18 ms·

Valve drops VR support for macOS

193 points by BSVogler 6y ago

jonny383 6y ago
Good riddance.
- olliej 6y ago
  To Mac or VR? Based on the threads here either is possible :)
  - kbumsik 6y ago
    to Mac I guess. At least Valve is betting on VR.
baby 6y ago
I don't understand why a Mac is such a bad platform for gaming, what is the technical challenge here? Can someone enlighten me?
- wtallis 6y ago
  The main reason is that Apple's pushing their own graphics API (Metal) rather than supporting the cross-platform Vulkan API. Apple also doesn't make any machines targeted for gaming use, and they haven't used NVidia graphics chips for quite a while and don't ship drivers for recent NVidia chips, so even Hackintosh users have trouble building a great Mac gaming system.
  - iphone_elegance 6y ago
    Metal is one hurdle, Apple has a weird habit of putting many small ones up in front of you for whatever reason it gets old after awhile and the sales aren't there to justify jumping over them most mac users who want to game don't seem to have issues just buying a console either so it's not like a large group of customers isn't being reached iOS is an exception due to it's position in the market but I've been seeing less and less interest in mobile overtime too
  - jsgo 6y ago
    Since after High Sierra (Mojave I think?), Apple eliminated the ability to use non-metal drivers on macOS wholesale. Nvidia’s drivers weren’t developed in Metal and there’s zero reason for them to do so (only way to use Nvidia is intentionally either as an addon to a Mac Pro or as an eGPU, which they don’t see a large market for it) and Apple has a long history of killing off support of something on their platforms, users be damned.
    - bangonkeyboard 6y ago
      > only way to use Nvidia is intentionally either as an addon to a Mac Pro or as an eGPU, which they don’t see a large market for it Not quite. From Nvidia: "Apple fully control drivers for Mac OS. But if Apple allows, our engineers are ready and eager to help Apple deliver great drivers for Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave)...Unfortunately, Nvidia currently cannot release a driver unless it is approved by Apple." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Apple/Nvidia_web_driver_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Apple/Nvidia_web_driver... Apple is preventing Nvidia from releasing Mac Pro and eGPU driver support.
      - jsgo 6y ago
        Which means if Apple allows them to use non-metal drivers. Historically, there’s little reason to think Apple would waiver (wish they would) and the value for Nvidia to write their drivers using Metal is minimal. I’m kind of curious though: what value do their web drivers have to them now that they couldn’t just release them as OSS and allow a determined group to rewrite them as Metal.
        bangonkeyboard 6y ago
        No, you've misunderstood again. Nvidia's eGPU web drivers already supported Metal in High Sierra [0]. Apple refuses to sign their drivers for Mojave and up. Without Apple's signature, GPU drivers will not run on macOS, OSS or not. [0] https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2020_03/840568137_ScreenShot2020-03-14at3_08_33PM.png.4ea6c048cc4115cb20209c562b4167de.png https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2020_03/84...
  - pcr910303 6y ago
    TBF, Apple’s Metal was developed before Bulkan while tackling the same problem, and for the NVidia chips, the reason on the bad relationship of NVidia/Apple is mostly on NVidia, right?
    - willis936 6y ago
      Does it really solve the same problem? Can I run metal API on my windows or linux machines? Also, to answer your question: no. Nvidia is in the GPU selling business. They wouldn’t mind having their high priced GPUs in high priced laptops. Apple keeps control of what hardware they sell, which dictates what software gets developed. Why would Nvidia or Apple spend resources to make software for a computer that no one is selling? It’s Apple who refuses to buy rather than Nvidia being unwilling to sell.
      - olliej 6y ago
        Can you run direct3d on your Linux and Mac systems?
        kbumsik 6y ago
        The point is that Windows has an alternative to their proprietary APIs, but mac doesn't
        jonahrd 6y ago
        I can run OpenGL and Vulkan on my Windows system. MacOS is the only platform that has officially deprecated OpenGL support, and there is no plan for any future Vulkan support.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Windows only has support on legacy Win32 thanks to the ICD driver model. Vulkan and OpenGL aren't supported on Win32 and UWP sandboxes. Game consoles never had OpenGL support, other than a timid attempt from Sony with GL ES 1.0 using Cg as shading language.
        6y ago
- tonygrue 6y ago
  As the article alludes, lack of a build your own, flexible yet affordable desktop option seems to be a pretty deadly aspect. Pretty much Mac owners are on laptops. Even in the PC world few laptops can power VR. Those that do tend to be bulky for cooling and have nVidia GPUs; both things which MacBooks seem unwilling to have. Having a extensible desktop at 1k that supports nVidia would probably go a long way.
  - sysbin 6y ago
    As a gamer with a macbook pro. I just use shadow to play games over the cloud. Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics.
    - deadbunny 6y ago
      > Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics. You're not going to get very far without drivers an you'll be stuck on OpenGL 4.1 and Metal. That and you'll have the problem that there are less games built for MacOS than Windows an Linux + Proton. Investing in a GPU for MacOS for gaming would be a huge waste of money IMO.
      - sysbin 6y ago
        People can bootcamp if they want to run windows with a good gpu on their laptop. You're also missing the cloud gaming part.
        iphone_elegance 6y ago
        I'm not sold on cloud gaming yet, I gave pubg on stadia a whirl today (on my google fiber) and it was somewhat laggy and blurry compared to even my not-highend rx580 which only cost me about what a year or so of stadia would (not including the games)
    - fortran77 6y ago
- numpad0 6y ago
  Mac tends to fail meeting minimum graphics requirements. There’s no practical way around it.
  - eschaton 6y ago
    Sure there is: Design your game for the systems the majority of the users who will want to play it—after you’ve marketed it to them to them—will have. Don’t start with system requirements first and make a game targeting that because you want to show everyone how elite a hacker you are. If Sony didn’t require games achieve 60FPS at 1080p on PlayStation 4 before they’d allow them on the platform, most of the developers would be targeting PS 4 Pro because they want to show off. I expect that’s mostly the case anyway, and these developers have to be dragged by their corporate masters kicking and screaming back to baseline PS 4 support.
    - f1refly 6y ago
      Yeah well but then your game looks like garbage for most of the people who will proceed to buy some competing product that's more up to their standards. If you want to make a game and sell it only to the low end mac audience go for it, just don't expect to get your investment back. I don't expect game devs to target my 2011 thinkpad in the 2020 gaming market, that'd be ridiculous.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Apparently plenty of game studios seem to happy to target the lame iGPUs from Intel on PC side.
- kroltan 6y ago
  Danieru explained pretty well in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23048633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23048633
- eschaton 6y ago
  Game developers who insist upon working a certain way and insist that they have to target a certain kind of high baseline hardware say this. Game developers who want to reach a broad market and are willing to meet their deployment platforms halfway do not say this. They just port and ship.
- colordrops 6y ago
  I just upgraded to Catalina and now almost none of my steam games work. Turns out they were compiled for 32 bit support, and 32bit support was removed in Catalina, basically destroying my gaming rig.
Danieru 6y ago
Mac is a horrible platform to support for video game developers. Speaking from experience the issues are: 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. 2. Shifting sand of non-backwards compatibility. Notice how of the above list everyone except Linux and Android have solid back compat stories. Video games are in development for 2-3 years, and stay on the market for 5+ years with no planned recompiles. So a 7 year period of support after inital build machine setup is expected, anything less is going to get your platform side lined. 3. Small market. Mac users make up a share of sales similar to Linux. "What are you talking about! Linux is 1% while Mac is a whole 4%!", nope! Those numbers are the same insignificance per a video game business plan. Platforms with such low sales, like Stadia, might be support provided the platform owner pays porting costs. 4. Culture. Steve Jobs disliked games, it shows in Apple's support. 5. Horrible hardware. Supposing you've decided to ignore all the downsides, and the small upside still appeals to you. Now you have to tune your game to run on hardware which would put cheap Wal-Mart machines to the test. Apple's install base is almost all integrated older intel GPUs. If you do not support Metal, then you are forced to support these old intel integrated GPUs with bonus hacked up OpenGL drivers. All points are ones I am speaking from experience on. We shipped TINY METAL on MacOS, the lack of cross build delayed the release. The horrible sales numbers meant carrying forward support was a net drag on the game. All further games I work on do not get MacOS ports for these reasons.
- cced 6y ago
  > Video games are in development for 2-3 years, and stay on the market for 5+ years with no planned recompiles. Do video game makers plan for updates? Am I getting this wrong, or are patches and such deployed without a game recompile?
  - kroltan 6y ago
    Maybe for the first year or two, but many many games are pretty much untouched after that, even though there is a long tail of players still buying and playing them. And yes, many expansions and additional content are usually data-driven, so it might not require a recompile.
ashtonkem 6y ago
I remain skeptical of the long term viability of VR; I’m old enough to remember when 3D TVs and monitors were going to change the face of both TV and video games, and yet here we are. I priced out VR recently and I was unimpressed with the price per value available, with most systems adding $500-$1,000 to my gaming system’s cost, and some requiring that I modify my room to work properly. And that’s not even accounting for the high cost of a VR capable gaming rig, if you don’t own one. This is a pretty steep financial and logistical hill to climb given the current set of titles available.
- Taek 6y ago
  Yeah but have you played beat saber? I'm dead serious though the experience you get in a good immersive VR rig is completely unrivaled. Well worth the hassle and overhead. This will get better as costs come down and developers continue to innovate.
  - 013a 6y ago
    I will proselytize Beat Saber until the day I die. I have played hundreds of hours of video games in 2020, which reflects the time spent since I was 8 playing Donkey Kong on the Super Nintendo. After writing this, I'm probably going to jump into some FF7R. In the morning, I'm going to log into Animal Crossing and do some chores around the island. Beat Saber is the most fun game I have ever played. No qualifiers. No shifty language. Nothing else is even in the same order of magnitude as Beat Saber. I dare to even call it a video game, because very few other games even possess the language to compete with it. The combat in FF7R is visceral, but you're not actually swinging Cloud's sword. The loop in Animal Crossing is entrancing, but it doesn't become your entire world like when you put a headset on. Even other VR games, which have that language they can use to tell their gameplay, often feel like the VR experience is bolted onto something which could, and maybe should, be non-VR. You often fight with the game; the game transplants you into a world, not just on a screen, but every degree surrounding you, yet you're limited in how you move, you're limited in how the game allows you to interact, nothing feels natural, and you soon adapt your actions with what the game wants. I am solidly in the camp that, honestly, VR will not become a household item like a game console is. Even with headsets priced about at the level of a game console, like the Rift, the platform has too many downfalls. Startlingly few games work well in VR. Even an experience like Half Life Alyx, the pinnacle of VR technology, feels like a shell of a game like Half Life 2. Its different. It can't tell a strong story, because players don't generally spend more than 30-90 minutes in VR at a time. It can't really innovate in puzzle design, because movement and viewport control is so heavy that it becomes tiring if you ask the player to do too much. The mechanics feel incredible. No one enters HL:A for the first time, loads that pistol, and doesn't have this HUGE GRIN on their face. But, its also a novelty; it wears off far too quickly once you begin realizing how many fundamentally core things Valve had to sacrifice to make the game work at all. Nearly every game in VR is, bluntly, a tech demo. The platform is still figuring out if it is viable. Of the top selling VR games on Steam, #7 is a sim game which models a hyper-realistic anime girl, allowing you to mess with her clothes in a predictable anime way, and #10 is Skyrim. Of course, HL:A and Beat Saber are #1 and #2, but roughly this state is where VR was six years ago. It hasn't really evolved, and I'm not convinced HL:A was the catalyst I think Valve is hoping it is. But, maybe I'm wrong. I will say this: There is no price you can pay for a VR headset that does not make Beat Saber worth it (within your means, of course). It is that good. I have an Index ($1000); beyond spending an hour or two in as many games as I can, 100% of my time is spent in Beat Saber, and I do not regret the purchase. Everything else VR has to offer is just icing. But this, a platform, does not make.
fortran77 6y ago
There's a small market, little developer support, and they don't support NVidia graphics. Not worth doing. Good for Valve.
mekanicalsyncop 6y ago
Everyone's talking about the slower hardware. IMO the biggest hurdle to gaming is Mac OS's baked in mouse acceleration and whatever else makes 100% of mice feel absolutely terrible on a Mac. Even the magic mouse feels janky. I followed a bunch of online guides to do everything I can to disable the acceleration and everything else, but for some reason when I try to play a game it still feels terrible. Even when the game has a high framerate the mouse never feels smooth. Tried multiple MBPs. Multiple gaming mice from multiple manufacturers, etc. Has anyone ever had any luck making a mouse feel as smooth as it does on Windows? If so, what did you do?
- yellowapple 6y ago
  What's sad is that once upon a time (back when macOS was called OS X, and when iMacs used PowerPC CPUs) the mouse acceleration was great, and the cursor buttery smooth, at least so I thought.
  - mekanicalsyncop 6y ago
    I really like a lot about MacOS but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to ever use it until 2014 so I wasn't able to experience that. I'd get rid of my Windows computer in an instant if it wasn't for the poor support Mac has for gaming. Windows is fine but I enjoy the Mac workflow more.
- p1necone 6y ago
  That's disappointing - I've never used a Mac but the first thing I do on new Windows PCs is turn off "enhance pointer precision" (mouse acceleration) in control panel. It's awful for anything where you have to aim, I can't imagine gaming on a system with mouse acceleration that can't be disabled.
  - ascom 6y ago
    FPS games typically use raw input, which bypasses any acceleration settings in the OS. This works on both Windows and macOS, assuming the game is properly written. This is why I insist on keeping mouse acceleration enabled since it helps with everyday computing tasks and has no effect on at least the games I normally play. Regarding the comment above, it is definitely possible there are subtle configuration differences that cause the described behavior (different acceleration curves, polling rate/DPI settings, display refresh rates, etc). FWIW, my “gaming” mouse works fine with my MBP, but it takes a moment to readjust to the different sensitivity and acceleration behavior.
iphone_elegance 6y ago
Apple feels like it's about as blind to where graphics and gaming are going as Microsoft was to mobile. in the end it's probably for the best though
FloatArtifact 6y ago
It's not surprising considering if Apple pursues their own arm based laptop / desktop implementation 2021/2022? What kind of impact will that have on the ecosystem?

193 points by BSVogler 6y ago

jonny383 6y ago

Good riddance.

olliej 6y ago
To Mac or VR? Based on the threads here either is possible :)
- kbumsik 6y ago
  to Mac I guess. At least Valve is betting on VR.

baby 6y ago

I don't understand why a Mac is such a bad platform for gaming, what is the technical challenge here? Can someone enlighten me?

wtallis 6y ago
The main reason is that Apple's pushing their own graphics API (Metal) rather than supporting the cross-platform Vulkan API. Apple also doesn't make any machines targeted for gaming use, and they haven't used NVidia graphics chips for quite a while and don't ship drivers for recent NVidia chips, so even Hackintosh users have trouble building a great Mac gaming system.
- iphone_elegance 6y ago
  Metal is one hurdle, Apple has a weird habit of putting many small ones up in front of you for whatever reason it gets old after awhile and the sales aren't there to justify jumping over them most mac users who want to game don't seem to have issues just buying a console either so it's not like a large group of customers isn't being reached iOS is an exception due to it's position in the market but I've been seeing less and less interest in mobile overtime too
- jsgo 6y ago
  Since after High Sierra (Mojave I think?), Apple eliminated the ability to use non-metal drivers on macOS wholesale. Nvidia’s drivers weren’t developed in Metal and there’s zero reason for them to do so (only way to use Nvidia is intentionally either as an addon to a Mac Pro or as an eGPU, which they don’t see a large market for it) and Apple has a long history of killing off support of something on their platforms, users be damned.
  - bangonkeyboard 6y ago
    > only way to use Nvidia is intentionally either as an addon to a Mac Pro or as an eGPU, which they don’t see a large market for it Not quite. From Nvidia: "Apple fully control drivers for Mac OS. But if Apple allows, our engineers are ready and eager to help Apple deliver great drivers for Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave)...Unfortunately, Nvidia currently cannot release a driver unless it is approved by Apple." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Apple/Nvidia_web_driver_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Apple/Nvidia_web_driver... Apple is preventing Nvidia from releasing Mac Pro and eGPU driver support.
    - jsgo 6y ago
      Which means if Apple allows them to use non-metal drivers. Historically, there’s little reason to think Apple would waiver (wish they would) and the value for Nvidia to write their drivers using Metal is minimal. I’m kind of curious though: what value do their web drivers have to them now that they couldn’t just release them as OSS and allow a determined group to rewrite them as Metal.
      - bangonkeyboard 6y ago
        No, you've misunderstood again. Nvidia's eGPU web drivers already supported Metal in High Sierra [0]. Apple refuses to sign their drivers for Mojave and up. Without Apple's signature, GPU drivers will not run on macOS, OSS or not. [0] https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2020_03/840568137_ScreenShot2020-03-14at3_08_33PM.png.4ea6c048cc4115cb20209c562b4167de.png https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2020_03/84...
- pcr910303 6y ago
  TBF, Apple’s Metal was developed before Bulkan while tackling the same problem, and for the NVidia chips, the reason on the bad relationship of NVidia/Apple is mostly on NVidia, right?
  - willis936 6y ago
    Does it really solve the same problem? Can I run metal API on my windows or linux machines? Also, to answer your question: no. Nvidia is in the GPU selling business. They wouldn’t mind having their high priced GPUs in high priced laptops. Apple keeps control of what hardware they sell, which dictates what software gets developed. Why would Nvidia or Apple spend resources to make software for a computer that no one is selling? It’s Apple who refuses to buy rather than Nvidia being unwilling to sell.
    - olliej 6y ago
      Can you run direct3d on your Linux and Mac systems?
      - kbumsik 6y ago
        The point is that Windows has an alternative to their proprietary APIs, but mac doesn't
      - jonahrd 6y ago
        I can run OpenGL and Vulkan on my Windows system. MacOS is the only platform that has officially deprecated OpenGL support, and there is no plan for any future Vulkan support.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Windows only has support on legacy Win32 thanks to the ICD driver model. Vulkan and OpenGL aren't supported on Win32 and UWP sandboxes. Game consoles never had OpenGL support, other than a timid attempt from Sony with GL ES 1.0 using Cg as shading language.
      - 6y ago
tonygrue 6y ago
As the article alludes, lack of a build your own, flexible yet affordable desktop option seems to be a pretty deadly aspect. Pretty much Mac owners are on laptops. Even in the PC world few laptops can power VR. Those that do tend to be bulky for cooling and have nVidia GPUs; both things which MacBooks seem unwilling to have. Having a extensible desktop at 1k that supports nVidia would probably go a long way.
- sysbin 6y ago
  As a gamer with a macbook pro. I just use shadow to play games over the cloud. Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics.
  - deadbunny 6y ago
    > Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics. You're not going to get very far without drivers an you'll be stuck on OpenGL 4.1 and Metal. That and you'll have the problem that there are less games built for MacOS than Windows an Linux + Proton. Investing in a GPU for MacOS for gaming would be a huge waste of money IMO.
    - sysbin 6y ago
      People can bootcamp if they want to run windows with a good gpu on their laptop. You're also missing the cloud gaming part.
      - iphone_elegance 6y ago
        I'm not sold on cloud gaming yet, I gave pubg on stadia a whirl today (on my google fiber) and it was somewhat laggy and blurry compared to even my not-highend rx580 which only cost me about what a year or so of stadia would (not including the games)
  - fortran77 6y ago
numpad0 6y ago
Mac tends to fail meeting minimum graphics requirements. There’s no practical way around it.
- eschaton 6y ago
  Sure there is: Design your game for the systems the majority of the users who will want to play it—after you’ve marketed it to them to them—will have. Don’t start with system requirements first and make a game targeting that because you want to show everyone how elite a hacker you are. If Sony didn’t require games achieve 60FPS at 1080p on PlayStation 4 before they’d allow them on the platform, most of the developers would be targeting PS 4 Pro because they want to show off. I expect that’s mostly the case anyway, and these developers have to be dragged by their corporate masters kicking and screaming back to baseline PS 4 support.
  - f1refly 6y ago
    Yeah well but then your game looks like garbage for most of the people who will proceed to buy some competing product that's more up to their standards. If you want to make a game and sell it only to the low end mac audience go for it, just don't expect to get your investment back. I don't expect game devs to target my 2011 thinkpad in the 2020 gaming market, that'd be ridiculous.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Apparently plenty of game studios seem to happy to target the lame iGPUs from Intel on PC side.
kroltan 6y ago
Danieru explained pretty well in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23048633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23048633
eschaton 6y ago
Game developers who insist upon working a certain way and insist that they have to target a certain kind of high baseline hardware say this. Game developers who want to reach a broad market and are willing to meet their deployment platforms halfway do not say this. They just port and ship.
colordrops 6y ago
I just upgraded to Catalina and now almost none of my steam games work. Turns out they were compiled for 32 bit support, and 32bit support was removed in Catalina, basically destroying my gaming rig.

Danieru 6y ago

Mac is a horrible platform to support for video game developers. Speaking from experience the issues are: 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. 2. Shifting sand of non-backwards compatibility. Notice how of the above list everyone except Linux and Android have solid back compat stories. Video games are in development for 2-3 years, and stay on the market for 5+ years with no planned recompiles. So a 7 year period of support after inital build machine setup is expected, anything less is going to get your platform side lined. 3. Small market. Mac users make up a share of sales similar to Linux. "What are you talking about! Linux is 1% while Mac is a whole 4%!", nope! Those numbers are the same insignificance per a video game business plan. Platforms with such low sales, like Stadia, might be support provided the platform owner pays porting costs. 4. Culture. Steve Jobs disliked games, it shows in Apple's support. 5. Horrible hardware. Supposing you've decided to ignore all the downsides, and the small upside still appeals to you. Now you have to tune your game to run on hardware which would put cheap Wal-Mart machines to the test. Apple's install base is almost all integrated older intel GPUs. If you do not support Metal, then you are forced to support these old intel integrated GPUs with bonus hacked up OpenGL drivers. All points are ones I am speaking from experience on. We shipped TINY METAL on MacOS, the lack of cross build delayed the release. The horrible sales numbers meant carrying forward support was a net drag on the game. All further games I work on do not get MacOS ports for these reasons.

cced 6y ago
> Video games are in development for 2-3 years, and stay on the market for 5+ years with no planned recompiles. Do video game makers plan for updates? Am I getting this wrong, or are patches and such deployed without a game recompile?
- kroltan 6y ago
  Maybe for the first year or two, but many many games are pretty much untouched after that, even though there is a long tail of players still buying and playing them. And yes, many expansions and additional content are usually data-driven, so it might not require a recompile.

ashtonkem 6y ago

I remain skeptical of the long term viability of VR; I’m old enough to remember when 3D TVs and monitors were going to change the face of both TV and video games, and yet here we are. I priced out VR recently and I was unimpressed with the price per value available, with most systems adding $500-$1,000 to my gaming system’s cost, and some requiring that I modify my room to work properly. And that’s not even accounting for the high cost of a VR capable gaming rig, if you don’t own one. This is a pretty steep financial and logistical hill to climb given the current set of titles available.

Taek 6y ago
Yeah but have you played beat saber? I'm dead serious though the experience you get in a good immersive VR rig is completely unrivaled. Well worth the hassle and overhead. This will get better as costs come down and developers continue to innovate.
- 013a 6y ago
  I will proselytize Beat Saber until the day I die. I have played hundreds of hours of video games in 2020, which reflects the time spent since I was 8 playing Donkey Kong on the Super Nintendo. After writing this, I'm probably going to jump into some FF7R. In the morning, I'm going to log into Animal Crossing and do some chores around the island. Beat Saber is the most fun game I have ever played. No qualifiers. No shifty language. Nothing else is even in the same order of magnitude as Beat Saber. I dare to even call it a video game, because very few other games even possess the language to compete with it. The combat in FF7R is visceral, but you're not actually swinging Cloud's sword. The loop in Animal Crossing is entrancing, but it doesn't become your entire world like when you put a headset on. Even other VR games, which have that language they can use to tell their gameplay, often feel like the VR experience is bolted onto something which could, and maybe should, be non-VR. You often fight with the game; the game transplants you into a world, not just on a screen, but every degree surrounding you, yet you're limited in how you move, you're limited in how the game allows you to interact, nothing feels natural, and you soon adapt your actions with what the game wants. I am solidly in the camp that, honestly, VR will not become a household item like a game console is. Even with headsets priced about at the level of a game console, like the Rift, the platform has too many downfalls. Startlingly few games work well in VR. Even an experience like Half Life Alyx, the pinnacle of VR technology, feels like a shell of a game like Half Life 2. Its different. It can't tell a strong story, because players don't generally spend more than 30-90 minutes in VR at a time. It can't really innovate in puzzle design, because movement and viewport control is so heavy that it becomes tiring if you ask the player to do too much. The mechanics feel incredible. No one enters HL:A for the first time, loads that pistol, and doesn't have this HUGE GRIN on their face. But, its also a novelty; it wears off far too quickly once you begin realizing how many fundamentally core things Valve had to sacrifice to make the game work at all. Nearly every game in VR is, bluntly, a tech demo. The platform is still figuring out if it is viable. Of the top selling VR games on Steam, #7 is a sim game which models a hyper-realistic anime girl, allowing you to mess with her clothes in a predictable anime way, and #10 is Skyrim. Of course, HL:A and Beat Saber are #1 and #2, but roughly this state is where VR was six years ago. It hasn't really evolved, and I'm not convinced HL:A was the catalyst I think Valve is hoping it is. But, maybe I'm wrong. I will say this: There is no price you can pay for a VR headset that does not make Beat Saber worth it (within your means, of course). It is that good. I have an Index ($1000); beyond spending an hour or two in as many games as I can, 100% of my time is spent in Beat Saber, and I do not regret the purchase. Everything else VR has to offer is just icing. But this, a platform, does not make.

fortran77 6y ago

There's a small market, little developer support, and they don't support NVidia graphics. Not worth doing. Good for Valve.

mekanicalsyncop 6y ago

Everyone's talking about the slower hardware. IMO the biggest hurdle to gaming is Mac OS's baked in mouse acceleration and whatever else makes 100% of mice feel absolutely terrible on a Mac. Even the magic mouse feels janky. I followed a bunch of online guides to do everything I can to disable the acceleration and everything else, but for some reason when I try to play a game it still feels terrible. Even when the game has a high framerate the mouse never feels smooth. Tried multiple MBPs. Multiple gaming mice from multiple manufacturers, etc. Has anyone ever had any luck making a mouse feel as smooth as it does on Windows? If so, what did you do?

yellowapple 6y ago
What's sad is that once upon a time (back when macOS was called OS X, and when iMacs used PowerPC CPUs) the mouse acceleration was great, and the cursor buttery smooth, at least so I thought.
- mekanicalsyncop 6y ago
  I really like a lot about MacOS but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to ever use it until 2014 so I wasn't able to experience that. I'd get rid of my Windows computer in an instant if it wasn't for the poor support Mac has for gaming. Windows is fine but I enjoy the Mac workflow more.
p1necone 6y ago
That's disappointing - I've never used a Mac but the first thing I do on new Windows PCs is turn off "enhance pointer precision" (mouse acceleration) in control panel. It's awful for anything where you have to aim, I can't imagine gaming on a system with mouse acceleration that can't be disabled.
- ascom 6y ago
  FPS games typically use raw input, which bypasses any acceleration settings in the OS. This works on both Windows and macOS, assuming the game is properly written. This is why I insist on keeping mouse acceleration enabled since it helps with everyday computing tasks and has no effect on at least the games I normally play. Regarding the comment above, it is definitely possible there are subtle configuration differences that cause the described behavior (different acceleration curves, polling rate/DPI settings, display refresh rates, etc). FWIW, my “gaming” mouse works fine with my MBP, but it takes a moment to readjust to the different sensitivity and acceleration behavior.

iphone_elegance 6y ago

Apple feels like it's about as blind to where graphics and gaming are going as Microsoft was to mobile. in the end it's probably for the best though

FloatArtifact 6y ago

It's not surprising considering if Apple pursues their own arm based laptop / desktop implementation 2021/2022? What kind of impact will that have on the ecosystem?