What Apple is doing with USD might have been better served by glTF, but glTF is a Khronos standard and Apple refuses to work with them for unspecified legal reasons.
Given that Apple created OpenCL and handed it over to Khronos, this seems a bit off.
> OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia. Apple submitted this initial proposal to the Khronos Group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#History
Apple just has a long history of working with Pixar. I think they've been using Pixar's USD as the basis for their AR asset file format since 2018.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/apples-usdz-ar-file-for...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F6ns6I3zs-2JL_dT9hOkX_25...
> Apple is not comfortable working under Khronos IP framework, because of dispute between Apple Legal & Khronos which is private. Can’t talk about the substance of this dispute. Can’t make any statement for Apple to agree to Khronos IP framework.
Since the details of the dispute haven't come out it's unclear if it has been resolved yet, but regardless they don't seem to be on good terms.
Even GLB, the binary glTF format, is very sub-optimal for runtime. It even has chunks of JSON embedded in it.
Marrying the format so closely to OpenGL is looking pretty dated now of course, with OpenGL/WebGL dead and buried by Vulkan/WebGPU. You can render glTF with Vulkan/WebGPU but the flexibility of the format and the newer APIs rigid pipeline layouts are at odds with each other - ideally you want the data to follow a consistent, rigid layout.
If only.
Vulkan requires everyone to be a driver writer before they can even think about drawing a triangle, while at the same time already beating OpenGL with spaghetti extensions at the rate it is getting new ones every month.
And it is only a GNU/Linux and Android thing anyway, not the main API on PlayStation, XBox, Apple, Windows and Switch.
WebGL took a decade to be fully adopted, WebGPU has at least another decade ahead of it until it becomes fully widespread, and even then it will be targeting 2015 hardware capabilities.
No different than DX12/Metal. these new APIs were made because driver writers need more power. But that means the usage will be niche, either for top companies who can throw money to find driver writers or hobbyists who invest in the future (or become headhunted by said top companies).
>And it is only a GNU/Linux and Android thing anyway, not the main API on PlayStation, XBox, Apple, Windows and Switch.
To be fair, OpenGL was never the main API for Xbox/Apple/Windows to begin with. And it's been several generations since Playstation/Switch really endorsed OpenGL. I wasn't expecting Vulkan to change that overnight.
That said, Nintendo does seem to welcome Vulkan more warmly than Sony has. So that's one more major player.
