6 ms·

The games table seems to be very misleading. For example, for Alien Isolation you apparently get 7-12 FPS at 1440x900 resolution but somehow that's marked as pl

The games table seems to be very misleading. For example, for Alien Isolation you apparently get 7-12 FPS at 1440x900 resolution but somehow that's marked as playable. In fact, there are tons of entries for first/third person 3D games where <30 FPS is apparently playable.

pwagland 6y ago
There are three entries for Alien Isolation, one gives a 30FPS (on a Mac mini), one gives 7-12FPS(on a MacBook Air) and a note of "Very slow and blurry, only 7-12 FPS, Effectively unplayable". The third says nothing useful. The game is rated as "playable". So you need to look at the notes and hardware carefully if this is important to you.
- LilBytes 6y ago
  That's the point. Under absolutely no circumstance would any one (I mean this literally), describe a modern day shooter at 7-12 FPS to be playable. Does playable mean, it starts and loads? Or does it mean playable in the sense that, you feel satisfied and enjoy the experience? It's absolutely the latter when talking in the context of video games. And not the former. Edit: it even says so in the right hand side, Notes column. "Very slow and blurry, only 7-12 FPS, Effectively unplayable" That isn't "effectively", it absolutely _is_ unplayable.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - simonh 6y ago
    Playable just means it works at an acceptable performance on some hardware, which this game does. Yes there is some other hardware that it wont run acceptably on, but this is true of all games.
    - tosh 6y ago
      Going forward I think I will be able to provide personalized/contextualized views. Imagine: this is the list of games I own/care about: (5 games) this is the list of Macs I own/care about: (2 Macs) this would allow me to add a personalized view where you can compare performance for the games you care about across the Macs you own + the Macs or games you intend to purchase edit: This is part of the initial motivation for creating the spreadsheet people right now are wondering whether their games (and apps) will run at all on the new Macs and if so how that compares to what they see on their current Macs
- tosh 6y ago
  Thanks for your comment, I think right now having the game table list all the reports might be a bit confusing. As next step I want to group the reports by game and provide a detail view for each game. An added benefit for this is that every game gets a dedicated URL but also allows for a more powerful ui (e.g. sort/filter by distribution platform or Mac specs you are interested in and so on) while staying in the context of the specific game. Thanks for your comment. Appreciate it.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
That's what Mac people think is playable.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
judofyr 6y ago
Looking at the games which has been marked as "playable: no" it seems that their definition of "playable" means that it runs without crashing/glitching. I think that's perfectly sensible definition. A game can have 60FPS, but be unplayable because it crashes when you switch scenes. And a game can have 5FPS, but be "playable". They should have another column called "recommended" though, since filtering by "playable" isn't very useful…
- LilBytes 6y ago
  Yes, but placing Solitaire and Alien Isolation into the same category that "playable" means it can be launched and interacted with at 7-12 FPS is absolutely disingenuous. It wholly matters what type of game we're referring to. Yes, Solitaire at low FPS is playable. I mean, it doesn't matter. At all. Playable for Solitaire is almost Boolean. A suspenseful, atmospheric horror shooter? How it plays is absolutely important and why has that context been disregarded?
- croes 6y ago
  Nope,it has to run mostly without crashes and glitches and need a certain FPS to be called playable.
  - thih9 6y ago
    > need a certain FPS to be called playable What FPS exactly? Isn’t that very subjective? Some people might be happy with 15fps, others would want 60fps. I like the approach in this dataset because the reader can decide for themselves.
    - tpetry 6y ago
      You are absolutely right! And with gammers setting more and more enthusiastic levels (e.g. 120fps) is a problem. But the bare minimum should be fps like a movie, so 24fps or 30fps. This will not be perfect, but any animation may look a little bit smoother than 15fps
    - gameswithgo 6y ago
berdario 6y ago
I don't game on Macos, but if you get above 10fps, depending on the specific game, it can be playable. For example, I played several hours of Hitman on a device which cannot push more than 15 fps at 1080p. In that game you have to plan, walk around, wait for opportunities... And you might not even have to fire your gun
oliwarner 6y ago
In some cases there quality and resolution are higher than they need to be. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an exceptionally heavy (or poorly optimised) game. 24fps at 1080p/highest is indeed unplayable, but it's expect it to be much better at 720p/medium.
- mister_hn 6y ago
  but do you want to play at 720p on a Retina monitor? Seriously?
  - simonh 6y ago
    People play at reduced resolution on 4k monitors all the time. Display technology significantly out ran game performance a long time ago.
  - tosh 6y ago
    imho the key thing about gaming on the M1 Macs right now is that many games that were unplayable on the previous generation of the same Macs (Air, entry model Pro 13", Mini) have flipped from unplayable to playable, which is what many people who use these systems (often not primarily for gaming) care about. That said: I do think I need to come up with better wording or at least better definitions of what "playable" means (perhaps even for every game * settings * spec combination). With enough reports per game this might actually work. For a while a long-tail of games will only have 1 report though and I wonder how to deal with those. edit: e.g. in some cases it might sense to provide augmented information like if you are interested in performance on a MacBook Air while there is no report for MacBook Air it might make sense to add the context that there are reports on using a MacBook Pro 13" with the added disclaimer that wile in the same ballpark is not the same system (that could give enough context for the reader to guesstimate an upper/lower bound on what to expect)
  - oliwarner 6y ago
    Yes, I'd rather play a game in potato than a slideshow in retina. Nobody is discounting that somebody might have the opportunity to play their games on a better system, these tests just show what's possible... Which is a lot more than I'd have said a month ago.
krzyk 6y ago
> In fact, there are tons of entries for first/third person 3D games where <30 FPS is apparently playable. first/third person 3D games are playable with 20 FPS (with drops to 15), I played a lot of them with that FPS on my old laptop (e.g. GTA IV, V, Sleeping Dogs).
gameswithgo 6y ago
kids these days get mad if their fps drops below 100!
neogodless 6y ago
I think what it needs is a filter you create yourself that defines "playable" and only those games get the green light.
- tosh 6y ago
  I also think that would provide most power to users, I will still try to come up with a sensible default definition for everyone
tosh 6y ago
thanks a lot for the feedback! I've already switched some games that were reported as "playable" to "not playable" because they are only technically playable I am currently thinking about how to best approach this and provide a definition of "playable" that makes sense as context for the reports I'm also thinking about adding some kind of confidence indicator (e.g. 5 reports by different known reporters stating a game is playable vs 1 report from an anonymous user w/ incompletely filled out report) I'm currently looking at best practices from other software compatibility databases out there. Any pointers or thoughts very welcome. I want this to be as high quality as possible so you know that if you have a question about game compatibility or performance on Apple Silicon Macs that this is the website to check.
- calcifer 6y ago
  I strongly recommend getting in touch with the developer of ProtonDB [1]. That database encountered the same issues and went through a number of revisions for scoring/confidence and is at a great place right now. You can reach him on Discord [2]. [1] https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ [2] https://discord.gg/uuwK9EV https://discord.gg/uuwK9EV
  - tosh 6y ago
    thanks a lot for the pointer!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

pwagland 6y ago

There are three entries for Alien Isolation, one gives a 30FPS (on a Mac mini), one gives 7-12FPS(on a MacBook Air) and a note of "Very slow and blurry, only 7-12 FPS, Effectively unplayable". The third says nothing useful. The game is rated as "playable". So you need to look at the notes and hardware carefully if this is important to you.

LilBytes 6y ago
That's the point. Under absolutely no circumstance would any one (I mean this literally), describe a modern day shooter at 7-12 FPS to be playable. Does playable mean, it starts and loads? Or does it mean playable in the sense that, you feel satisfied and enjoy the experience? It's absolutely the latter when talking in the context of video games. And not the former. Edit: it even says so in the right hand side, Notes column. "Very slow and blurry, only 7-12 FPS, Effectively unplayable" That isn't "effectively", it absolutely _is_ unplayable.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 6y ago
  Playable just means it works at an acceptable performance on some hardware, which this game does. Yes there is some other hardware that it wont run acceptably on, but this is true of all games.
  - tosh 6y ago
    Going forward I think I will be able to provide personalized/contextualized views. Imagine: this is the list of games I own/care about: (5 games) this is the list of Macs I own/care about: (2 Macs) this would allow me to add a personalized view where you can compare performance for the games you care about across the Macs you own + the Macs or games you intend to purchase edit: This is part of the initial motivation for creating the spreadsheet people right now are wondering whether their games (and apps) will run at all on the new Macs and if so how that compares to what they see on their current Macs
tosh 6y ago
Thanks for your comment, I think right now having the game table list all the reports might be a bit confusing. As next step I want to group the reports by game and provide a detail view for each game. An added benefit for this is that every game gets a dedicated URL but also allows for a more powerful ui (e.g. sort/filter by distribution platform or Mac specs you are interested in and so on) while staying in the context of the specific game. Thanks for your comment. Appreciate it.

jay_kyburz 6y ago

That's what Mac people think is playable.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

judofyr 6y ago

Looking at the games which has been marked as "playable: no" it seems that their definition of "playable" means that it runs without crashing/glitching. I think that's perfectly sensible definition. A game can have 60FPS, but be unplayable because it crashes when you switch scenes. And a game can have 5FPS, but be "playable". They should have another column called "recommended" though, since filtering by "playable" isn't very useful…

LilBytes 6y ago
Yes, but placing Solitaire and Alien Isolation into the same category that "playable" means it can be launched and interacted with at 7-12 FPS is absolutely disingenuous. It wholly matters what type of game we're referring to. Yes, Solitaire at low FPS is playable. I mean, it doesn't matter. At all. Playable for Solitaire is almost Boolean. A suspenseful, atmospheric horror shooter? How it plays is absolutely important and why has that context been disregarded?
croes 6y ago
Nope,it has to run mostly without crashes and glitches and need a certain FPS to be called playable.
- thih9 6y ago
  > need a certain FPS to be called playable What FPS exactly? Isn’t that very subjective? Some people might be happy with 15fps, others would want 60fps. I like the approach in this dataset because the reader can decide for themselves.
  - tpetry 6y ago
    You are absolutely right! And with gammers setting more and more enthusiastic levels (e.g. 120fps) is a problem. But the bare minimum should be fps like a movie, so 24fps or 30fps. This will not be perfect, but any animation may look a little bit smoother than 15fps
  - gameswithgo 6y ago

berdario 6y ago

I don't game on Macos, but if you get above 10fps, depending on the specific game, it can be playable. For example, I played several hours of Hitman on a device which cannot push more than 15 fps at 1080p. In that game you have to plan, walk around, wait for opportunities... And you might not even have to fire your gun

oliwarner 6y ago

In some cases there quality and resolution are higher than they need to be. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an exceptionally heavy (or poorly optimised) game. 24fps at 1080p/highest is indeed unplayable, but it's expect it to be much better at 720p/medium.

mister_hn 6y ago
but do you want to play at 720p on a Retina monitor? Seriously?
- simonh 6y ago
  People play at reduced resolution on 4k monitors all the time. Display technology significantly out ran game performance a long time ago.
- tosh 6y ago
  imho the key thing about gaming on the M1 Macs right now is that many games that were unplayable on the previous generation of the same Macs (Air, entry model Pro 13", Mini) have flipped from unplayable to playable, which is what many people who use these systems (often not primarily for gaming) care about. That said: I do think I need to come up with better wording or at least better definitions of what "playable" means (perhaps even for every game * settings * spec combination). With enough reports per game this might actually work. For a while a long-tail of games will only have 1 report though and I wonder how to deal with those. edit: e.g. in some cases it might sense to provide augmented information like if you are interested in performance on a MacBook Air while there is no report for MacBook Air it might make sense to add the context that there are reports on using a MacBook Pro 13" with the added disclaimer that wile in the same ballpark is not the same system (that could give enough context for the reader to guesstimate an upper/lower bound on what to expect)
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Yes, I'd rather play a game in potato than a slideshow in retina. Nobody is discounting that somebody might have the opportunity to play their games on a better system, these tests just show what's possible... Which is a lot more than I'd have said a month ago.

krzyk 6y ago

> In fact, there are tons of entries for first/third person 3D games where <30 FPS is apparently playable. first/third person 3D games are playable with 20 FPS (with drops to 15), I played a lot of them with that FPS on my old laptop (e.g. GTA IV, V, Sleeping Dogs).

gameswithgo 6y ago

kids these days get mad if their fps drops below 100!

neogodless 6y ago

I think what it needs is a filter you create yourself that defines "playable" and only those games get the green light.

tosh 6y ago
I also think that would provide most power to users, I will still try to come up with a sensible default definition for everyone

tosh 6y ago

thanks a lot for the feedback! I've already switched some games that were reported as "playable" to "not playable" because they are only technically playable I am currently thinking about how to best approach this and provide a definition of "playable" that makes sense as context for the reports I'm also thinking about adding some kind of confidence indicator (e.g. 5 reports by different known reporters stating a game is playable vs 1 report from an anonymous user w/ incompletely filled out report) I'm currently looking at best practices from other software compatibility databases out there. Any pointers or thoughts very welcome. I want this to be as high quality as possible so you know that if you have a question about game compatibility or performance on Apple Silicon Macs that this is the website to check.

calcifer 6y ago
I strongly recommend getting in touch with the developer of ProtonDB [1]. That database encountered the same issues and went through a number of revisions for scoring/confidence and is at a great place right now. You can reach him on Discord [2]. [1] https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ [2] https://discord.gg/uuwK9EV https://discord.gg/uuwK9EV
- tosh 6y ago
  thanks a lot for the pointer!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]