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I really wish Apple would just sort out their graphics APIs. Proton & wine makes gaming on linux genuinely surprisingly performant: I have enjoyed several AAA g

I really wish Apple would just sort out their graphics APIs. Proton & wine makes gaming on linux genuinely surprisingly performant: I have enjoyed several AAA games (and am continuing to do so). I really don't know why they do not like Vulkan or don't want to provide a compatibility layer for it. One of the games mentioned is Fallout New Vegas, which apparently gets 15 FPS outdoors, at the lowest graphics quality settings, in a game >10 years old. I've literally just finished that on my linux box, under proton, with the gog copy installing brilliantly under lutris and with a 3rd party higher-resolution texture pack. Apple are really shooting themselves in the foot. Also, from the article on a call of duty online game: > Everything felt smooth, works flawlessly in highest settings available, but only few minutes until your account get banned :( SoC power consumption is around 3.5W I'm not surprised that perhaps many devs naïvely assumed that if you're not running x64, you're a "cheater" [or in a VM, which apparently is often also "cheating"...sigh]. I'd be interested to know how many of the god-awful DRM schemes that BigGames like to run (like Denuvo) take to being emulated in crossover-or-wine-running-under-rosetta. I bet they don't like it!

google234123 6y ago
They don't like it because allowing users to run in a VM would be amazing for cheaters. A VM provides direct memory access to the game frmo outside the VM and a trivial way to create a new computer if you are banned.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  Does apple really care about cheaters in desktop games? That’s something for a games publisher or studio to care about. Especially in paid games cheaters would make apple money because they’d need to purchase new accounts to keep playing.
  - google234123 6y ago
    Apple doesn't care at all, game companies care so they block VMs.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
I really don't know why they do not like Vulkan or don't want to provide a compatibility layer for it. Metal was released before Vulkan existed, and Khronos already has a compatibility layer available (https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK) - I don’t think graphics APIs are the issue here.
ralfd 6y ago
Note that Fallout:NV is running via CrossOver, a (commercial) Wine version. This means it runs Intel-Windows binaries via Rosetta on the Mac.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
simonh 6y ago
I played through New Vegas on a Mac last year using Porting Kit, so that's an Apple Silicon issue not a Mac or graphics API issue.
flohofwoe 6y ago
Well, Apple did sort out their graphics APIs ;) If anybody (e.g. Valve or Apple) would see the Mac as a viable gaming platform, they would offer an API wrapper solution like Proton (which would emulate DirectX and Win32 APIs on top of macOS APIs). But it's already starting at the hardware, embedded Intel GPUs don't cut it for gaming. But the 3D API is just one tiny piece when porting games to other platforms, and the importance of cross-platform 3D-APIs is overrated. Game consoles always had their own non-standard 3D-APIs, and this didn't hinder games being created or ported. And OpenGL only was a cross-platform API in theory, in practice every OpenGL implementation had its own peformance and compatibility quirks, and Vulkan apparently isn't much different. But the root cause is not a technological problem, there simply are not enough people interested in gaming on macOS. If there would be a market, games would come to macOS, with or without Apple's involvement.
- dathinab 6y ago
  > Game consoles always had their own non-standard 3D-APIs, and this didn't hinder games being created or ported. It did, which is why both Sony and Nintendo made their hardware and API's less special in recent years. (Which doesn't mean they are not special, but less so.). I mean as far as I now both Playstation 4+ as well as the Switch do support Vulcan. Which is one (of multiple) reasons why so many games where ported to the Switch. (The other, maybe bigger, reason was that Nintendos polices got much better.)
  - flohofwoe 6y ago
    I seriously doubt that Vulkan plays any significant role in getting games onto the PS4 or Switch, simply because there are not many games running exclusively on top of Vulkan. On PC by far most games are rendering through D3D11 and D3D12, with the bulk still using D3D11 because Windows7 is still a thing. In general you use the API that's "most native" on a platform because that usually gets you the best performance and driver quality. I'm happy to be proven wrong though.
- lmedinas 6y ago
  I partially agree with you, the problem is not technical, although using the most famous and portable APIs definitely helps gaming companies porting and making their games available for MacOS or iOS. But i guess the main 2 problems are: 1) Not enough Mac users which would be significant for a AAA gaming company to port their games on day 1 and get profit. 2) Apple has not taken yet gaming seriously, maybe because they have not seen a viable business model for gaming. I guess here this could change as Apple is slowly putting their feet on it with Apple Arcade (which is definitely not going to bring hardcode gamers), making iOS a good gaming platform (device stability, good GPUs and good support for 3rd party controllers) now its the first time most popular Macs are getting a good GPU. Perhaps also this is one of the reasons why they are blocking Cloud gaming.
tosh 6y ago
I might be too optimistic but I'm hopeful that Steam can figure out a way to provide Proton-like compatibility to Macs going forward and/or that CrossOver will help here. It certainly would be a lucrative market for Steam that just opened up. Most games w/ high performance requirements were not playable on entry-level Macs up until now.

google234123 6y ago

They don't like it because allowing users to run in a VM would be amazing for cheaters. A VM provides direct memory access to the game frmo outside the VM and a trivial way to create a new computer if you are banned.

tmpz22 6y ago
Does apple really care about cheaters in desktop games? That’s something for a games publisher or studio to care about. Especially in paid games cheaters would make apple money because they’d need to purchase new accounts to keep playing.
- google234123 6y ago
  Apple doesn't care at all, game companies care so they block VMs.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

I really don't know why they do not like Vulkan or don't want to provide a compatibility layer for it. Metal was released before Vulkan existed, and Khronos already has a compatibility layer available (https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK) - I don’t think graphics APIs are the issue here.

ralfd 6y ago

Note that Fallout:NV is running via CrossOver, a (commercial) Wine version. This means it runs Intel-Windows binaries via Rosetta on the Mac.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

simonh 6y ago

I played through New Vegas on a Mac last year using Porting Kit, so that's an Apple Silicon issue not a Mac or graphics API issue.

flohofwoe 6y ago

Well, Apple did sort out their graphics APIs ;) If anybody (e.g. Valve or Apple) would see the Mac as a viable gaming platform, they would offer an API wrapper solution like Proton (which would emulate DirectX and Win32 APIs on top of macOS APIs). But it's already starting at the hardware, embedded Intel GPUs don't cut it for gaming. But the 3D API is just one tiny piece when porting games to other platforms, and the importance of cross-platform 3D-APIs is overrated. Game consoles always had their own non-standard 3D-APIs, and this didn't hinder games being created or ported. And OpenGL only was a cross-platform API in theory, in practice every OpenGL implementation had its own peformance and compatibility quirks, and Vulkan apparently isn't much different. But the root cause is not a technological problem, there simply are not enough people interested in gaming on macOS. If there would be a market, games would come to macOS, with or without Apple's involvement.

dathinab 6y ago
> Game consoles always had their own non-standard 3D-APIs, and this didn't hinder games being created or ported. It did, which is why both Sony and Nintendo made their hardware and API's less special in recent years. (Which doesn't mean they are not special, but less so.). I mean as far as I now both Playstation 4+ as well as the Switch do support Vulcan. Which is one (of multiple) reasons why so many games where ported to the Switch. (The other, maybe bigger, reason was that Nintendos polices got much better.)
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  I seriously doubt that Vulkan plays any significant role in getting games onto the PS4 or Switch, simply because there are not many games running exclusively on top of Vulkan. On PC by far most games are rendering through D3D11 and D3D12, with the bulk still using D3D11 because Windows7 is still a thing. In general you use the API that's "most native" on a platform because that usually gets you the best performance and driver quality. I'm happy to be proven wrong though.
lmedinas 6y ago
I partially agree with you, the problem is not technical, although using the most famous and portable APIs definitely helps gaming companies porting and making their games available for MacOS or iOS. But i guess the main 2 problems are: 1) Not enough Mac users which would be significant for a AAA gaming company to port their games on day 1 and get profit. 2) Apple has not taken yet gaming seriously, maybe because they have not seen a viable business model for gaming. I guess here this could change as Apple is slowly putting their feet on it with Apple Arcade (which is definitely not going to bring hardcode gamers), making iOS a good gaming platform (device stability, good GPUs and good support for 3rd party controllers) now its the first time most popular Macs are getting a good GPU. Perhaps also this is one of the reasons why they are blocking Cloud gaming.

tosh 6y ago

I might be too optimistic but I'm hopeful that Steam can figure out a way to provide Proton-like compatibility to Macs going forward and/or that CrossOver will help here. It certainly would be a lucrative market for Steam that just opened up. Most games w/ high performance requirements were not playable on entry-level Macs up until now.