Metal Alternatives

    Metal is described as 'provides near-direct access to the graphics processing unit (GPU), enabling you to maximize the graphics and compute potential of your apps on iOS, macOS, and tvOS' and is an app in the Development category. There are more than 10 alternatives to Metal for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone and Android. The best alternative is OpenGL, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Metal are Vulkan (Free, Open Source), WebGL (Free, Open Source), SDL (Free, Open Source) and Microsoft DirectX (Free).

    This page was last updated Feb 22, 2020

    1. OpenGL

      • Free • Open Source
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • BSD
      • Haiku
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        OpenGL is the premier environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications.

      • Vulkan

        • Free • Open Source
        • Mac
        • Windows
        • Linux
        • Android
        • Chrome OS
        • Tizen OS
        • SteamOS
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        Vulkan is a new generation graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.
      • WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces. Developers familiar with OpenGL ES 2.
        No screenshots yet

      • SDL

        • Free • Open Source
        • Mac
        • Windows
        • Linux
        • Windows Mobile
        • iPhone
        • Symbian S60
        • BSD
        • iPad
        • Haiku
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        Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer.
        No screenshots yet
      • Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms.

        Bundleware

        Bundled with Bing Bar.

      • Allegro

        • Free • Open Source
        • Mac
        • Windows
        • Linux
        • iPhone
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        Allegro 4 and Allegro 5 are cross-platform, libraries mainly aimed at video game and multimedia programming. They handle common, low-level tasks such as creating windows, accepting user input, loading data, drawing images, playing sounds, etc.
        No screenshots yet
      • CrossBrowdy is an open-source and free JavaScript framework that let developers create multimedia apps, game engines, games, emulators and so on.
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      • PyOpenGL

        • Free • Open Source
        • Mac
        • Windows
        • Linux
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        Python bindings for OpenGL API.
        No screenshots yet

      • ModernGL

        • Free • Open Source
        • Mac
        • Windows
        • Linux
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        OpenGL is a great environment for developing portable, platform independent, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications. The API implementation in Python is cumbersome, resulting in applications with high latency.
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      • Crystal Space is a mature, full-featured Software Development Kit (SDK) providing real-time 3D graphics for applications such as games and virtual reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X).

        Discontinued

        Discontinued since July 2012 : http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Download

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      Showing 10 of 10 alternatives