By Stephen Silver
Saturday, July 28, 2018, 10:52 am PT (01:52 pm ET)

Autodesk has published a support document announcing that it is stopping development of its Alias and VRED vertical market packages, and that older versions will not work on Mojave due to Apple’s OpenGL deprecation.

According to a note posted on Autodesk’s support website, while older Alias versions can run on High Sierra or earlier, “no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation.” The change, according to the Autodesk note, “allows Autodesk development teams to focus on bringing innovations to market faster, and allows for more frequent software updates.”

“In the end, the entire Alias and VRED community will benefit from this streamlined approach,” wrote the company.

This follows the announcement by Apple in June at WWDC that Mojave will require graphics hardware to support Metal, and that active development has ceased for OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac.

It isn’t clear why Autodesk made the declaration that OpenGL’s deprecation was responsible for the applications not working in Mojave. Deprecation does not mean removed, and the existing OpenGL implementation in High Sierra remains in Mojave.

The move at present does not appear to affect the core AutoDesk product. Alias is used for automotive and industrial design, while VRED is 3D visualization software. Neither Mac version has been updated recently.

According to the company, Mac users have multiple options. Users can switch to the Windows version and use a Boot Camp workaround, or they can remain on High Sierra or other Mac versions without upgrading to Mojave.

AppleInsider has reached out to Autodesk for comment.