Apple built a DirectX 12 translation layer for Apple Silicon

[senttoschool]

Cyberpunk running on M2 Max and getting good framerates:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1435ukq
This is it boys. Apple quietly dropped dynamite on Mac AAA gaming.

 

[diamond.g]

The Xbox is not the only console out there, the original message talked about the PS5.

The PS5 isn't wildly different from the Xbox Series X. If anything I would have question about how much GNM and GNMX differ from what is available on PCs (wrt DirectX).

 

[diamond.g]

Cyberpunk running on M2 Max and getting good framerates:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1435ukq
This is it boys. Apple quietly dropped dynamite on Mac AAA gaming.

Looks CPU limited, based on some of the comments.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

@Zest28 never said they were good ports, just easy ones.

I'm not sure that the fact that consoles use x86 has made ports easier. Shaders, memory usage and multithreading have become more complex, and are the main sticking points for ports.

 

[leman]

Metal is a pain in the ass, that is what is missing.

Right, so basically anything that’s not “popular” is a pain in the ass. No wonder we can’t have good things, with thst kind of attitude. You know what’s really a pain in the ass? Vulkan. A crappy, unintuitive, error prone, extremely verbose API pushed down everyone’s throat by the GPU lobby just because it makes their job of writing drivers easier.

 

[diamond.g]

I'm not sure that the fact that consoles use x86 has made ports easier. Shaders, memory usage and multithreading have become more complex, and are the main sticking points for ports.

All of those things are readily available on PC you just have to be willing to leave folks behind that don't meet those requirements.

 

[jmho]

The PS5 isn't wildly different from the Xbox Series X. If anything I would have question about how much GNM and GNMX differ from what is available on PCs (wrt DirectX).

Yeah, modern graphics APIs are like comparing American, Canadian, British, and Australian "languages". They're all fundamentally just dialects of the same thing.

Except for Vulkan, which as Leman points out is like Glaswegian.

 

[thenewperson]

Right, so basically anything that’s not “popular” is a pain in the ass. No wonder we can’t have good things, with thst kind of attitude. You know what’s really a pain in the ass? Vulkan. A crappy, unintuitive, error prone, extremely verbose API pushed down everyone’s throat by the GPU lobby just because it makes their job of writing drivers easier.

But can you tell us how you really feel about Vulkan?

 

[leman]

But can you tell us how you really feel about Vulkan?

I‘m being polemic obviously. It just that irrational complaining any time someone tries to do things better annoy the hell out of me.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Vulkan. A crappy, unintuitive, error prone, extremely verbose API pushed down everyone’s throat by the GPU lobby just because it makes their job of writing drivers easier.

DX12 and Vulkan are very verbose, specially Vulkan. The Vulkan code is one and a half pages long.

 

[thenewperson]

I‘m being polemic obviously. It just that irrational complaining any time someone tries to do things better annoy the hell out of me.

Yeah I understand. r/macgaming especially is awful because everything done to improve the situation is discarded in favour of crying about Vulkan and gets silly.

 

[Numa_Numa_eh]

Yeah I understand. r/macgaming especially is awful because everything done to improve the situation is discarded in favour of crying about Vulkan and gets silly.

Haha. Very true. Every answer there is “this wouldn’t happen if they used Vulcan”

 

[diamond.g]

So is this porting tool is also able to translate RT? I wonder why it showed greyed out on the cyberpunk 2077 video that was uploaded.

 

[jmho]

I think Cyberpunk supports a lot of GPU / vendor specific features, so maybe they're literally enumerating GPUs instead of asking DirectX if the device supports RT.

Or it's broken / not implemented yet.

They definitely say they support it, although it's going to be incredibly slow.

 

[thenewperson]

Haha. Very true. Every answer there is “this wouldn’t happen if they used Vulcan”

Saw this morning someone had already claimed that Apple copied Codeweaver's code to implement GPK as D3D -> Vulkan -> Metal to keep the crying going on (because of course) and I closed the page. Such an unserious bunch.

 

[leman]

Yeah I understand. r/macgaming especially is awful because everything done to improve the situation is discarded in favour of crying about Vulkan and gets silly.

r/macgaming currently is busy discussing how the porting kit is actually Apple's strategy to support running Windows games on macOS directly and how amazing it is that Apple desired to roll their own Proton. I suppose one shouldn't expect more from a bunch of kids with zero attention span, but it's still frustrating that this is the community we have.

 

[leman]

BTW, what I am really impressed with is the fact they support geometry shaders. They really must have implemented a custom abstracting compiler that maps structural paradigms rather than simply translating code.

 

[diamond.g]

BTW, what I am really impressed with is the fact they support geometry shaders. They really must have implemented a custom abstracting compiler that maps structural paradigms rather than simply translating code.

Are Geo Shaders commonly used in PC space?

 

[leman]

Are Geo Shaders commonly used in PC space?

They are used occasionally, which is a shame, as they always were a crap design.

What I find very ironic about this entire story is that Apple with their "inferior Metal" implements geometry shaders on top of the mesh shading pipeline which is still virtually unused in PC games due to lack of widespread hardware support.

 

[diamond.g]

They are used occasionally, which is a shame, as they always were a crap design.

What I find very ironic about this entire story is that Apple with their "inferior Metal" implements geometry shaders on top of the mesh shading pipeline which is still virtually unused in PC games due to lack of widespread hardware support.

Yeah that is a failing of PC hardware aging. The new consoles don't make it any better either (the PS5 GPU doesn't technically support mesh shading directly, you have to use the Geo Engine).

 

[Machspeed007]

I'm against this. Apple should not care about gaming. These are serious professional tools, not toys made for 12 year olds.

I would argue that neither the professional segment has seen any significant progress lately. Sure Adobe, but Adobe has been with Apple for decades already.
What about the CAD/CAM engineering segment? Still minuscule compared to Windows unfortunately.

 

[Machspeed007]

On a tangential note, it’s super disappointing to see some of the negative takes from more prominent Mac bloggers/podcasters regarding yesterdays gaming announcements.

I think they don't take into account the succes that Linux/Proton DX12 translation layer has recently.

This a very smart move by Apple, provided that keep updating the translation layer. Steam Deck has 720p and is a success, so the hardware isn't really the problem here.
Also, support for eGPUs is a must for AAA titles. That's missing even from Apple Silicon MacPro

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I think they don't take into account the succes that Linux/Proton DX12 translation layer has recently.

The translation layer used by Apple is much more complex, and imposes a greater performance penalty than Linux.

NVIDIA Gaming/GPU Performance: Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Benchmarks - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

 

[nathansz]

CodeWeavers says that apple is using crossover. They sent an email about it.

 

[Machspeed007]

The translation layer used by Apple is much more complex, and imposes a greater performance penalty than Linux.

View attachment 2214578

NVIDIA Gaming/GPU Performance: Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Benchmarks - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

I'm sure that they will improve it.
Wine/Proton had poor performance as well, in the beginning.