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Comment by redsummer | Hacker News Reader

And how are people supposed to develop for this new technology if they haven't released a Mac pro for nearly 4 years, and graphic card support is well behind Windows?

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Probably via ThunderBolt3 connected eGPUs and whatever GPU comes in the next iMac update. Graphics card support isn't that difficult of a problem to solve. It'll never be on par with Windows but it doesn't have to be either. There are already a lot of AR/VR capable GPUs supported on macOS via the included AMD drivers and NVIDIA's third party drivers. It's probably a moot point though because they could just support testing on the AR device itself or perhaps with any other iOS devices with a similar GPU.

If only there were some way to get rid of all the cables! Could you, I don't know, and plug the GPU directly into a socket on your computer?? Then put everything inside a bigger box to keep it all tidy and clean.

I wonder if Apple is secretly working on something like that.

Apple just freshly created that problem by abandoning tech that wouldn't have required those cables.

Maybe they'll re-introduce it some day and call it revolutionary.

Who says this has to come from the desktop/laptop hardware side of things? They make the fastest and more powerful mobile chipsets (including GPU) right now...

Mobile chipsets can barely support 1080p 2D 60FPS.

You want to support >1080p 3D graphics projected onto the real world with VERY harsh latency limits (human sensory). Modern GPU's that eat more than 100watts and have terraflops of compute power are only starting to offer the compute speeds VR needs.

With Moore's Law ending I don't see mobile ever being able to render VR settings to a sufficient degree.

This is a 4/5 year development project. And that's being optimistic. On top of that, I'm not sure AR needs that kind of power. It's not VR. Just needs to display some objects and text on field of vision.

Hololens, for example, it's far from being a powerful machine and seems to do it just fine. Obviously we are talking about taking the first steps in a field that is still in development. it's not going to be perfect at first.

I am more akin to believing the phone will automatically sync with whatever AR equipment you have and that will do the processing, like hooking up my laptop to the projector.

Mobile chipsets support 1440p stereo 3d 60FPS (Gear VR, Daydream)

If only it were possible for Apple to launch new dev hardware alongside the new platform. Whenever or if ever it comes out.

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