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Very impressive work, and a great testament to the value of shared, iterative and open components. I'll be curious how long it takes Proton to be ported, thoug

by dagmx 2y ago

Very impressive work, and a great testament to the value of shared, iterative and open components. I'll be curious how long it takes Proton to be ported, though I suspect even with an optimal Vk implementation, many games will run terribly due to the difference in GPU architecture + arm translation overhead + proton itself (however negligible). Still, I remain optimistic that more games will target unified memory and ARM in the future on desktops, as SoCs become more prevalent like the snapdragon.

rowanG077 2y ago
A ton of games which don't require dxvk are running at 60+ FPS. See https://vt.social/@lina/112524118075585601 https://vt.social/@lina/112524118075585601 Alyssa, the machine that she is, has also been working on improving FEX performance recently.
- ricardojoaoreis 2y ago
  Alyssa did some work for Valve, they might have an interest in FEX for some ARM version of Proton. Good thing that we can all benefit from it
  - elabajaba 2y ago
    She left Collabora last year and now works for Valve as a contractor.
talldayo 2y ago
There will be a small bit of irony if the gaming experience on Asahi ends up easier and more straightforward than MacOS. Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  Why would that be ironic. Apple wilfully is holding gaming back on OSX by ignoring Vulkan and having a pure shit opengl implementation.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    You may have a good point with the opengl thing. But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small that we can't credibly say that not having a Vulkan driver holds Apple back on gaming. I'd bet any money that the number of games that work on Metal is wayyyy higher than the minuscule number of games that run on Vulkan. Which should tell you how few Vulkan games there are.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      > But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small Really? 7 out of the 10 most popular games on Steam work fine if you have Vulkan 1.3 drivers: https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount
      - dagmx 2y ago
        of the top 10, I count 3: Counter Strike 2 Dota 2 Stardew Valley How are you getting 7/10 unless you're also counting games that happen to run under Proton, which aren't native? And regardless, that's a really small sample size to extrapolate from, when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well.
        talldayo 2y ago
        I'm sorting by playercount, which seems to be corroberated here: https://steamcharts.com/top https://steamcharts.com/top I am counting Proton games because they very explicitly are supported by sufficient Vulkan coverage. In case you weren't paying attention that's kinda the only reason anyone cares about Apple Silicon getting Vulkan 1.3 coverage in the first place. > when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. You're right, when we push it out to 1000 titles it gets closer to 80% playable: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard > Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well. ...yeah, you keep telling yourself that. One day, they'll definitely flip the switch on MacOS support. Certainly.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Vulkan would likely not really have helped macOS gaming in any form. I consider it a red herring that people point to. The number of games that run natively on Vulkan is negligible. The number of games that run on Metal by comparison (natively) is orders of magnitude higher. If we're ONLY talking about the ability to use Proton, Apple does now have Game Porting Toolkit that does effectively the same thing with comparable performance characteristics if you take out the other contributing overhead elements.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    You can't ship Game Porting Toolkit with your game, though. DXVK doesn't have this limitation, and developers use it all the time. In effect, this means the number of games you get with native Vulkan coverage is a magnitude higher than the total sum of all Metal-native desktop titles.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      This isn't completely true. Crossover is allowed to ship the GPTK components for API translation (which they currently do as of 23.5) and games are allowed to embed Crossover elements like they did in the pre-Metal days with Cider etc. All this talk of DXVK doesn’t explain why games based on engines with native metal support aren’t on a Mac either.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        Crossover is a paid product, and even then has pretty poor DX12 support compared to Proton. Up until a couple years ago it didn't work at all. Again; if Apple had just supported Vulkan alongside Metal like a normal non-paranoid company, their users wouldn't be caught in the middle of this. It's such a blatantly obvious solution with no user-facing downsides. It's shocking that anyone would defend the status-quo when it's so notoriously and obviously broken.
        dagmx 2y ago
        Your assertions aren’t backed by history though. Prior to metal and Vulkan, many games used Cider to target Mac despite having the same APi (at that point, an up to date OpenGL). And many of the current game devs do have Metal versions of their engines that they target towards iOS, yet don’t have a macOS version. The fact of the matter is that it comes down to market share. Macs have historically not had a large user base that also had capable GPUs. It’s not been worth supporting that tiny market share It’s the same on Linux. Why are there so few Linux native games? The argument that Vulkan would have solved this is completely incongruent with the reality of the state of gaming. This will inevitably go back to “well at least we could have used proton” but that’s also not true, and besides there’s GPTK. And then the argument becomes circular , because all evidence points to: devs just don’t care about Mac’s from a support perspective. You can make it easier, they still won’t come until the possible demographic size is larger. and even with DXVK, what about all the other platform specific differences? Vulkan wouldn't solve those either.
- burnte 2y ago
  > Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. They'll never admit it. They only caved on USB-C because they were legally required to. They won't cave on this, or NVidia support, or putting the charge port on the side of the mouse and not the belly, etc.
  - mantas 2y ago
    Nobody required USB-C charging for laptops and iPads. It would have happened on iPhones eventually too.
    - eptcyka 2y ago
      They were the (one of the) first ones to usb-c on laptops. I don’t think they were ever planning to do usb-c on the iPhone, they had no reason to be this late.
      - chipotle_coyote 2y ago
        They didn't have a technical reason to be that late, but they probably had a marketing reason -- and I don't mean "they made money by licensing Lightning." (They did, obviously, but I don't think it was raking in big bucks, at least not Apple standards.) When the iPhone switched to Lightning from the clunky 34-pin iPod connector, a whole lot of people got pissed off with Apple and stayed pissed off with them for years. Literally years. People were convinced Apple did it just to sell more cables. So if you're Apple, and you know the history of the last time you forced everyone to buy new cables, and now you have orders of magnitude more people using your phone…you probably put this off as absolutely long as possible. Would they have gotten there without pressure from the EU? Honestly, I think so -- I used to agree with you, but when the iPad Air, not just the Pro, went to USB-C, I changed my mind.
        kalleboo 2y ago
        When Apple went up on stage and announced Lightning, they said "this is our connector for the next 10 years". 10 years later, almost on the dot, they replaced Lightning on the iPhone with USB-C. Doesn't seem weird at all to me.
- troupo 2y ago
  > Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. People who keep saying this have surprisingly short/bad memories. And very little idea of the state of the industry. - Apple already shipped Metal version 1 a full year before Vulkan was even an idea. iPhone, one of the largest casual gaming platforms in the world, is Metal - Windows and Xbox is DirectX - Playstation is their own thing (keep forgetting what it's called) That leaves Android (mostly underpowered and fractured to even run games properly) and Switch who really support Vulkan.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > Apple already shipped Metal version 1 a full year before Vulkan was even an idea. That doesn't stop them from implementing two APIs at once, like every single GPU hardware vendor in existence. But given their avoidance of OpenGL and OpenCL, we should have always assumed Apple's goal was to usurp Open interfaces and replace them with only proprietary options. What else could they intend to signal? > Windows and Xbox is DirectX Yes. DirectX is covered almost in it's entirety by DXVK. It's harder to find a DirectX game that isn't playable with Vulkan than one that is. https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount > Playstation is their own thing (keep forgetting what it's called) Yeah, and it keeps biting them in the ass when they have to then backport Playstation-native titles to PC with DirectX. It's a notoriously redundant process. > That leaves Android (mostly underpowered and fractured to even run games properly) and Switch who really support Vulkan. Well also Windows, Linux, BSD, HaikuOS, Google Fuchsia, QNX, Stadia and Tizen. And hardware wise you can't forget that Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Qualcomm and Broadcomm all support it in their GPUs.
    - robertoandred 2y ago
      Apple created OpenCL. It was nvidia who made everyone else avoid it.
- jakogut 2y ago
  Linux market share is considerably ahead of macOS according to the Steam hardware survey. Just this past month, Linux is sitting at 2.32% compared to macOS at 1.47%.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Genuine question: is it actually reasonable to compare desktop/laptop OS market share with handheld market share? Like... what does that actually tell us? I suppose in the case of gaming it can be useful, since at this point more games are played on Linux (due to SteamDeck) than on macOS. But otherwise, I always get a weird feeling when someone lumps these stats together. I guess part of the weirdness I feel is when people say "Linux is the most used OS in the world" because of all the Android devices floating around, which is super misleading, since "Linux" isn't really an OS on its own anymore. (Technically it never was, but I'm not one of the "GNU/Linux" pedants, so...) Android and GNU/Linux are very distinct, very different OSes, so it makes no sense to lump them together. "Linux is the most-used kernel in the world" is a more accurate statement, but, again, I'm not really sure what that actually tells us in practical terms.
    - jakogut 2y ago
      I think it is actually a reasonable thing to compare. I've had similar thoughts on the Android comparison. Yes, Linux is the most widely used kernel in the world, but that doesn't mean that desktop GNU/Linux is up to the same level of usability. That doesn't mean that desktop GNU/Linux would provide a good touchscreen experience on a tablet. It could, but the entire userspace software stack is completely different. I think what it does indicate is that the kernel is featureful, stable, extensible, reliable, and a good base to build products and services from. SteamOS on the Steam Deck is a close cousin of desktop GNU/Linux, purpose built for gaming. It might be a handheld, but it's also a PC. I think the popularity of the device tells us that the compatibility of Linux with Windows software, games especially, is good enough for the average person. It tells us that people are willing to tolerate a bit of a learning curve and some differences to what they're accustomed to so long as the value is there, and 95% of things just work. It's also worth noting that many Steam Deck users choose to continue using SteamOS, based on Linux, to run their Windows games, in spite of the fact that their device will also run Windows.
- duped 2y ago
  Gaming on MacOS isn't hard, it's just bad.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    It's kinda both. I think there's ample demand and opportunity to create a simplified Asahi install script optimized for pushbutton gaming. The biggest constraining factor is disc space.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  Supporting a different 3D API is really not the complicated or time consuming part of porting a game to another platform, especially when the target API is Metal. The poor game support on macOS is a mix of Apple apathy towards gaming and the low potential sales numbers. Also, of the few new Vulkan apps being released (a whopping 9 in 2023), most actually only support a single platform: https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ Apple also offers a D3D12 porting toolkit now (basically D3D12 running on top of Metal, same thing like Proton is D3D running on top of Vulkan) which business-wise makes a lot more sense than native Vulkan support since there are many more D3D12 games than Vulkan games: https://developer.apple.com/games/ https://developer.apple.com/games/
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Supporting a different 3D API is really not the complicated or time consuming part of porting a game to another platform, especially when the target API is Metal. If you have a graphics programmer on hand, no. The vast majority of indie devs are powerless in that domain, though. I don't see many attempts out there to make it easier for them either. Maintenance is always the time consuming part, be it simple or complex work. People aren't going to support Linux even if Vulkan theoretically makes it straightforward, because the time needed to maintain it isn't worth the lack of customers. Steam + Proton gives even less incentive to bother. So that advantage doesn't translate to much business value when evaluating DX12 vs. Vulkan. This is an issue going all the way back to the OpenGL vs. D3D days. Nothing fundamentally changes as long as Microsoft completely swamps the PC gaming market.
    - flohofwoe 2y ago
      If you have somebody on the team who was able to write a Vulkan rendering engine, then that same person can also easily pop out a Metal port ... just be careful, that person probably never wants to touch Vulkan again afterwards ;) Otherwise I would expect that the game either uses a library which abstracts away the differences between the system 3D APIs (shameless plug: https://github.com/floooh/sokol https://github.com/floooh/sokol, but also BGFX, WebGPU or AFAIK SDL3 is also getting a cross-platform 3D API), or uses a complete game engine like Godot, Unity or Unreal. > Maintenance is always the time consuming part This is the only thing that matters, it's not the initial port that's the problem, but the long term maintenance and customer support and that often doesn't make business sense on non-mainstream platforms like Linux or macOS. But a cross-platform 3D API doesn't make any of that easier (you'll still have to struggle with driver bugs for instance, or just plain weird configurations, especially on Linux systems - unless going through Proton which I'm sure works around a ton of compatibility issues and driver bugs under the hood).
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  >Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. Even if Apple supported Vulkan that doesn't mean AAA games would be ported to Mac soon. AAA require beefy GPUs and Apple silicon isn't going to match Nvidia.
  - sspiff 2y ago
    AAA can make use of beefy GPUs, but equally it can run on more pedestrian hardware. If AAA games sold only to those with desktops and high end graphics cards, PC gaming would have died a long time ago. Even today, many games run fine on Pascal era graphics cards, and they certainly run fine on mid range laptop versions of Nvidias 4050 & 4060. Apples silicon can keep up with those, plus the simpler, less diverse hardware on Mac would probably lead to better optimisation if the market was big enough. I'm not saying Vulkan is the only thing holding gaming from Apple computers, because I think the control Apple has over software distribution on Mac is also something that scares large publishers away from investing in the platform.
  - filleduchaos 2y ago
    I don't think I know a single AAA game released in the past decade that requires a beefier GPU than Apple ships. It would be complete financial suicide for a studio whose development budget runs in the tens and even hundreds of millions these days) to limit their customer base to the relative handful of gamers who have their hands on the latest and greatest graphics cards.
  - lonjil 2y ago
    You've got it backwards. Before M1, most Macs that regular consumers owned were incredibly bad GPU-wise. M1 was an enormous upgrade and finally made Mac usable for gaming for the average Mac owner. But years of most Macs being useless for gaming drove the game devs away.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Unfortunately, I don't think simply having a powerful GPU is enough to make people care. The M1 is almost 5 years old now, and I haven't seen a single major games studio go out of their way to target Apple Silicon. If anything, people are giving up on the platform now that OpenGL is more or less entirely broken and Metal is mandatory. Porting to MacOS is like committing to a console ecosystem where things constantly change and you're expected to pay the price. Windows developers don't like that; they want to push one build out and support it for the next decade. Hope springs eternal, but there's a reason we want Vulkan. Native gaming on Mac is awful; it is quite literally the worst gaming experience you can have between Linux and Windows, both of which can run DirectX games without issue. If we had functioning Vulkan drivers on Mac, we wouldn't be begging and grovelling for games to work; they just would, like on Steam Deck.
- nox101 2y ago
  Vulkan is the arguably worst of the modern GPU APIs. It's not all that portable since you have to check for sooo many differences in architecture. It requires the most amount of manual synchronization. It lacks a higher-level shading language (you generally have to pick a library that implements some other higher level language and let it generate SPIR-V for you and pray it works portably). Except for projects like this, Vulkan really only exists on Linux and Android. It'a not really a thing on Windows. Sure, some games are using it, but they're like 1% or less. Metal is arguably the best of the 3 APIs, though of course it was easier to do without having any legacy behind it and without being designed by committee.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > It's not all that portable since you have to check for sooo many differences in architecture. And... Metal is better in this regard? I'd take SPIR-V generation for two target architectures over a complete render overhaul any day of the week. > Metal is arguably the best of the 3 APIs Then what harm is there in offering Vulkan alongside it? If Metal is the obviously superior choice, there should be no problem doing the same thing Microsoft does by allowing developers to use both. Why is Apple afraid of letting their APIs compete?
- DiskoHexyl 2y ago
  Lack of Vulkan support is just one (small) reason gaming doesn't really exist on Mac. IMO it's more down to Apple's historic view on videogames and software compatibility in general- they are okay with frequently breaking things (like they did with 32bit apps) and expect developers to just constantly accomodate that. With a giant iOS market and its deluge of relatively small free-to-play/service-based games, it's a worthy model for devs to pursue (until the game is unprofitable, and then, in a couple of years, it's delisted as incompatible). For a more traditional desktop/console style gaming, where a long tail is expected, with little further support, it's a tough proposition to release on a platform that has a miniscule market share AND constantly breaks. Its own graphics API is just a cherry on top, I think
- Aleksdev 2y ago
  They have nothing to admit to. I don’t think Apple ever positioned the macs as gaming computers or gaming friendly computers.

by dagmx 2y ago

rowanG077 2y ago

A ton of games which don't require dxvk are running at 60+ FPS. See https://vt.social/@lina/112524118075585601 https://vt.social/@lina/112524118075585601 Alyssa, the machine that she is, has also been working on improving FEX performance recently.

ricardojoaoreis 2y ago
Alyssa did some work for Valve, they might have an interest in FEX for some ARM version of Proton. Good thing that we can all benefit from it
- elabajaba 2y ago
  She left Collabora last year and now works for Valve as a contractor.

talldayo 2y ago

There will be a small bit of irony if the gaming experience on Asahi ends up easier and more straightforward than MacOS. Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late.

rowanG077 2y ago
Why would that be ironic. Apple wilfully is holding gaming back on OSX by ignoring Vulkan and having a pure shit opengl implementation.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  You may have a good point with the opengl thing. But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small that we can't credibly say that not having a Vulkan driver holds Apple back on gaming. I'd bet any money that the number of games that work on Metal is wayyyy higher than the minuscule number of games that run on Vulkan. Which should tell you how few Vulkan games there are.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small Really? 7 out of the 10 most popular games on Steam work fine if you have Vulkan 1.3 drivers: https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount
    - dagmx 2y ago
      of the top 10, I count 3: Counter Strike 2 Dota 2 Stardew Valley How are you getting 7/10 unless you're also counting games that happen to run under Proton, which aren't native? And regardless, that's a really small sample size to extrapolate from, when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        I'm sorting by playercount, which seems to be corroberated here: https://steamcharts.com/top https://steamcharts.com/top I am counting Proton games because they very explicitly are supported by sufficient Vulkan coverage. In case you weren't paying attention that's kinda the only reason anyone cares about Apple Silicon getting Vulkan 1.3 coverage in the first place. > when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. You're right, when we push it out to 1000 titles it gets closer to 80% playable: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard > Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well. ...yeah, you keep telling yourself that. One day, they'll definitely flip the switch on MacOS support. Certainly.
dagmx 2y ago
Vulkan would likely not really have helped macOS gaming in any form. I consider it a red herring that people point to. The number of games that run natively on Vulkan is negligible. The number of games that run on Metal by comparison (natively) is orders of magnitude higher. If we're ONLY talking about the ability to use Proton, Apple does now have Game Porting Toolkit that does effectively the same thing with comparable performance characteristics if you take out the other contributing overhead elements.
- talldayo 2y ago
  You can't ship Game Porting Toolkit with your game, though. DXVK doesn't have this limitation, and developers use it all the time. In effect, this means the number of games you get with native Vulkan coverage is a magnitude higher than the total sum of all Metal-native desktop titles.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    This isn't completely true. Crossover is allowed to ship the GPTK components for API translation (which they currently do as of 23.5) and games are allowed to embed Crossover elements like they did in the pre-Metal days with Cider etc. All this talk of DXVK doesn’t explain why games based on engines with native metal support aren’t on a Mac either.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Crossover is a paid product, and even then has pretty poor DX12 support compared to Proton. Up until a couple years ago it didn't work at all. Again; if Apple had just supported Vulkan alongside Metal like a normal non-paranoid company, their users wouldn't be caught in the middle of this. It's such a blatantly obvious solution with no user-facing downsides. It's shocking that anyone would defend the status-quo when it's so notoriously and obviously broken.
      - dagmx 2y ago
        Your assertions aren’t backed by history though. Prior to metal and Vulkan, many games used Cider to target Mac despite having the same APi (at that point, an up to date OpenGL). And many of the current game devs do have Metal versions of their engines that they target towards iOS, yet don’t have a macOS version. The fact of the matter is that it comes down to market share. Macs have historically not had a large user base that also had capable GPUs. It’s not been worth supporting that tiny market share It’s the same on Linux. Why are there so few Linux native games? The argument that Vulkan would have solved this is completely incongruent with the reality of the state of gaming. This will inevitably go back to “well at least we could have used proton” but that’s also not true, and besides there’s GPTK. And then the argument becomes circular , because all evidence points to: devs just don’t care about Mac’s from a support perspective. You can make it easier, they still won’t come until the possible demographic size is larger. and even with DXVK, what about all the other platform specific differences? Vulkan wouldn't solve those either.
burnte 2y ago
> Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. They'll never admit it. They only caved on USB-C because they were legally required to. They won't cave on this, or NVidia support, or putting the charge port on the side of the mouse and not the belly, etc.
- mantas 2y ago
  Nobody required USB-C charging for laptops and iPads. It would have happened on iPhones eventually too.
  - eptcyka 2y ago
    They were the (one of the) first ones to usb-c on laptops. I don’t think they were ever planning to do usb-c on the iPhone, they had no reason to be this late.
    - chipotle_coyote 2y ago
      They didn't have a technical reason to be that late, but they probably had a marketing reason -- and I don't mean "they made money by licensing Lightning." (They did, obviously, but I don't think it was raking in big bucks, at least not Apple standards.) When the iPhone switched to Lightning from the clunky 34-pin iPod connector, a whole lot of people got pissed off with Apple and stayed pissed off with them for years. Literally years. People were convinced Apple did it just to sell more cables. So if you're Apple, and you know the history of the last time you forced everyone to buy new cables, and now you have orders of magnitude more people using your phone…you probably put this off as absolutely long as possible. Would they have gotten there without pressure from the EU? Honestly, I think so -- I used to agree with you, but when the iPad Air, not just the Pro, went to USB-C, I changed my mind.
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        When Apple went up on stage and announced Lightning, they said "this is our connector for the next 10 years". 10 years later, almost on the dot, they replaced Lightning on the iPhone with USB-C. Doesn't seem weird at all to me.
troupo 2y ago
> Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. People who keep saying this have surprisingly short/bad memories. And very little idea of the state of the industry. - Apple already shipped Metal version 1 a full year before Vulkan was even an idea. iPhone, one of the largest casual gaming platforms in the world, is Metal - Windows and Xbox is DirectX - Playstation is their own thing (keep forgetting what it's called) That leaves Android (mostly underpowered and fractured to even run games properly) and Switch who really support Vulkan.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- talldayo 2y ago
  > Apple already shipped Metal version 1 a full year before Vulkan was even an idea. That doesn't stop them from implementing two APIs at once, like every single GPU hardware vendor in existence. But given their avoidance of OpenGL and OpenCL, we should have always assumed Apple's goal was to usurp Open interfaces and replace them with only proprietary options. What else could they intend to signal? > Windows and Xbox is DirectX Yes. DirectX is covered almost in it's entirety by DXVK. It's harder to find a DirectX game that isn't playable with Vulkan than one that is. https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount > Playstation is their own thing (keep forgetting what it's called) Yeah, and it keeps biting them in the ass when they have to then backport Playstation-native titles to PC with DirectX. It's a notoriously redundant process. > That leaves Android (mostly underpowered and fractured to even run games properly) and Switch who really support Vulkan. Well also Windows, Linux, BSD, HaikuOS, Google Fuchsia, QNX, Stadia and Tizen. And hardware wise you can't forget that Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Qualcomm and Broadcomm all support it in their GPUs.
  - robertoandred 2y ago
    Apple created OpenCL. It was nvidia who made everyone else avoid it.
jakogut 2y ago
Linux market share is considerably ahead of macOS according to the Steam hardware survey. Just this past month, Linux is sitting at 2.32% compared to macOS at 1.47%.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Genuine question: is it actually reasonable to compare desktop/laptop OS market share with handheld market share? Like... what does that actually tell us? I suppose in the case of gaming it can be useful, since at this point more games are played on Linux (due to SteamDeck) than on macOS. But otherwise, I always get a weird feeling when someone lumps these stats together. I guess part of the weirdness I feel is when people say "Linux is the most used OS in the world" because of all the Android devices floating around, which is super misleading, since "Linux" isn't really an OS on its own anymore. (Technically it never was, but I'm not one of the "GNU/Linux" pedants, so...) Android and GNU/Linux are very distinct, very different OSes, so it makes no sense to lump them together. "Linux is the most-used kernel in the world" is a more accurate statement, but, again, I'm not really sure what that actually tells us in practical terms.
  - jakogut 2y ago
    I think it is actually a reasonable thing to compare. I've had similar thoughts on the Android comparison. Yes, Linux is the most widely used kernel in the world, but that doesn't mean that desktop GNU/Linux is up to the same level of usability. That doesn't mean that desktop GNU/Linux would provide a good touchscreen experience on a tablet. It could, but the entire userspace software stack is completely different. I think what it does indicate is that the kernel is featureful, stable, extensible, reliable, and a good base to build products and services from. SteamOS on the Steam Deck is a close cousin of desktop GNU/Linux, purpose built for gaming. It might be a handheld, but it's also a PC. I think the popularity of the device tells us that the compatibility of Linux with Windows software, games especially, is good enough for the average person. It tells us that people are willing to tolerate a bit of a learning curve and some differences to what they're accustomed to so long as the value is there, and 95% of things just work. It's also worth noting that many Steam Deck users choose to continue using SteamOS, based on Linux, to run their Windows games, in spite of the fact that their device will also run Windows.
duped 2y ago
Gaming on MacOS isn't hard, it's just bad.
- talldayo 2y ago
  It's kinda both. I think there's ample demand and opportunity to create a simplified Asahi install script optimized for pushbutton gaming. The biggest constraining factor is disc space.
flohofwoe 2y ago
Supporting a different 3D API is really not the complicated or time consuming part of porting a game to another platform, especially when the target API is Metal. The poor game support on macOS is a mix of Apple apathy towards gaming and the low potential sales numbers. Also, of the few new Vulkan apps being released (a whopping 9 in 2023), most actually only support a single platform: https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ https://carette.xyz/posts/state_of_vulkan_2024/ Apple also offers a D3D12 porting toolkit now (basically D3D12 running on top of Metal, same thing like Proton is D3D running on top of Vulkan) which business-wise makes a lot more sense than native Vulkan support since there are many more D3D12 games than Vulkan games: https://developer.apple.com/games/ https://developer.apple.com/games/
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >Supporting a different 3D API is really not the complicated or time consuming part of porting a game to another platform, especially when the target API is Metal. If you have a graphics programmer on hand, no. The vast majority of indie devs are powerless in that domain, though. I don't see many attempts out there to make it easier for them either. Maintenance is always the time consuming part, be it simple or complex work. People aren't going to support Linux even if Vulkan theoretically makes it straightforward, because the time needed to maintain it isn't worth the lack of customers. Steam + Proton gives even less incentive to bother. So that advantage doesn't translate to much business value when evaluating DX12 vs. Vulkan. This is an issue going all the way back to the OpenGL vs. D3D days. Nothing fundamentally changes as long as Microsoft completely swamps the PC gaming market.
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    If you have somebody on the team who was able to write a Vulkan rendering engine, then that same person can also easily pop out a Metal port ... just be careful, that person probably never wants to touch Vulkan again afterwards ;) Otherwise I would expect that the game either uses a library which abstracts away the differences between the system 3D APIs (shameless plug: https://github.com/floooh/sokol https://github.com/floooh/sokol, but also BGFX, WebGPU or AFAIK SDL3 is also getting a cross-platform 3D API), or uses a complete game engine like Godot, Unity or Unreal. > Maintenance is always the time consuming part This is the only thing that matters, it's not the initial port that's the problem, but the long term maintenance and customer support and that often doesn't make business sense on non-mainstream platforms like Linux or macOS. But a cross-platform 3D API doesn't make any of that easier (you'll still have to struggle with driver bugs for instance, or just plain weird configurations, especially on Linux systems - unless going through Proton which I'm sure works around a ton of compatibility issues and driver bugs under the hood).
DeathArrow 2y ago
>Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. Even if Apple supported Vulkan that doesn't mean AAA games would be ported to Mac soon. AAA require beefy GPUs and Apple silicon isn't going to match Nvidia.
- sspiff 2y ago
  AAA can make use of beefy GPUs, but equally it can run on more pedestrian hardware. If AAA games sold only to those with desktops and high end graphics cards, PC gaming would have died a long time ago. Even today, many games run fine on Pascal era graphics cards, and they certainly run fine on mid range laptop versions of Nvidias 4050 & 4060. Apples silicon can keep up with those, plus the simpler, less diverse hardware on Mac would probably lead to better optimisation if the market was big enough. I'm not saying Vulkan is the only thing holding gaming from Apple computers, because I think the control Apple has over software distribution on Mac is also something that scares large publishers away from investing in the platform.
- filleduchaos 2y ago
  I don't think I know a single AAA game released in the past decade that requires a beefier GPU than Apple ships. It would be complete financial suicide for a studio whose development budget runs in the tens and even hundreds of millions these days) to limit their customer base to the relative handful of gamers who have their hands on the latest and greatest graphics cards.
- lonjil 2y ago
  You've got it backwards. Before M1, most Macs that regular consumers owned were incredibly bad GPU-wise. M1 was an enormous upgrade and finally made Mac usable for gaming for the average Mac owner. But years of most Macs being useless for gaming drove the game devs away.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Unfortunately, I don't think simply having a powerful GPU is enough to make people care. The M1 is almost 5 years old now, and I haven't seen a single major games studio go out of their way to target Apple Silicon. If anything, people are giving up on the platform now that OpenGL is more or less entirely broken and Metal is mandatory. Porting to MacOS is like committing to a console ecosystem where things constantly change and you're expected to pay the price. Windows developers don't like that; they want to push one build out and support it for the next decade. Hope springs eternal, but there's a reason we want Vulkan. Native gaming on Mac is awful; it is quite literally the worst gaming experience you can have between Linux and Windows, both of which can run DirectX games without issue. If we had functioning Vulkan drivers on Mac, we wouldn't be begging and grovelling for games to work; they just would, like on Steam Deck.
nox101 2y ago
Vulkan is the arguably worst of the modern GPU APIs. It's not all that portable since you have to check for sooo many differences in architecture. It requires the most amount of manual synchronization. It lacks a higher-level shading language (you generally have to pick a library that implements some other higher level language and let it generate SPIR-V for you and pray it works portably). Except for projects like this, Vulkan really only exists on Linux and Android. It'a not really a thing on Windows. Sure, some games are using it, but they're like 1% or less. Metal is arguably the best of the 3 APIs, though of course it was easier to do without having any legacy behind it and without being designed by committee.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > It's not all that portable since you have to check for sooo many differences in architecture. And... Metal is better in this regard? I'd take SPIR-V generation for two target architectures over a complete render overhaul any day of the week. > Metal is arguably the best of the 3 APIs Then what harm is there in offering Vulkan alongside it? If Metal is the obviously superior choice, there should be no problem doing the same thing Microsoft does by allowing developers to use both. Why is Apple afraid of letting their APIs compete?
DiskoHexyl 2y ago
Lack of Vulkan support is just one (small) reason gaming doesn't really exist on Mac. IMO it's more down to Apple's historic view on videogames and software compatibility in general- they are okay with frequently breaking things (like they did with 32bit apps) and expect developers to just constantly accomodate that. With a giant iOS market and its deluge of relatively small free-to-play/service-based games, it's a worthy model for devs to pursue (until the game is unprofitable, and then, in a couple of years, it's delisted as incompatible). For a more traditional desktop/console style gaming, where a long tail is expected, with little further support, it's a tough proposition to release on a platform that has a miniscule market share AND constantly breaks. Its own graphics API is just a cherry on top, I think
Aleksdev 2y ago
They have nothing to admit to. I don’t think Apple ever positioned the macs as gaming computers or gaming friendly computers.