matter what Apple's plans are for their OS.

[Anonymous]

What it means is Mac for VFX is dead and if your running flame or flare on a Mac your times running out. Game over. 

In reality neither Autodesk nor Foundry is actively looking to rewrite code from scratch so it’s going to be quite a few years if ever that anything is done with Metal. Considering gamer programmers are also up up in arms world wide,  Apple effectively just killed its own Mac future. Stupidest thing Apple has ever done but there a phone brand not a computer company anymore.

No point in buying that upcoming 2019 Mac Pro anymore.

R.I.P Apple computers

[joelosis]

while i share your sentiment for mac being a dead platform going forward, i just don't think all the players like autodesk,adobe and the foundy to name a few would just abandon the apple platform,  interesting times ahead for sure

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

now that the things and decisions and immediacy become clearer, especially in the  light of yesterdays news, are there any new reactions to this, looking at the future ?

Rosetta 2 anyone ?

I can‘t imagine Windows as an alternative platform, the effort on the side of Autodesk must be much higher than adapting metal.

Now we do have Apple Silicon making the decision not any less complicated.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

RIP MacBook Pro

In all honesty the writings been on the wall since the Nvidia war started. Mac is no longer for pro work.

-Now just a toy, nothing pro about Arm chips
-Arm based is for subscription control model
-Saving power is not a pro feature
-IOS toy apps are not pro, OSX were
-Third party software won’t run on Arm
-Third party makes most all pro softwares
-Like Rosetta, 32bit, JIT comparability will be killed off quick. First buyers stuck with dead Arm Macs.
-No windows dual boot or intel compatibility
-No true pro level Nvidia Quadro graphics
-No pro software support
-Third party make all pro Mac apps not apple.

Goodbye Mac

[Anonymous]

Hi Steward,

Thanks for your reply.

While I would agree with most (not all) of your objections, the question remains.

We as customers who spend 20kUSD a year In Autodesk have a right to know if the platform that we invested in along with continuous subsciptions, which gives and will give us tremendous workflow benefits (more than *nix for that matter) will be supported/respected in future development.

Yes, the GPU discussion is an ongoing and righteous one, yet I can‘t stand the whining anymore, it is going on now for 5, 6 or is it 7 years already ?

Either the platform is relevant and development adapts or not - that’s what I want to know.

For me it is not ultimately about the Mac, but if Autodesk will adapt or stick to what they have, which is pretty much stoneage under the hood.

We can surely swap back to CentOS or whatever and just invest in Dell T or an HP Z and eventually use a system that still doesn‘t support any Photoshop - or not.

For me, the only one who is qualified in answering this is Autodesk (whom I ultimately address my question to).

Cheers

[AndyDill]

One thing I appreciate about Apple is their cavalier attitude.  I don't always LOVE it (rip Shake), but with so many companies bending over to make sure programs from the 90's can still run, it's nice to have a company build from the ground up every so often.  I remember the move to OSX being clunky, but it also made it so Maya could run on the system, even before Photoshop would.

I'm not enough of a chip expert to speak to the impact on Flame, but I hold the developers in high regard. If they have to port Flame to this new chip, I'm sure they'll do a great job.

[Anonymous]

Hi Andy,

I have the same mixed feelings, especially when it comes to Shake!-) And that was not due to platform or OS deveopments, but more likely a simple and brutal business decision (I guess). Maybe they bought it simply to acquire some IP for image processing which they eventually failed to use (who is using Motion really ?).

Anyway, yes, I appreciate Flame as well. But just like Avid, for me as an engineer (not a coder!), I see much of the same stuff unchanged since the early days. That makes support easy (I can still support MediaComposer as well almost as if it were 1997), but progress difficult. And it is the economics factor for ADSK: keeping 75% of the code unchanged or almost unchanged and do UI cosmetics or add wiretap gateway into the mix to support more codecs.

These were clever development decisions though and I do appreciate them. Also, take the Logik shaders - it is almost brilliant.

Ultimately I do not speak as a user (because I am not), but as the purchaser (also not the final decision maker - technically I am consulting the decision makers).

And I have yet to see a useful, definitive and official statement from ADSK re the changes on the Mac platform and ADSK‘s subsequent roadmap.

Cheers

[anuj_abhiwan]

The future of Autodesk Flame development on macOS remains focused on:

1. Performance: Leveraging Apple Silicon for enhanced speed and efficiency.
2. Compatibility: Supporting macOS updates while maintaining integration with creative tools.
3. Features: Continuous updates to improve VFX, colour grading, and compositing workflows.
4. Community Needs: Aligning development with feedback from macOS users in the industry.

Autodesk is committed to optimizing Flame for macOS, ensuring it remains a robust tool for creative professionals.