Burning questions from the 2020 (virtual) dev summit

Question

Hi Gang - great job from the Runtime team on the Dev Summit Plenary live stream this morning!  Since the dev summit is virtual and very little info is available at this point I guess I'm going to post my questions here.

* Can we get an update on expected Metal support for iOS?
* There was talk a while back about SDK level support for external GNSS devices.  Is that still a thing?
* Any update or progress made on support for GoTenna mesh radios?  This was a demo from the Qt folks last year and something we have been working on adding to our apps (on the back burner though).
* Will there be a way to do a road-ahead session for Runtime this year?  Those are my personal favorite and honestly a huge reason I go to the Dev Summit in the first place.

RexHansenAFO · Answer

Indeed, we've been working on game engine integration for a while so good to see it announced - and demonstrated exceptionally well 
  Best place to stay up to date on our game engine work is the ArcGIS for Game Engines beta program: https://esriurl.com/a4ge    It's a public opportunity, just need to fill out a survey to get in.  The first set of beta deliverables should be available early Q3 2020.   Also, we originally had a Dev Summit tech session on our developer offerings for game engines, but as Dev Summit was cancelled, we now intend to host as a webinar in early April.  We'll provide updates/details on these upcoming events to those in the beta program.

MichaelDavis3 · Answer

Thanks Rex - very helpful info.  I'll mention the Unity/Unreal support for the Runtime SDK was defiantly the star of the show for our Dev group.  A whole bunch of interest in that one for both work and personal projects 🙂

Is there a spot on GeoNet or point of contact we should direct folks to for more information and updates on the game engine Runtime and future betas?

RexHansenAFO · Answer

Hi Michael,

Yes, unfortunate about the cancellation of the event as we also look forward to discussions about current and future Runtime work.

1) We are working on Metal support at the moment.  It should be introduced with the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS with 100.8.   It will be delivered with iOS support in the Runtime SDKs for .NET and Qt after 100.8.    When support for Metal is included, OpenGL will not longer be supported.  This will prevent use of the AGSMapView and AGSSceneView in the Xcode simulator, unless the following requirements are met: 
- Xcode 11 
- Catalina (macOS 10.15) 
- app targets iOS 13 
2)  Yes, we're working on better location enablement in Runtime in the latter half of this year (100.9 in Aug, 100.10 in Dec).  This includes support for high accuracy GNSS (position correction information from GNSS, access number of satellites, etc).   It also includes better information about the current location (eg notification about location changes), additional location sources (eg indoor positioning), and geofencing.         
3)  Support for mesh network radios is still in the near term backlog for Runtime, but not yet scheduled for a release in 2020.   
4) There are no specific plans at the moment to record or host a virtual Road Ahead session for Runtime.   Feel free to reach out via GeoNET, your account manager, or tech support if you have questions.

Keep in mind, all information I have presented above is subject to change.

Thanks

-Rex