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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games
- russelg 2y agoIt would be great if this meant proton is coming back to macOS :) I don't have high hopes however.
- whateveracct 2y agoMe neither, but it's a shame. Those Apple Silicon chips are solid for gaming.
- shmerl 2y agoIf Apple cared about gamers, they wouldn't have blocked proper Vulkan support. They simply don't care. A major reason to stay away from Apple if you are a gamer.
- caseyy 2y agoIt’s not the end of the world to develop for macOS and iOS. These platforms are just idiosyncratic and don’t have many serious gamers. Neither smartphones nor Macs have been powerful or ergonomic enough to play current-generation games for decades. So the user base is almost entirely people who don’t play games. For a developer, the juice is not worth the squeeze (and by far!). The platforms are challenging to port for and all that effort seems to result in near-zero sales. All ports seem to be almost guaranteed commercial failures. My key point is that perhaps the platforms are now mature enough to develop for and Metal is alright. But they have not been for a long time and it’s a really bad market to target for a game developer. Unless Apple funds your games like some other platforms do, it’s better to just blow the porting budget on something that’s at least fun. I haven’t heard of anyone’s game funded by Apple, but maybe it happens? These deals are rarely made public. Chicken and the egg. Just my opinion.
- jamesfinlayson 2y ago> Unless Apple funds your games like some other platforms do, it’s better to just blow the porting budget on something that’s at least fun. I haven’t heard of anyone’s game funded by Apple, but maybe it happens? These deals are rarely made public. Maybe I'm wrong but I thought/assumed that Valve's work to get Steam and their GoldSource and Source game engines working on Mac was with some sort of support from Apple - I know they did Linux support around the same time but the extra work to get everything working on a Mac wouldn't have been trivial.
- caseyy 2y agoNice find, it’s true. That’s the only avenue I see where porting a AAA-style game makes sense for a Mac financially. Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, and several Counter-Strike games were also ported, but CS:GO was later discontinued for Macs. These were done without Apple’s money as I understand. And the discontinuation seems related to support costs on a platform that doesn’t have many gamers.
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoYeah I think Valve ported their whole catalogue of games, but I'm not sure what exactly happened with the discontinuation - I thought they quietly dropped the Mac support tag from all of their games two or three months ago, probably because Intel Macs haven't been sold in a few years now? Presumably they didn't want to sink more money into Mac support (they had 11 years worth of Mac usage statistics to back up their decision).
- caseyy 2y agoI don’t think Intel v. ARM matters too much once the engine HALs support it natively, or through Rosetta 2. This to me doesn’t seem too bad. The OS APIs and building an ergonomic experience is the challenging part. Supporting APIs is harder than it may seem. That’s graphics, sound, task scheduling and multi threading, I/O for both files and devices, and many more. All these things have different approaches on different OSes, as well as different limits of what is allowed and what is not. Different best practices and degrees of documentation, too. This all then needs to make for a good player experience and meet gamer expectations. It’s a Herculean task. It is even harder, because many graphics APIs, for example, support different features. So either your artists must accommodate and create several versions of skeletal meshes, visual effects, and similar; or your engineers must develop new graphics technologies to compensate automatically. And if that didn’t seem hard enough, try recruiting from a pool of game graphics programmers for macOS without a hot six figures a year burning a hole in your pocket. Now consider this for other APIs, though they are often more standard and less challenging. I could be wrong, but many corners are cut for platforms that don’t have that many players — you just can’t justify the costs it would take to do an excellent port. And that creates pretty deep and difficult to patch issues. The same is seen on games ported to Linux.
- pjmlp 2y agoMost game studios don't care about Vulkan, that is why HLSL is what everyone uses instead of GLSL. Any game engine worth using has Metal support for ages.
- gpderetta 2y agoThat's all well and good, but no Vulkan means not DXVK or VKD3D without yet another layer of translation like MoltenVk.
- dwaite 2y agoHow did they block Vulkan support?
- nolist_policy 2y agoBy not providing Vulkan drivers/APIs on their platforms.
- user-the-name 2y ago[dead]
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoIt really is a difficult demographic for apple though. Not much money. Demand for as much bang as possible for the buck.
- flohofwoe 2y agoSilly argument, Vulkan also isn't available on Xbox or Playstation, yet dedicated game console platforms clearly care a lot about gaming. There's also only a handful of Vulkan games, supporting D3D11 and D3D12 on macOS would make a lot more sense. But in reality, porting to a different 3D API isn't what makes or breaks a game port.
- shmerl 2y agoI see nothing silly about it. Bringing other bad examples of lock-ins doesn't excuse Apple in the least. Personally I'd stay away from the above too. > There's also only a handful of Vulkan games There are a ton of games that are Vulkan games through vkd3d-proton and dxvk. Which was the above point.
- flohofwoe 2y agoSo if Apple would provide a similar D3D shim on macOS, all D3D games would suddenly become "Metal games"? If Apple would implement Vulkan support on macOS it would be a layer on top of Metal (same as their GL implementation or MoltenVk). Running through two translation layers (D3D => Vk => Metal) doesn't make a lot of sense.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 2y agoSo it should be D3D → Vulkan → kernel / hardware. But Apple are too stuck up with their NIH to allow that.
- flohofwoe 2y agoThat would either mean that Apple needs to maintain two separate types of display drivers or create a new abstract driver interface which sits between Metal+Vulkan and the underlying hardware. That's just adding busywork with only downsides, both technical and organisational. Vulkan just isn't that important outside of Linux and Android, especially when most games are built on top of a crossplatform engine anyway.
- hot_gril 2y agoI didn't even know there was Proton for macOS, but it looks like Valve ended that before the AS chips, so I don't think it had to do with the CPU arch.
- agildehaus 2y agoNo native Vulkan on macOS, right? I know of MoltenVK, but I have no idea how suitable it is.
- zamadatix 2y agoIt works well enough for many games via Steam games using Crossover but Vlavle may not be interested in targeting the platform anyways.
- dunghill 2y agoYeah, no native Vulkan on macOS. MoltenVK[0] is a workaround. Decent for some projects. [0] https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
- dagmx 2y agoJust use Whisky (https://getwhisky.app/ https://getwhisky.app/) or CrossOver (https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover) While it would be great if Valve did what they do on SteamOS and just manage it themselves, it’s a very minor burden to use the existing solutions to do the same.
- sho 2y ago> Just use Whisky You know, every 6 months or so I get a sudden hankering to play Portal or something and start down this rabbit hole. Based on your prompt, I had another look today. So I went and downloaded this "whisky" thing. From their website: "Experience the latest titles effortlessly with Whisky!". OK. Installed. I open it and I see a window with "bottle configuration" (wtf is a bottle?), an "open c: drive" button (???), "SteamCMD" whatever that is, "winetricks" (??) and a "run.." button which opens a file from finder (??). I have absolutely no idea what any of this is or how to proceed. Confronted with this and the prospect of hours of research and messing around I decide I don't need to play anything all that much really. UPDATE - ok, I decided to actually try and get it working and it's not that bad. Follow this video, basically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xowJ3b-pt-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xowJ3b-pt-U And protip, set your system audio to 44.1khz. Cool. Portal. I maintain the user onboarding could be MUCH more friendly.
- dagmx 2y agoYeah whisky definitely exposes more of the wine underpinnings. Crossover is more user friendly but isn’t free. Crossover are the primary developers behind WINE and transitively, Proton. Steam just handles all the configuration elements of proton for the user but essentially it’s doing the same stuff under the hood.
- npteljes 2y agoThis is one of the things that Valve does very well. I even end up installing Steam on PCs that I run non-steam software on, because Proton is just that easy. I add the shortcut to Steam, choose my proton runtime (if that), click play, and the client does the rest. WHY ON EARTH is it more complicated with other launchers? No idea, and I bet that they have exactly 0 UX people among their midst. And even the programmer excuse doesn't work, that programmers are bad at this sort of thing (think "programmer art"); because programming also adopted convention over configuration in the early 2000s, 20 years ago now. Sorry for the rant, I also hate bad UX. It makes me feel stupid for no good reason.
- slowhadoken 2y ago[flagged]
- speed_spread 2y agoWould it possible to AOT-recompile from x86 to aarch64? Or will it all be emulated forever?
- xena 2y agoRosetta does do AOT recompilation when it can.
- namrog84 2y agoYes i dont see why not. At least on the surface technical level. I used to work at ms on xbox backcompat games and we AOT recompile PowerPC arch to x86. (Xbox 360 to Xbox one). You could likely aot recompile any arch with enough resources to fix up issues and things. One key difference is older games were fixed so no more updates. It can be a little trickier with modern games still taking updates but could be done.
- Rohansi 2y agoNot possible to fully AOT for all applications because you don't know which ones do JIT compilation to generate x86 code at runtime. Many games make use of LuaJIT, for example.
- whazor 2y agoLuaJIT would also work with ARM though, so would it be possible to swap it out?
- corsix 2y agoIndeed, LuaJIT support for Windows/Arm64 was added in https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/593 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/593, and there’s experimental out-of-tree support for Windows/Arm64EC in https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/1096 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/1096
- saidinesh5 2y agoSwapping out is possible only if there are shared libraries though. For statically linked programs is there anything that can be done?
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoInteresting - Source 2 has mobile support (not sure if it's native but I assume it is, so maybe it already has ARM support) and Source technically has mobile support but that was done by nvidia Lightspeed Studios I think. Maybe Valve has been quietly adding ARM support to their engines behind the scenes.
- 015a 2y agoI think, especially considering the news of Qualcomm talking with Intel about acquisition, or just Intel's general problems; we are in the last decade of x86.
- zamadatix 2y agoEven calling Intel x86 a loss overnight AMD is doing more than fine enough, server and consumer, for x86 to stay with a competitive presence into the 2030s even taking a dim view of the architectures future.
- ywvcbk 2y agoEven Intel isn’t doing that bad. Their revenue is still 2x or so higher than AMDs and they are still ahead in the consumer market. Their next gen mobile chips are allegedly already more power efficient than Qualcomm’s meaning that their only remaining advantage might be lower price.
- chithanh 2y agoAfter buying Intel, Qualcomm could sink x86 by simply not renewing the cross-licensing agreement with AMD. With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, Qualcomm could then ensure that going forward, the only economically viable way of running x86 code is on Snapdragon CPUs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...
- johnny22 2y agoI gotta feeling that would raise legal issues at time of sale. I don't see that happening.
- chithanh 2y agoYou would need the FTC to intervene to stop the acquisition. And currently there is a massive lobbying push by US technology companies to replace Lina Khan with someone who is more merger friendly. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/kamala-harris-donors-privately-want-ftc-s-lina-khan-sec-s-gary-gensler-removed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/kamala-ha... (non-paywall archive link: https://archive.md/PhHhU https://archive.md/PhHhU )
- snvzz 2y agoWith SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.
- pjmlp 2y agoThey are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoAre you suggesting they aren't serious about Linux unless they stop selling games without a native Linux version?
- kranke155 2y agowhich would be insanity, considering the numbers...
- pjmlp 2y agoYes
- boomboomsubban 2y agoNever happening, it'd destroy Steam instantly. Even as someone who tries to predominantly buy games with a native Linux version, it's not something I really want. If I have some desire to play a game from 2008 again, I'm glad Steam will still offer me the Windows version.
- jasonjmcghee 2y agoOn my deck, I can run native Linux games
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoHuh. I wonder if this uses https://box86.org/ https://box86.org/ or such, like proton uses wine
- ga2mer 2y agoThey use[0] FEX[1] and sponsor their development. [0] https://steamdb.info/app/3043620/history/?changeid=25321568 https://steamdb.info/app/3043620/history/?changeid=25321568 [1] https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
- modeless 2y agoIt seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.
- simooooo 2y agoIt should be called DeckHead
- unwind 2y agoBut "Blade Runner" [1]! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Deckard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Deckard
- LorenDB 2y agoAnd with Waydroid support, games designed for Quest or other Android-based headsets could run on Deckard as well.
- dagmx 2y agoImho it’s unlikely this is for natively running on a standalone headset. The overhead of translation alone would be just burning already limited compute budgets. The other games on their list are too demanding for untethered play in the wattage one would have on a face mounted device. IMHO gorilla tag here is just a red herring. IMHO this is just valve hedging the bet that ARM machines become more popular , and future steamdeck like devices might use ARM. It would make sense that they test SteamVR running with proton and tethered to a headset rather than directly connected. Imho, that’s the more straightforward explanation for this. The game is just a test bed for tethered play.
- Log_out_ 2y agoCould split it at the image generation layer? GPU work is done on the headset, sim is running on external machine.But then why use arm?
- rowanG077 2y agoThis is really nothing new. Valve has been supporting fex by paying Alyssa from asahi Linux to work on it for a while.
- bloqs 2y agoDoes this mean mac support could be possible
- johnny22 2y agocrossover already supports macs to some extent. Wine itself is gaining more and more arm64 support every few weeks.
- sylware 2y agoThey are recompiling games they do not own? That said, this would also be good news for RISC-V if they start providing builds for different ISA than x86(32bits) and x86_64.
- pentamassiv 2y agoIt's exciting that they are using Waydroid. It would be great for Linux Mobile to have a corporation fund the development so that Android apps can be used where native applications are unavailable.
- guruprasadah 2y ago> There are also some other tags such as "proton_experimental" and "proton-arm64ec-vanguard" Could this potentially, have any chance, of being a method/branch of proton able to run the Vanguard anti-cheat, i.e being capable of running Valorant? It's just a wish, but would be really nice if true.
- dncornholio 2y agoNo, not in a chance. Vanguard needs to be developed from the ground up to be able to support Linux.
- oliwarner 2y agoGreat. A native Steam client with and Box64 or FEX integrated into Proton for CPU layer translation, would open up a world of low cost Steam hardware. Not just VR, commodity gaming devices like a $100 Steam Deck, $50 HDMI dongle consoles and with both a brand new market segment to tap into.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rookderby 2y agoSince we're all just reading tea leaves, my guess is Valve is looking at a higher performance, lighter, ARM-based SteamDeck 2. They have time to develop it, so maybe they're targeting the next generation of Snapdragon X.