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Compute Shaders AND Geometry Shaders at the same time on Mac OSX

Discussion in 'macOS' started by olympicmarmot, Sep 7, 2017.

  1. olympicmarmot

    olympicmarmot

    Joined:
    May 8, 2017
    Posts:
    7
    I'm working on a game that uses compute shaders extensively and am using Metal on Unity 2017.2 on a mac. These have been working really well. The problem I'm having is that geometry shaders only work on OpenGL (where they work great) and I'm trying to make some grass on a terrain, which would be easy with a geometry shader.

    Is there a work around for geometry shaders on Mac with Metal? I.e. some way to create new tris for rendering using a compute shader without passing them to the CPU? So far I've come up with nothing.

    Alternatively, if there's some eta for having both geometry and compute shaders at the same time on Unity on Mac OSX, would love to know when.
     
    McPeppergames likes this.
  2. C_p_H

    C_p_H

    Joined:
    Nov 24, 2014
    Posts:
    153
    It appears you'll have access to both via macOS High Sierra Metal2.

    Hint: The asset uNature may contain reference code to perform Compute & Geometry Shaders at same time on GPU.
     
  3. olympicmarmot

    olympicmarmot

    Joined:
    May 8, 2017
    Posts:
    7
    Thanks for the reply. Looks like you're right that Metal2 will have support for geometry shaders, but I guess it will be a wait until Unity supports them in their shaders?
     
    Joonsoo-Kim likes this.
  4. McPeppergames

    McPeppergames

    Joined:
    Feb 15, 2019
    Posts:
    103
    Any news on this? I also want to use Geometry shaders on a Mac.
    Any help or workaround info welcome!
     
  5. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 25, 2013
    Posts:
    10,674
    Metal doesn't support geometry shaders.