Sparse texture (& buffer?) support?

[oscarbg]

Hi,

would like to make an updated call for sparse texture support in MoltenVK..
seems all I can find about sparse tex support is from a issue three years ago (#631)..
a SPIRV-Cross issue was opened: KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Cross#1014
but no real progress since then..
sparse texture now is available also on MacOS also seems from Metal 2.3 (at least for M1 Macs).. also on A15 and M2 additional sparse stencil and depth format support.. don't know on Macos on AMD GPUs..
at least this is info from this Metal sparse sample:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metal/metal_sample_code_library/streaming_large_images_with_metal_sparse_textures
I have seen also new:
#define HAVE_SPARSE_SAMPLE_COMPARE_GRADIENTCUBE_OVERLOAD 1
vs last time 3 years ago in metal shader compiler headers..
finally seems no sparse buffer support (you can create sparse MLTHeaps from which create MTLTexture's but not MTLBuffer's ?) see: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metal/textures/creating_sparse_heaps_and_sparse_textures)..
hope somebody fills a bug with Apple for sparse buffer support..
similarly don't know if sparse 3D textures are supported..
@billhollings @cdavis5e @spnda do you know about current Metal sparse support? (sparse buffers, sparse 3D textures, supported on AMD GPUs on Macos?)
thanks..

[cdavis5e]

Part of the problem is that Metal doesn't let you place sparse tiles at specific locations inside of sparse heaps, whereas Vulkan and D3D12 do.

[oscarbg]

thanks for the insight..
so does basically avoid an "easy" implementation of sparse texture support on MoltenVK, right now?
in that case has this limitation been pointed to Apple devs (filed a ticket on Apple bug tracker)?

[Wangsh09]

any update on this?

[oscarbg]

Curious how game porting toolkit enables support for this (and also execute indirect funtionality).. new related features on Metal 3.1?..

[K0bin]

@oscarbg It doesn't. A bunch of games don't work because of the limited sparse support.