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Metal and Swift Concurrency
Hi, Introducing Swift Concurrency to my Metal app has been a bit challenging as Swift Concurrency is limited by the cooperative thread pool. GPU work is obviously not CPU bound and can block forward moving progress, especially when using waitUntilCompleted on the command buffer. For concurrent render work this has the potential of under utilizing the CPU and even creating dead locks. My question is, what is the Metal's teams general recommendation when it comes to concurrency? It seems to me that Dispatch or OperationQueues are still the preferred way for Metal bound tasks in order to gain maximum performance? To integrate with Swift Concurrency my idea is to use continuations that kick off render jobs via Dispatch or Queues? Would this be the best solution to bridge async tasks with Metal work? Thanks!
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1.1k
Apr ’25
screencapturekit
I have code that captures a window and displays a cropped image. The problem is 2 fold. Kit doesn't seem to allow to modify stop and recapture image in window mode to capture a portion of the screen. So this makes me having to crop and display the cropped image via a published variable. This all works find. But seems to stop after some time. Using an M1 16gig ram. program is taking less than 100meg of mem with 40-70%cpu as the crow flies. printing captured success in debug mode and sometimes frame isn't valid so guarding against it. any ideas on how to improve my strategy?
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135
Jun ’25
CMake unable to generate the Xcode file described in this tutorial
In the Creating A 3D Application With Hydra Rendering tutorial on the Apple Developer website, on the last step where I execute this command: cmake -S ~/Users/macuser/CreatingA3DApplicationWithHydraRendering/ -B ~/Users/macuser/CreatingA3DApplicationWithHydraRendering/ I keep getting an error: CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:5 (include): include could not find requested file: /Users/macuser/USDInstall/bin/pxrConfig.cmake I've tried to follow the instructions as mentioned in the README.md file included in the project files at least 5 times as well as moving the pxrConfig.cmake file around and copying it in different folders, then executed the command and was still unsuccessful into generating the proper file expected to compile and render the HydraPlayer renderer. How do I get cmake to generate the Xcode file to create the HydraPlayer renderer?
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164
May ’25
Game Center Challenges and Activities are not appearing
Hi, I'm trying to add game center challenges and activities to an already live game, but they are not appearing in game for testing, GameCenter, or the Games app. I know the game is setup with GameKit entitlements since this is a live game and it has working leaderboards and achievements. I've updated to Tahoe beta 8, added a challenge and activity on app store connect, added that to a new distribution and added that distribution to 'Add for Review' I'm using Unity and the Apple Unity plugin Not sure what other steps I'm missing Thanks
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1.1k
Sep ’25
We are getting a blank image after capturing and compressing the picture.
We used below method to resize image while compress the image, Below method is correct or need to do the correction in method or "CGBitmapContextCreate" -(UIImage *)resizeImage:(UIImage *)anImage width:(int)width height:(int)height { CGImageRef imageRef = [anImage CGImage]; CGImageAlphaInfo alphaInfo = CGImageGetAlphaInfo(imageRef); if (alphaInfo == kCGImageAlphaNone) alphaInfo = kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast; CGContextRef bitmap = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, width, height, CGImageGetBitsPerComponent(imageRef), 4 * width, CGImageGetColorSpace(imageRef), alphaInfo); CGContextDrawImage(bitmap, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef); CGImageRef ref = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(bitmap); UIImage *result = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:ref]; CGContextRelease(bitmap); CGImageRelease(ref); return result; }
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356
Dec ’25
SCNCamera SSAO on visionOS
Hi Looking at the documentation for screenSpaceAmbientOcclusionIntensity, I noticed that it says this is supported on visionOS 1.0+: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/scenekit/scncamera/screenspaceambientocclusionintensity Could someone enlighten me as to how that would work? As far as I know, we don't use an SCNCamera on visionOS. So, what's the idea here? Can we activate SSAO on visionOS?
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509
Feb ’25
Improving person segmentation and occlusion quality in RealityKit
I’m building an app that uses RealityKit and specifically ARConfiguration.FrameSemantics.personSegmentationWithDepth. The goal is to insert an AR object into the scene behind a person, and an additional AR object in front of the person, while being as photo realistic as possible. Through testing, I’ve noticed that many times, the edges of the person segmentation mask are not well matched to the actual person, and parts of the person are transparent, with the AR object bleeding through. It’s sort of like a “bad green screen” effect, which I’d expect to see a little bit, but not to this extent. I’ve been testing on iPhone 16, iPhone 14 Pro, iPad Pro 12.9 inch 6th Generation, and iPhone 12 Pro, with similar results across all devices. I’m wondering what else I can do to improve this… either code changes, platform (like different iPhone models), or environment (like lighting, distance, etc). Attaching some example screen grabs and a minimum reproducible code sample. Appreciate any insights! import ARKit import SwiftUI import RealityKit struct RealityViewContainer: UIViewRepresentable { func makeUIView(context: Context) -> ARView { let arView = ARView(frame: .zero) arView.environment.sceneUnderstanding.options.insert(.occlusion) arView.renderOptions.insert(.disableMotionBlur) arView.renderOptions.insert(.disableDepthOfField) let configuration = ARWorldTrackingConfiguration() configuration.planeDetection = [.horizontal] if ARWorldTrackingConfiguration.supportsFrameSemantics(.personSegmentationWithDepth) { configuration.frameSemantics.insert(.personSegmentationWithDepth) } arView.session.run(configuration) arView.session.delegate = context.coordinator context.coordinator.arView = arView } func makeCoordinator() -> Coordinator { Coordinator(self) } class Coordinator: NSObject, ARSessionDelegate { var parent: RealityViewContainer var floorAnchor: ARPlaneAnchor? init(_ parent: RealityViewContainer) { self.parent = parent } func session(_ session: ARSession, didAdd anchors: [ARAnchor]) { if let arView,floorAnchor == nil { for anchor in anchors { if let horizontalPlaneAnchor = anchor as? ARPlaneAnchor, horizontalPlaneAnchor.alignment == .horizontal, horizontalPlaneAnchor.transform.columns.3.y < arView.cameraTransform.translation.y { // filter out ceiling floorAnchor = horizontalPlaneAnchor let backgroundEntity = BackgroundEntity() let anchorEntity = AnchorEntity(anchor: horizontalPlaneAnchor) anchorEntity.addChild(background) let foregroundEntity = ForegroundEntity() backgroundEntity.addChild(foregroundEntity) arView.scene.addAnchor(anchorEntity) arView.installGestures([.rotation, .translation], for: backgroundEntity) break // Stop after adding the first horizontal plane (floor) } } } } } }
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112
May ’25
Metal triangle strips uniform opacity.
I have this drawing app that I have been working on for the past few years when I have free time. I recently rebuilt the app in Metal to build out other brushes and improve performance, need to render 10000s of lines in realtime. I’m running into this issue trying to create a uniform opacity per path. I have a solution but do not love it - as this is a realtime app and the solution could have some bottlenecks. If I just generate a triangle strip from touch points and do my best to smooth, resample, and handle miters I will always get some overlaps. See: To create a uniform opacity I render to an offscreen texture with blending disabled. I then pre-multiply the color and draw that texture to a composite texture with blending on (I do this per path). This works but gets tricky when you introduce a textured brush, the edges of the texture in the frag shader cut out the line. Pasted Graphic 1.png Solution: I discard below a threshold fragment float4 fragment_line(VertexOut in [[stage_in]], texture2d<float> texture [[ texture(0) ]]) { constexpr sampler s(coord::normalized, address::mirrored_repeat, filter::linear); float2 texCoord = in.texCoord; float4 texColor = texture.sample(s, texCoord); if (texColor.a < 0.01) discard_fragment(); // may be slow (from what I read) return in.color * texColor; } Better but still not perfect. Question: I'm looking for better ways to create a uniform opacity per path. I tried .max blending but that will cause no blending of other paths. Any tips, ideas, much appreciated. If this is too detailed of a question just achieve.
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105
Mar ’25
Clarifying when Game Center activity events fire relative to authentication
Hello, In our game we enforce an age gate before showing Game Center sign‑in. Only after the user passes the age gate do we call GKLocalPlayer.localPlayer.authenticateHandler. The reason I’m asking is that we want to reliably detect if the game was launched from a Game Center activity in the Games app (iOS 26+). If the user prefers to enter via activities, we don’t want to miss that event during cold start. Our current proposal is: Register a GKLocalPlayerListener early in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: so the app is ready to catch events. Queue any incoming events in our dispatcher. Only process those events after the user passes the age gate and authentication succeeds. My questions are: Does player:wantsToPlayGameActivity:completionHandler: ever fire before authentication, or only after the local player is authenticated? If it only fires after authentication, is our “register early but gate processing” approach the correct way to ensure we don’t miss activity launches? Is there any recommended pattern to distinguish “activity launch” vs. “normal launch” in this age‑gate scenario? We want to respect Apple’s age gate requirements, but also ensure activity launches are not lost if the user prefers that entry point. Sorry if this is a stupid question — I just want to be sure we’re following the right pattern. Thanks for any clarification or best‑practice guidance!
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7h
Present GameCentre Overlay Programmatically
As GKGameCenterViewController has been deprecated, it seems that GKAccessPoint is now the correct way to present the GameCentre leaderboard. But the placement options for the GKAccessPoint are very limited and lead to misaligned UI that looks clunky, as the GKAccessPoint does not align with the system navigation toolbar. Am I missing something here or am I just stuck with a lopsided UI now? I much preferred how this previously worked, where I could present the GKGameCenterViewController in a sheet from my own button
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1d
HidHide on MacOS
I was wondering if there's a method on MacOS to have my application hide a hid device such as a game controller and instead have the receiving game/application see my app's virtual controller? Is this possible via DriverKit or some other form of kernel level coding? On Windows we have a tool known as HidHide that hids a game controller from all other applications. Is it possible to implement such behavior into an app or is that system level?
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576
Dec ’25
打开显示HUD图形后,应用崩溃
hi everyone, 我们发现了一个和Metal相关崩溃。应用中使用了Metal相关的接口,在进行性能测试时,打开了设置-开发者-显示HUD图形。运行应用后,正常展示HUD,但应用很快发生了崩溃,日志主要信息如下: Incident Identifier: 1F093635-2DB8-4B29-9DA5-488A6609277B CrashReporter Key: 233e54398e2a0266d95265cfb96c5a89eb3403fd Hardware Model: iPhone14,3 Process: waimai [16584] Path: /private/var/containers/Bundle/Application/CCCFC0AE-EFB8-4BD8-B674-ED089B776221/waimai.app/waimai Identifier: Version: 61488 (8.53.0) Code Type: ARM-64 Parent Process: ? [1] Date/Time: 2025-06-12 14:41:45.296 +0800 OS Version: iOS 18.0 (22A3354) Report Version: 104 Monitor Type: Mach Exception Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x000000014fffae00 Crashed Thread: 57 Thread 57 Crashed: 0 libMTLHud.dylib esfm_GenerateTriangesForString + 408 1 libMTLHud.dylib esfm_GenerateTriangesForString + 92 2 libMTLHud.dylib Renderer::DrawText(char const*, int, unsigned int) + 204 3 libMTLHud.dylib Overlay::onPresent(id<CAMetalDrawable>) + 1656 4 libMTLHud.dylib CAMetalDrawable_present(void (*)(), objc_object*, objc_selector*) + 72 5 libMTLHud.dylib invocation function for block in void replaceMethod<void>(objc_class*, objc_selector*, void (*)(void (*)(), objc_object*, objc_selector*)) + 56 6 Metal __45-[_MTLCommandBuffer presentDrawable:options:]_block_invoke + 104 7 Metal MTLDispatchListApply + 52 8 Metal -[_MTLCommandBuffer didScheduleWithStartTime:endTime:error:] + 312 9 IOGPU IOGPUNotificationQueueDispatchAvailableCompletionNotifications + 136 10 IOGPU __IOGPUNotificationQueueSetDispatchQueue_block_invoke + 64 11 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_client_callout4 + 20 12 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_mach_msg_invoke + 464 13 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 368 14 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_mach_invoke + 456 15 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 368 16 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_lane_invoke + 432 17 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 368 18 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_lane_invoke + 380 19 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_root_queue_drain_deferred_wlh + 288 20 libdispatch.dylib _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 540 21 libsystem_pthread.dylib _pthread_wqthread + 288 我们测试了几个不同的机型,只有iPhone 13 Pro Max会发生崩溃。 Q1:为什么会发生这个崩溃? Q2:相同的逻辑,为什么仅在iPhone 13 Pro Max机型上出现崩溃? 期待您的解答。
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231
Jul ’25
VisionOS VideoMaterial on 3D Mesh
I'm trying to get video material to work on an imported 3D asset, and this asset is a USDC file. There's actually an example in this WWDC video from Apple. You can see it running on the flag in this airplane, but there are no examples of this, and there are no other examples on the internet. Does anybody know how to do this? You can look at 10:34 in this video. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/videomaterial
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981
Dec ’25
Bugs custom 18.6
Hello, when I'm looking to customize the icons of my phone, the applications that are in the grouping genres without replacing with all-black images, I don't know what happens by changing the color of the applications in group of change no color throws just listen not the black stuff
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150
Aug ’25