Metal, Apple's low-level graphics API that was first introduced in iOS 8, only keeps getting better, and that was made even more clear in a demo from Unity showing off a new feature coming to Metal in iOS 10: adaptive tessellation. Seen at the "What's New in Metal" session at WWDC 2016, the demo showed off the level of detail that adaptive tessellation will enable developers to bring to their games with Metal and the Unity game engine.
In a blog post talking about the proof of concept demo, Unity says:
Tessellation can be used to implement level of detail, efficiently adapt between materials (as in our demo), or for various other effects – limited only by your imagination! While tessellation has been around for a while, we're excited to see it come to iOS as it can help produce extremely detailed meshes without storing/streaming large meshes on disk.
Metal tessellation is headed to iOS 10 this fall, and Unity looks set to bring enable developers to take advantage of the feature in future versions of its game engine. Be sure to check out Unity's full blog post for much more technical detail on the demo. You can also watch the "What's New in Metal" session to see the demo in action.
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