Setting up Metal in Swift 3 on an iOS device - ipad

Question

I've been trying to convert Apple's MetalBasicTessellation project to work in swift 3 on an iPad Air 3, but thus far have been unsuccessful. Frustratingly, the project comes with an iOS implementation (written in objectiveC, and a swift playground), but no swift 3 implementation.
I have gotten the code to compile, but fails to run on my iPad with the following error:
2017-05-14 14:25:54.268400-0700 MetalBasicTessellation[2436:570250] -[MTLRenderPipelineDescriptorInternal validateWithDevice:], line 1728: error 'tessellation is only supported on MTLFeatureSet_iOS_GPUFamily3_v1 and later'
I am pretty sure that the iPad Air 2 is compliant, but I have the feeling the error is due to an improperly configured MetalKitView. I have reverse-engineered what I could from the project's objective-c and playground files, but I have gone as far as I am able to understand with my current expertise.
//
// ViewController.swift
// MetalBasicTessellation
//
// Created by vladimir sierra on 5/10/17.
//
//
import UIKit
import Metal
import MetalKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {
#IBOutlet weak var mtkView: MTKView!
// Seven steps required to set up metal for rendering:
// 1. Create a MTLDevice
// 2. Create a CAMetalLayer
// 3. Create a Vertex Buffer
// 4. Create a Vertex Shader
// 5. Create a Fragment Shader
// 6. Create a Render Pipeline
// 7. Create a Command Queue
var device: MTLDevice! // to be initialized in viewDidLoad
//var metalLayer: CAMetalLayer! // to be initialized in viewDidLoad
var vertexBuffer: MTLBuffer! // to be initialized in viewDidLoad
var library: MTLLibrary!
// once we create a vertex and fragment shader, we combine them in an object called render pipeline. In Metal the shaders are precompiled, and the render pipeline configuration is compiled after you first set it up. This makes everything extremely efficient
var renderPipeline: MTLRenderPipelineState! // to be initialized in viewDidLoad
var commandQueue: MTLCommandQueue! // to be initialized in viewDidLoad
//var timer: CADisplayLink! // function to be called every time the device screen refreshes so we can redraw the screen
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
/*
if let window = view.window {
let scale = window.screen.nativeScale // (2 for iPhone 5s, 6 and iPads; 3 for iPhone 6 Plus)
let layerSize = view.bounds.size
// apply the scale to increase the drawable texture size.
view.contentScaleFactor = scale
//metalLayer.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: layerSize.width, height: layerSize.height)
//metalLayer.drawableSize = CGSize(width: layerSize.width * scale, height: layerSize.height * scale)
} */
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() // returns a reference to the default MTLDevice
//device.supportsFeatureSet(MTLFeatureSet_iOS_GPUFamily3_v2)
// set up layer to display metal content
//metalLayer = CAMetalLayer() // initialize metalLayer
//metalLayer.device = device // device the layer should use
//metalLayer.pixelFormat = .bgra8Unorm // normalized 8 bit rgba
//metalLayer.framebufferOnly = true // set to true for performance issues
//view.layer.addSublayer(metalLayer) // add sublayer to main view's layer
// precompile custom metal functions
let defaultLibrary = device.newDefaultLibrary()! // MTLLibrary object with precompiled shaders
let fragmentProgram = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "tessellation_fragment")
let vertexProgram = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "tessellation_vertex_triangle")
// Setup Compute Pipeline
let kernelFunction = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "tessellation_kernel_triangle")
var computePipeline: MTLComputePipelineState?
do {
computePipeline = try device.makeComputePipelineState(function: kernelFunction!)
} catch let error as NSError {
print("compute pipeline error: " + error.description)
}
// Setup Vertex Descriptor
let vertexDescriptor = MTLVertexDescriptor()
vertexDescriptor.attributes[0].format = .float4
vertexDescriptor.attributes[0].offset = 0
vertexDescriptor.attributes[0].bufferIndex = 0;
vertexDescriptor.layouts[0].stepFunction = .perPatchControlPoint
vertexDescriptor.layouts[0].stepRate = 1
vertexDescriptor.layouts[0].stride = 4*MemoryLayout<Float>.size
// Setup Render Pipeline
let renderPipelineDescriptor = MTLRenderPipelineDescriptor()
renderPipelineDescriptor.vertexDescriptor = vertexDescriptor
//renderPipelineDescriptor.fragmentFunction = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "tessellation_fragment")
renderPipelineDescriptor.fragmentFunction = fragmentProgram
//renderPipelineDescriptor.vertexFunction = defaultLibrary.makeFunction(name: "tessellation_vertex_triangle")
renderPipelineDescriptor.vertexFunction = vertexProgram
//renderPipelineDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].pixelFormat = .bgra8Unorm // normalized 8 bit rgba
renderPipelineDescriptor.colorAttachments[0].pixelFormat = mtkView.colorPixelFormat
renderPipelineDescriptor.isTessellationFactorScaleEnabled = false
renderPipelineDescriptor.tessellationFactorFormat = .half
renderPipelineDescriptor.tessellationControlPointIndexType = .none
renderPipelineDescriptor.tessellationFactorStepFunction = .constant
renderPipelineDescriptor.tessellationOutputWindingOrder = .clockwise
renderPipelineDescriptor.tessellationPartitionMode = .fractionalEven
renderPipelineDescriptor.maxTessellationFactor = 64;
// Compile renderPipeline
do {
renderPipeline = try device.makeRenderPipelineState(descriptor: renderPipelineDescriptor)
} catch let error as NSError {
print("render pipeline error: " + error.description)
}
// Setup Buffers
let tessellationFactorsBuffer = device.makeBuffer(length: 256, options: MTLResourceOptions.storageModePrivate)
let controlPointPositions: [Float] = [
-0.8, -0.8, 0.0, 1.0, // lower-left
0.0, 0.8, 0.0, 1.0, // upper-middle
0.8, -0.8, 0.0, 1.0, // lower-right
]
let controlPointsBuffer = device.makeBuffer(bytes: controlPointPositions, length:256 , options: [])
// Tessellation Pass
let commandBuffer = commandQueue.makeCommandBuffer()
let computeCommandEncoder = commandBuffer.makeComputeCommandEncoder()
computeCommandEncoder.setComputePipelineState(computePipeline!)
let edgeFactor: [Float] = [16.0]
let insideFactor: [Float] = [8.0]
computeCommandEncoder.setBytes(edgeFactor, length: MemoryLayout<Float>.size, at: 0)
computeCommandEncoder.setBytes(insideFactor, length: MemoryLayout<Float>.size, at: 1)
computeCommandEncoder.setBuffer(tessellationFactorsBuffer, offset: 0, at: 2)
computeCommandEncoder.dispatchThreadgroups(MTLSizeMake(1, 1, 1), threadsPerThreadgroup: MTLSizeMake(1, 1, 1))
computeCommandEncoder.endEncoding()
let renderPassDescriptor = mtkView.currentRenderPassDescriptor
let renderCommandEncoder = commandBuffer.makeRenderCommandEncoder(descriptor: renderPassDescriptor!)
renderCommandEncoder.setRenderPipelineState(renderPipeline!)
renderCommandEncoder.setVertexBuffer(controlPointsBuffer, offset: 0, at: 0)
renderCommandEncoder.setTriangleFillMode(.lines)
renderCommandEncoder.setTessellationFactorBuffer(tessellationFactorsBuffer, offset: 0, instanceStride: 0)
renderCommandEncoder.drawPatches(numberOfPatchControlPoints: 3, patchStart: 0, patchCount: 1, patchIndexBuffer: nil, patchIndexBufferOffset: 0, instanceCount: 1, baseInstance: 0)
renderCommandEncoder.endEncoding()
commandBuffer.present(mtkView.currentDrawable!)
commandBuffer.commit()
commandBuffer.waitUntilCompleted()
/*
// finally create an ordered list of commands forthe GPU to execute
commandQueue = device.makeCommandQueue()
timer = CADisplayLink(target: self, selector: #selector(ViewController.gameloop)) // call gameloop every time the screen refreshes
timer.add(to: RunLoop.main, forMode: RunLoopMode.defaultRunLoopMode)
*/
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
/*
func render() {
guard let drawable = metalLayer?.nextDrawable() else { return } // returns the texture to draw into in order for something to appear on the screen
//objectToDraw.render(commandQueue: commandQueue, renderPipeline: renderPipeline, drawable: drawable, clearColor: nil)
}
// this is the routine that gets run every time the screen refreshes
func gameloop() {
autoreleasepool {
self.render()
}
} */
}
The entire git can be found here
Would some kind metal-guru-soul lend a hand? Documentation out there is pretty sparse.

Answer 1

The docs for MTLFeatureSet_iOS_GPUFamily3_v1 say:
Introduced with the Apple A9 GPU and iOS 9.0.
(Emphasis added.)
Meanwhile, the iOS Device Compatibility Reference: Hardware GPU Information article says the iPad Air 2 has an A8 GPU.
I don't believe your device is capable.
In general, the configuration of the MTKView will not affect the feature set that's supported. That's inherent in the device (the combination of hardware and OS version). You can query whether a device supports a given feature set using the supportsFeatureSet(_:) method of MTLDevice. Since a device can be (and usually is) acquired independently of any other object such as an MTKView, the feature set support can't depend on such other objects.