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Metal in ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS v100.8

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04-23-2020 07:42 PM
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Nicholas-Furness
Esri Regular Contributor
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In 2018, Apple announced they were deprecating support for Open GL in macOS and iOS. Here's what we wrote about that at the time: https://community.esri.com/community/developers/native-app-developers/arcgis-runtime-sdk-for-ios/blo... 

We're pleased to let you know that the 100.8 release of the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS, coming soon out now, introduces Metal support. There's nothing you need to do to take advantage of this other than upgrade your version of the Runtime SDK for iOS to version 100.8.

Testing has shown improved performance (especially when displaying scenes in the simulator).

Because OpenGL ES support is no longer included, any development or testing workflow that uses the iOS Simulator must use a simulator that supports Metal to view an AGSMapView or AGSSceneView. What this means in practice is that to use version 100.8 with an iOS Simulator you must meet the following minimum conditions:

  • Developing on macOS Catalina (10.15)
  • Using Xcode 11 (this is a requirement for Runtime 100.8 anyway).
  • Simulating iOS 13

If you need to develop or test with version 100.8 against iOS 12 or using an earlier version of macOS, you need to use a physical device in place of the simulator.

You'll find this information and more in the release notes.

Please note that the Runtime SDKs for Qt, .NET (Xamarin.iOS), and Java will introduce Metal support in future releases.

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About the Author
Product Manager for the ArcGIS Maps SDKs for Native Apps, focusing on the Swift SDK, as well as the ArcGIS Maps SDKs for Game Engines. My background is in computer science, but my professional career has always been GIS, in particular Utilities.