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iOS Metal system delayed one Vsync period to really display the frame on the screen
View Layout Add the following views in a view controller: Label View A, with a subview of the same size: MTKView A View B, with a subview of the same size: MTKView B Refresh Rates of Each View The label view refreshes at 60fps (driven by CADisplayLink). MTKView A and B refresh at 15fps. MTKView Implementation Details The corresponding CAMetalLayer's maximumDrawableCount is set to 2, changed to double buffering. The scheduling mechanism is modified; drawing is not driven by the internal loop but is done manually. The draw call is triggered immediately upon receiving a frame. self.metalView.enableSetNeedsDisplay = NO; self.metalView.paused = YES; A new high-priority queue is created for drawing, instead of handling it on the main queue. MTKView Latency Tracking The GPU completion time T1 is observed through the addCompletedHandler callback of the CommandBuffer. The presentation time T2 of the frame is observed through the addPresentedHandler callback of the currentDrawable in MTKView. Testing shows that T2 - T1 > 16.6ms (the Vsync period at 60Hz). This means that after the GPU rendering in MTLView is finished, the frame is not actually displayed at the next Vsync instruction but only at the Vsync instruction after that. I believe there is an extra 16.6ms of latency here, which I want to eliminate by adjusting the rendering mechanism. Observation from Instruments From Instruments, the Surface presentation aligns with the above test results. After the Metal encoder finishes, the Surface in Display switches only after the next-next Vsync instruction. See the image in the link for details. Questions According to a beginner's understanding, after MTKView's GPU rendering is finished, the next Vsync instruction should officially display (make it visible). However, this is not what is observed. Does the subview MTKView need to wait for another Vsync cycle to be drawn to the actual display buffer? The label updates its text at 60fps, so the entire interface should be displayed at 60fps. Is the content of MTKView not synchronized when the display happens? Explanation of the Reasoning Behind Some MTKView Code Details Changing from the default triple buffering to double buffering helps reduce the latency introduced by rendering. Not using MTKView's own scheduling mechanism but using manual triggering of the draw method is because MTKView's own scheduling mechanism is driven by CADisplayLink. Therefore, if a frame falls within a Vsync window, it needs to wait for the next Vsync window to trigger the draw operation, which introduces waiting latency.
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1w
Scenekit view and scenekit editor color difference
Hello there, I'm having trouble matching what I see in the scenekit editor and the output of the resulting scene in a scnview. For a glitter effect I have set a high value on the diffuse intensity which looks fine in the editor but when running the game the colors are much darker. To see if the intensity value is merely capped I have set the same multiplier on the hat below - but it is blown out which looks to me like there is some grading going on I have tried to switch on hdr rendering but that didn't make a difference. I tried disabling linear rendering and that simply made everything darker still - which I expect. Does someone have an idea what else this could be? What rendering is the scenekit editor using and how can I match it? Interestingly when I take a screenshot of the editor window for this post, the image is also blown out... what is going on? :) Thanks so much for any pointers, Seb
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123
Apr ’25
How set leaderboards to live
I’ve added two recurring leaderboards to my app and the user interface for the Game Center leaderboards pops up when expected and it lists the leaderboards but when you click on them it says “Have Fun With Friends” and lists some of my contacts instead of any scores. The status under Apple Connect is “Not Live” and I’m wondering how to activate them. App has been approved for external beta testing. On a related note, on my iPad it doesn’t display correctly, it says “Game Center” at the top but the rest of the UI doesn’t appear, just blackness.
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608
Jan ’25
RealityView content scale factor
Hi, following the recent deprecation of SceneKit, I'm trying to move a couple of my SceneKit projects to RealityKit. One thing I can't seem to find is how to change the content scale factor when using a RealityView in SwiftUI. It was really easy to do in SceneKit with just a SCNView property, and it seems that it's also possible when using ARView, but I can't find a way to do it with a RealityView. Maybe it's a SwiftUI limitation?
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Jul ’25
Safe Places to Find Dependable App Developers
Hello! Brand new to the Apple developer community, so, hello everyone! I'm a game developer, we just launched our first game on PC and I'm looking to port it to ios. Time is something I'm kind of short on, and I hear it takes some jumping through hoops to get the know-how to port something to mobile. Any good sites you'd recommend for finding programmers to port your game? It's fairly simple - just a visual novel. Any and all suggestions welcome! All the best! Elijah
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612
Dec ’24
SCNScene.write To USDZ, Node color fades
I use SCNScene.write To file ".usdz", then open the ".usdz" by SCNScene.url , all Nodes color fades. Export and load only once. The fading is not obvious. Return and repeat 4 or 5 times. It is obvious that the color is inconsistent with the original color and has become much lighter.
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153
May ’25
You cannot debug in simulator
I can't create any breakpoint in my Xcode after I upgraded to macOS 15.4 macOS: Version 15.4 (24E248) visionOS Simulator: 2.3 Xcode: Version 16.2 (16C5032a) My app works well without any breakpoints. But if I create any breakpoint it shows me this: Couldn't find the Objective-C runtime library in loaded images. Message from debugger: The LLDB RPC server has crashed. You may need to manually terminate your process. The crash log is located in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and has a prefix 'lldb-rpc-server'. Please file a bug and attach the most recent crash log.
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404
Apr ’25
Trying to better understand CGAffineTransform.... and need a bit of guidance.
I have a CoreImage pipeline and one of my steps is to rotate my image about the origin (bottom left corner) and then translate it. I'm not seeing the behaviour I'm expecting, and I think my problem is in how I'm combining these two steps. As an example, I start with an identity transform (lldb) po transform333 ▿ CGAffineTransform - a : 1.0 - b : 0.0 - c : 0.0 - d : 1.0 - tx : 0.0 - ty : 0.0 I then rotate 1.57 radians (approx. 90 degrees, CCW) transform333 = transform333.rotated(by: 1.57) - a : 0.0007963267107332633 - b : 0.9999996829318346 - c : -0.9999996829318346 - d : 0.0007963267107332633 - tx : 0.0 - ty : 0.0 I understand the current contents of the transform. But then I translate by 10, 10: (lldb) po transform333.translatedBy(x: 10, y: 10) - a : 0.0007963267107332633 - b : 0.9999996829318346 - c : -0.9999996829318346 - d : 0.0007963267107332633 - tx : -9.992033562211013 - ty : 10.007960096425679 I was expecting tx and ty to be 10 and 10. I have noticed that when I reverse the order of these operations, the transform contents look correct. So I'll most likely just perform the steps in what feels to me like the incorrect order. Is anyone willing/able to point me to an explanation of why the steps I'm performing are giving me these results? thanks, mike
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573
Jan ’25
Issue with FBX import -- models are ultra small
When importing FBX animations (generated by Cinema 4d or Blender) the models come in very far way and cannot resize or zoomed in. I have tried every setting from both programs to no avail. Is there a secret to providing the right export options? When importing without animations/and rigging the model imports fine and correct size. But once motion is included, something is awry. I also tried changing base units in Converter, but did not work. I have attache my model heirarchy in C4D as well as the imported result. It appears the animation is imported, as I can see it move, but can barely see it :)
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556
Feb ’25
Anchor an Reality scene on an image anchor
Developing a prototype Vision Pro app and would like to render a 3D scene made from Reality Composer Pro on an image anchor in a RealityView. But I have no luck so far to make it work and need some guidance to move on. I got the image file stored in the assets like below: And from below is the source codes: import SwiftUI import RealityKit import RealityKitContent struct AnchorView: View { @State var imageEntity: Entity = { let anchorEntity = AnchorEntity(.image(group: "AR Resources", name: "reanchor")) return anchorEntity }() var body: some View { RealityView { content in do { // Add the initial RealityKit content if let scene = try? await Entity(named: "Scene", in: realityKitContentBundle) { imageEntity.addChild(scene) content.add(imageEntity) } } catch { print("Error occurs when adding reality view content: \(error)") } } } }
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1.2k
Sep ’25
What good is NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied?
If I create a bitmap image and then try to get ready to draw into it, like so: NSBitmapImageRep* newRep = [[NSBitmapImageRep alloc] initWithBitmapDataPlanes: nullptr pixelsWide: 128 pixelsHigh: 128 bitsPerSample: 8 samplesPerPixel: 4 hasAlpha: YES isPlanar: NO colorSpaceName: NSDeviceRGBColorSpace bitmapFormat: NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied | NSBitmapFormatThirtyTwoBitBigEndian bytesPerRow: 4 * 128 bitsPerPixel: 32]; [NSGraphicsContext setCurrentContext: [NSGraphicsContext graphicsContextWithBitmapImageRep: newRep]]; then the log shows this error: CGBitmapContextCreate: unsupported parameter combination: RGB 8 bits/component, integer 512 bytes/row kCGImageAlphaLast kCGImageByteOrderDefault kCGImagePixelFormatPacked Valid parameters for RGB color space model are: 16 bits per pixel, 5 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst 32 bits per pixel, 8 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast 32 bits per pixel, 10 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNone|kCGImagePixelFormatRGBCIF10|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 64 bits per pixel, 16 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents|kCGImageByteOrder16Little 128 bits per pixel, 32 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents 128 bits per pixel, 32 bits per component, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast|kCGBitmapFloatComponents See Quartz 2D Programming Guide (available online) for more information. If I don't use NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied as part of the format, I don't get the error message. My question is, why does the constant NSBitmapFormatAlphaNonpremultiplied exist if you can't use it like this? If you're wondering why I wanted to do this: I want to extract the RGBA pixel data from an image, which might have non-premultiplied alpha. And elsewhere online, I saw advice that if you want to look at the pixels of an image, draw it into a bitmap whose format you know and look at those pixels. And I don't want the process of drawing to premultiply my alpha.
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133
Jun ’25
RealityKit captureHighResolutionFrame from session is broken on iOS26?
A bit of background on what our app is doing: We have a RealityKit ARView session running. During this period we place objects in RealityKit. At some point user can "take photo" and we use session.captureHighResolutionFrame to capture a frame. We then use captured frame and frame.camera.projectPoint to project my objects back to 2D Issue we found is that on devices that have iOS26, first photo user takes and the first frame received from session.captureHighResolutionFrame gives incorrect CGPoint for frame.camera.projectPoint. If user takes the second photo with the same camera phostion, second frame received from session.captureHighResolutionFrame gives correct CGPoint for frame.camera.projectPoint I notices some difference between first and subsequent frames that i believe is corresponding with the issue. Yaw value of camera (frame.camera.eulerAngles.y) on first frame is not correct ( inconsistent with any subsequent frame) I also created a small example app and i followed Building an Immersive Experience with RealityKit example to create it. The issue exists in this app for iOS26, while iOS18.* has consistent values between first and subsequent captured frames. Note: The yaw value seems to differ more if we start session in portrait but take photo in landscape. Example result for 3 captured frames: Frame captured with yaw: 1.4855177402496338 Frame captured with yaw: -0.08803760260343552 Frame captured with yaw: -0.08179682493209839 Example code: class CustomARView: ARView, ARSessionDelegate { required init(frame: CGRect) { super.init(frame: frame) } required init?(coder decoder: NSCoder) { fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")} func setup() { let singleTap = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(handleTap)) addGestureRecognizer(singleTap) } @objc func handleTap(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) { Task { do { let frame = try await session.captureHighResolutionFrame() print("Frame captured with yaw: \(Double(frame.camera.eulerAngles.y))") } catch { } } } } struct CustomARViewUIViewRepresentable: UIViewRepresentable { func makeUIView(context: Context) -> some UIView { let arView = CustomARView(frame: .zero) arView.setup() return arView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIViewType, context: Context) { } } struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { CustomARViewUIViewRepresentable() .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity) .ignoresSafeArea() } }
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548
Sep ’25
How to use MetalPeformancePrimitives
I am trying to learn the new Metal Peformance Primitives APIs. I have added the MetalPeformancePrimitives framework and included the header in my shader code as per documentation #include <MetalPeformancePrimitives/MetalPeformancePrimitives.h> Unfortunately, Xcode complains that the header cannot be found. How do I include it properly? I am using Xcode 26 on Tahoe. The MetalPeformancePrimitives framework is present on my machine and I can inspect the headers in the filesystem.
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705
Oct ’25
Is there any future for screensavers on macOS?
I haven't been looking at screensavers for a long time because of Apple's lack of will (or resources?) to provide a public version of the private modern SDK used by Apple for a very long time now. I'm now looking at the Screen Saver pane in System Settings (the What-If version of System Preferences in an alternate universe where all screens are in portrait mode). In macOS Sequoia, it seems like 3rd party screensavers are not welcome considering that they are relegated to the "Other" section at the bottom of the list and you have to click Show All to start seeing 3rd party screen savers. I also had a quick look at macOS Tahoe Beta 3 and it looks like that all the real screensavers are gone (3rd party and the ones from Apple: Hello, Message, Flurry, etc.) or at least it requires to be a Nobel Prize to find them (and the Search field is not useful). I tried to install a 3rd party screen saver on macOS Tahoe Beta 3, it doesn't show up in the list. To summarize: No public access to modern APIs AFAIK. UI that is hostile to 3rd party screen savers on macOS Sequoia. Apparently only screensavers that are slideshows or movies curated by Apple in macOS Tahoe b3. Hence the question: Is there any future for screen savers on macOS? Because if there's none, I won't waste my time trying to update some old screen savers.
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523
Aug ’25
Desire to close contour from left & right two top points
Hello all... is there a way to close a contour if you have found say two points on each side top "extension"? see image attached. So in end desire a trapezoid type shape. Code example would be very appreciated. thank you :) Think I have it as a CGPath. So a way to edit a CGPath, or close the top from a top left to a top right point?
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498
Jan ’25