Introducing ARKit - the newest framework from Apple. Defining the three stages in ARKit - Tracking, Scene Understanding and Rendering. Describing the main ARKit classes used - ARSession, ARSessionConfiguration, ARFrame, ARAnchor and ARCamera. Looking into tracking states and interruptions. Implementing a full Metal renderer for ARKit.

Read about what's new in Metal, now called Metal 2. MPS has new features but most important - it now works on macOS too. See why the new Argument Buffers are the biggest addition to the framework this year. Read about how Raster Order Groups can help avoiding race conditions in shaders. Find out what the ProMotion and Direct to Display features are, and read about all the other new features introduced this year.

Looking again at the memory models in Metal. Analyzing data copy vs no-copy methods. Understanding stack vs heap allocations. Page aligning the data using posix_memalign(). Looking again at the resource storage modes - Shared, Private, Memoryless and Managed. Considerations about resource coherency and synchronization between CPU and GPU.

Learning about the memory model in Metal. Defining Metal resources as Buffers and Textures. Presenting ways to create a Buffer. Defining the Resource Storage Modes. Presenting the address space qualifiers for function variables and arguments. Looking at UnsafePointer and Pointee as another way to aceess memory locations.

Learning about Ambient Occlusion in Metal. Using more distance functions - rectangular shapes. Introducing cone tracing as a derivative of ray tracing using "thicker" rays. Using spheres with different radii to approximate a cone. Marching along the cone instead of a ray, to determine how much light is occluded. Replacing the circling light source with a moving camera so we can examine the entire scene.