Niche platform from one of the biggest companies on the planet isn’t as niche as others though. If there’s a way to get first party support from the vendor directly it could be beneficial to the other platforms too (iOS).

> it could be beneficial to the other platforms too (iOS).

In what way?

As far as I know, iOS support on Godot is almost entirely community-driven. If true, Godot has nothing to gain. Apple is struggling with adoption so they have most to gain from Godot support for visionOS, but is not obvious that visionOS support would benefit Godot in any strategic manner.

One strategic heuristic is that you don’t want to undertake the work to enable another company’s success on a product line, unless you depend on it or believe you have a strategic advantage against other competitors.

For example, if Godot negotiates for exclusivity or primary status for game engine positioning on visionOS and they believe VR is a material future footprint, that might be interesting. Anything less is in Apple’s favor and not in Godot’s.

>As far as I know, iOS support on Godot is almost entirely community-driven.

Yes, and now it has gotten to the point where it clearly has been noticed by Apple; and they're eager to contribute back to it too.

Is that not... the ideal scenario here? You have community contribute a port for a big platform, the company notices, and starts contributing too.

> Apple; and they're eager to contribute back to it too.

To think Apple is interested in the success of Godot would be a mistake. It might feel like a compliment, but it would be a trap because Apple’s interest stems from increasing the chances of visionOS success and will be happy to externalize the ongoing maintenance tax to Godot.

Unless Godot feels they need visionOS then it isn’t in their interest to entertain Apple’s PR. If anything they should respond saying they already support standard interface in the form of OpenXR.

Did you get burned by a company contributing to an open source project before or what makes you so cynical about this PR? I feel like it's the ideal scenario that a company actually dedicates engineers and time to contribute to an open source project instead of doing their own thing, maybe even behind closed doors.

I’m invested in the success of Godot and fear the visionOS distraction dilutes the urgency that’s needed to compete with Unreal and Unity.

Additionally, if Godot accepts this PR and related ongoing work, it would signal to me poor strategic judgment.

Many an open source project progress slows down under the burden of supporting immaterial platforms.

Have you contributed to Godot yourself or made something of note with it? Multiple developers are actively asking for visionOS support as people on the Godot team have mentioned. Why should your distaste for a platform preclude them from having platform support that would benefit the things they want to build?

Beyond that, have you even looked at the PR here to see what your supposed distraction would be? Most of the PR is shared infrastructure between the Apple embedded platforms.

> Why should your distaste for a platform preclude them from having platform support that would benefit the things they want to build?

They answered this in their initial comment:

> If you officially support visionOS, it now requires all product and engineering innovation to take it into account, slowing down velocity for very little gain, if any.

That’s not really an answer though, anymore than any other platform. I’m not asking why they don’t want it supported, I’m asking why their distaste should overrule everyone else who does.

Just because this one very angry person doesn’t want this platform supported, doesn’t mean others don’t. You could argue the exact same thing in reverse for any other platform that is niche for someone else.

Apple would need to make an ongoing commitment.

Either monetarily, or with personnel. What I would have really liked to see is for them to not only fix issues relating to their own products, but to help Godot as a whole. Maybe, even add Swift as a scripting option without a hard requirement of owning a Mac.

This looks like a one time "gift" of high maintenance code. It's not like when Microsoft assisted with C# support. I don't need to buy a Windows PC or a $3500 Microsoft headset to make use of that.

It's also really rude to just open a giant PR without a discussion first.

> It's also really rude to just open a giant PR without a discussion first.

Would you mind explaining why you feel that way?

I understand being cautious about accepting the PR, but can’t say I quite understand why submitting it would be rude

It’s now implied that the community needs to maintain this thing.

Apple should of made it clear what they want to do, and an ongoing commitment of any before opening the PR.

Yes

I'll leave this decision to the Godot maintainers but as an outside that only read the PR and comments it seems plausible that it's also in Apples favor to fix issues in the shared iOS / visionOS codebase that they are using, especially if they might come from Apple APIs that could be improved on their side too.

exclusivity ?? its an open source project why would they want that, its not a competition :p

Godot is absolutely in competition with other game engines.

I don't know the Godot ppl, but I hang out on the LibGDX discord and what they want is to make a good engine for its own sake. If someone would be better served with Unity or Godot or anything else they're extremely quick to say so.

The point is to make the world better not for their own project to Win.

I'm assuming Godot is the same way, and the idea of spending effort making sure every other OSS engine doesn't have VisionOS support is a lil baffling