Apple's Metal 3 key to 'No Man's Sky' and 'Resident Evil: Villages' coming to Mac
Darryl Boxberger
The new Metal 3 API, coming later this year, will allow Macs to upscale more efficiently, intelligently draw frames for smoother gameplay, and access game data quicker.
Part of the new macOS Ventura, Jeremy Sandmel, senior director of GPU software at Apple, discussed the new Metal at the company's WWDC 2022 event.
The new version of Metal introduces the MetalFX framework. MetalFX manages upscaling for better resolution, as well as drawing extra frames to improve frame rate in games. The Mac version of the game "No Man's Sky" will utilize the MetalFX technology to improve its performance.
Metal 3 will also feature a "fast resource loading API," that speeds up the pipeline from silicon to RAM and storage to allow the device to find and draw textures quicker. This will allow games that use the API to experience less loading time.
With the technologies included in the new Metal, "Resident Evil: Village" was announced for the Mac. Masaru Ijuin, manager of the Advanced Technical Research Division, took the stage to announce the port of the game to macOS.
"Resident Evil: Village" will be available on the Mac later in 2022.
A new API in the new Metal specifically for iPad is a background download API, which optimizes performance for the foreground while the device is taxed by a concurrent software download.
Metal 3 will launch with macOS Ventura and iPadOS 16 this Fall.
Metal was first introduced in 2014 as an optimization layer for the iPhone 5s' Apple A7 processor. The technology was expanded in scope and to more devices as more powerful Apple Silicon chips were released.
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