Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[GrumpyCoder]

Do we know if RE for Mac requires Metal 3? They made it sound like the game won’t run at the resolutions mentioned without the upscaler but maybe I am misunderstanding what was said.

Requiring in what way? To run the release or from a technical perspective?
On Windows it technically doesn't require DX12 and runs fine in DX11 if you get around the version check. Some people at a security hackathon had it running with even older versions of DX, but with glitches/crashes. From a technical point of view, there's nothing in RE that should require Metal 3. But the Capcom/Apple financial agreement was done to boost Metal 3 press.

 

[diamond.g]

Requiring in what way? To run the release or from a technical perspective?
On Windows it technically doesn't require DX12 and runs fine in DX11 if you get around the version check. Some people at a security hackathon had it running with even older versions of DX, but with glitches/crashes. From a technical point of view, there's nothing in RE that should require Metal 3. But the Capcom/Apple financial agreement was done to boost Metal 3 press.

The verbiage seemed to imply that MetalFX is required to get decent frames at the resolutions take about, which, unless I am mistaken will need Metal 3 right?


And another question I have is how close is MetalFX to FSR 2.0?

 

[GrumpyCoder]

The verbiage seemed to imply that MetalFX is required to get decent frames at the resolutions take about, which, unless I am mistaken will need Metal 3 right?

From what I've seen, yes. You can always throw more hardware at it at which point MetalFX becomes obsolete, but that would require Ultra to work really well. One could still optimize it and Apple is supporting this effort for now with Capcom, so we'll see. It's also not what's really on their mind right now, they want the game on "slow" hardware like the M2. The Japanese market is a little special when it comes to games and hardware (Neo Geo, Marty FM Towns, etc.), so the potential endgame for Japan is more targeted towards a M2 equipped system that can easily be hooked up to a TV to play a game. This does make sense, I doubt it will jump over to the NA and european market though. Time will tell, but it has to work fast before Capcom is following Nintendo.

And another question I have is how close is MetalFX to FSR 2.0?

Not sure, have not compared. I've been mostly in the DLSS camp. I'll have to dig into MetalFX later this year for a project when I'll have to do more comparisons.

 

[mi7chy]

And another question I have is how close is MetalFX to FSR 2.0?

FSR 2.0 is open source so they can clone it and call it whatever they want like MetalFX. Both FSR 2.0 and MetalFX are spatial upscaling vs DLSS temporal upscaling.

There's been an explosion of adding homebrew FSR 2.0 mod to DLSS games. It's doubled my fps on Metro Exodus at 4K FSR 2.0 quality.

 

[JordanNZ]

Both FSR 2.0 and MetalFX are spatial upscaling vs DLSS temporal upscaling.

Oh Mi7chy.

MetalFX is both.

MetalFX | Apple Developer Documentation

Boost your Metal app’s performance by upscaling lower-resolution content to save GPU time.

developer.apple.com

“MetalFX gives you two different ways to upscale your input renderings:

• Temporal antialiased upscaling
• Spatial upscaling”

 

[mi7chy]

It's just marketing material at this point. We'll be the judge of it whenever it materializes. Could be something or nothing like fake MSAA (8x). Definitely needs upscaling though since integrated graphics under performs.

 

[JordanNZ]

It's just marketing material at this point. We'll be the judge of it whenever it materializes. Could be something or nothing like fake MSAA (8x). Definitely needs upscaling though since integrated graphics under performs.

Mate. It’s developer documentation.
This isn’t marketing. It’s all explained there.

It’s nothing like MSAA. It’s exactly as it’s described. And the broken MSAA is a bug in AC, not with Metal/drivers.

 

[diamond.g]

Yeah FSR 2.0 is Temporal upscaling just like DLSS, FSR 1/RSR is spatial upscaling. I thought that was common knowledge.

 

[Homy]

Really! I'm going to pick just one. How exactly does Tomb Raider look so good? The one thing that looks good is wet surface/skin. The rest is rather meh, look at the dry skin or surfaces, look at hair and hair physics. Trees, bushes, etc. that all looks rather bad. What we get with Tomb Raider is what we get with many games, using psychology. Draw attention to one thing that looks good and away from anything that doesn't look good. That's not really new and done all the time, people went nuts when God of War 3 came out and said how good it looks. They only thing that looked really good was lighting with different colors and the powerup orbs flying around illuminating everything. The rest was rather poor. We've seen similar tricks used in games like Uncharted because the PS3 was very difficult to program for and had severe shortcomings for specific features. But it's not even exclusive to games, it's used in movies all the time as well, Spielberg, JJ.Abrams, etc.

Awards are just that, awards. What they actually mean is usually not understood by people who never received some or are not involved in the industry. I've won my share of awards, including Apple and can say "design" doesn't always mean what the name suggests. Then you have the issue of nomination, sometimes you have to pick the lesser of the evils when only bad stuff is nominated. Then you might have financial interest in awards... I've won awards for work I've not been proud off, ashamed even. Yet it won an award because I knew people in the commitee and they wanted to work with me, so they tried to do me a favour. Same for political reasons. We've seen academy awards handing out awards to afro americans or female artist not because of performance, but as a statement for BLM, MeToo or similar social movements.

So what does an award for Texturing actually mean? That someone sat down with Photoshop and made some nice textures. Doesn't say anything about the game. One could take a photo and use it as a texture... there's the award for most photorealistic texture.

What does an award in Game Design actually mean? Could be level design alone? Could it be the setting (in Earth, moon, etc.)? These awards need to be understood to interpret correctly.

I guess we can now add ”Awards mean nothing” to your list of meaningless things along with ”Every progress Apple makes means nothing” and ”Every port Feral makes means nothing”. You certainly try hard to depreciate everyone else’s work by generalizing to make your opinion and work sound more legit. Not to mention calling your opponents flat-earthers and Mac-fanbois. That really helps your credibility.

Well, you’re fully entitled to your opinion about the cheap graphics in AAA games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus and that being one reason for porting them to Mac but that’s just your opinion. I think I trust my own judgment and those awards given by several different experts in the gaming industry more than one person’s generalized opinion on MR. Care to give some examples of games you do think have better graphics in comparison from the same years? Would be interesting to see examples of your ”high” standards.

By the way I didn’t mention Metro Exodus in my award list before since it’s not a Feral port but for those others interested in knowing Metro Exodus also was nominated for several awards for its graphics among other things. It was nominated for ”Best Visual Art” and ”Best Visual Design” in 2019 and ”Graphics, Technical” in 2020. It was also nominated for ”Outstanding Technical Achievement” in 2020 at D.I.C.E Awards founded by AIAS (Academy of Interactive Art & Science) which is guested by some of the most known keynote speakers in the game and film industry (Bethesda, Microsoft, Blizzard, Riot Games, Activision, Valve, Hideo Kojima, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo Del Toro and more). It also got a BAFTA nomination for ”Technical Achievement” the same year.

 

[Homy]

Mate. It’s developer documentation.
This isn’t marketing. It’s all explained there.

It’s nothing like MSAA. It’s exactly as it’s described. And the broken MSAA is a bug in AC, not with Metal/drivers.

Metal 3 seems to offer the best solution with both options being eligible. Unfortunately Apple won't be able to release Ventura with Metal 3 until judges at discussion forums give their approval. Speaking of underperforming HP tried to make "The World's Most Powerful Mini Workstation" with Nvidia RTX A2000 at almost $5000. See how it performs against a M1 Ultra. I guess power efficiency counts after all.

 

[Irishman]

It's just marketing material at this point. We'll be the judge of it whenever it materializes. Could be something or nothing like fake MSAA (8x). Definitely needs upscaling though since integrated graphics under performs.

Lol!! So, why do discrete graphics benefit from it?!?

Apple’s not in a situation where their SoC could be called weak or under performing.

Right?

 

[Colstan]

Apple’s not in a situation where their SoC could be called weak or under performing.

HP attempted to build a "Mac Studio Killer", and even Linus himself says that they failed miserably. The performance/watt of Apple Silicon is unrivaled.

"As configured, it simply shouldn't exist."

 

[diamond.g]

HP attempted to build a "Mac Studio Killer", and even Linus himself says that they failed miserably. The performance/watt of Apple Silicon is unrivaled.

"As configured, it simply shouldn't exist."

I am not sure why they put a 12900K in a thermally limited case like they did. It was dumb for sure.

 

[ipponrg]

I guess we can now add ”Awards mean nothing” to your list of meaningless things along with ”Every progress Apple makes means nothing” and ”Every port Feral makes means nothing”. You certainly try hard to depreciate everyone else’s work by generalizing to make your opinion and work sound more legit. Not to mention calling your opponents flat-earthers and Mac-fanbois. That really helps your credibility.

Well, you’re fully entitled to your opinion about the cheap graphics in AAA games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus and that being one reason for porting them to Mac but that’s just your opinion. I think I trust my own judgment and those awards given by several different experts in the gaming industry more than one person’s generalized opinion on MR. Care to give some examples of games you do think have better graphics in comparison from the same years? Would be interesting to see examples of your ”high” standards.

By the way I didn’t mention Metro Exodus in my award list before since it’s not a Feral port but for those others interested in knowing Metro Exodus also was nominated for several awards for its graphics among other things. It was nominated for ”Best Visual Art” and ”Best Visual Design” in 2019 and ”Graphics, Technical” in 2020. It was also nominated for ”Outstanding Technical Achievement” in 2020 at D.I.C.E Awards founded by AIAS (Academy of Interactive Art & Science) which is guested by some of the most known keynote speakers in the game and film industry (Bethesda, Microsoft, Blizzard, Riot Games, Activision, Valve, Hideo Kojima, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo Del Toro and more). It also got a BAFTA nomination for ”Technical Achievement” the same year.

I suppose this is better than nothing.

I’ve always felt every progress we see Apple make is that they are just trying to catch up with select ports that most don’t care about. Until the day they are legitimately same day deliverable as PC, i don’t think it has much meaning

 

[diamond.g]

I suppose this is better than nothing.

I’ve always felt every progress we see Apple make is that they are just trying to catch up with select ports that most don’t care about. Until the day they are legitimately same day deliverable as PC, i don’t think it has much meaning

A good example will be the sports ball games (in this case basketball). macOS will probably end up getting the iOS up-port instead of the PC equivalent...

 

[Yskas]

So I bought a Mac mini M1, lovely hardware, extremely power efficient etc, but my God, the overall gaming support on this platform is depressing. It's like being in the stone age compared to platforms like Windows and Linux.

The closest you can get to actual proper gaming support is some random janky third party paid-for Lutris clone.

Has gaming been completely dumped as a priority by Apple or something?

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system, what the hell, man...

 

[millerj123]

So I bought a Mac mini M1, lovely hardware, extremely power efficient etc, but my God, the overall gaming support on this platform is depressing. It's like being in the stone age compared to platforms like Windows and Linux.

The closest you can get to actual proper gaming support is some random janky third party paid-for Lutris clone.

Has gaming been completely dumped as a priority by Apple or something?

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system, what the hell, man...

Yeah, so disappointed mine doesn't do games.

 

[Yskas]

Yeah, so disappointed mine doesn't do games.

Blows my mind because you can tell this little cpu wants to go to the races but the Apple OS nerds absolutely nerfed the thing to death gaming wise!

 

[XboxEvolved]

So I bought a Mac mini M1, lovely hardware, extremely power efficient etc, but my God, the overall gaming support on this platform is depressing. It's like being in the stone age compared to platforms like Windows and Linux.

The closest you can get to actual proper gaming support is some random janky third party paid-for Lutris clone.

Has gaming been completely dumped as a priority by Apple or something?

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system, what the hell, man...

Yeah this definitely is annoying, its much worse than it was even on Intel Macs and it irks me when people say "Oh well you don't buy Macs to game" thats the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Oh you can get some modern games running on your Mac at average settings at around 30-40 FPS, but get ready to do all kinds of emulation to get it to work.

 

[Slartibart]

if only there would be a way to get some sincere information before buying something… dunno know… personally I would call it “google”… or something… on the other hand, we are just in 2022… hopefully this “internet” at least will develop into something useful…. even if only for such a scenario the OP finds themselves in…

 

[unrigestered]

good thing i don't game on PC, so i don't really care.
But it was always known that Macs are not the best address when it comes to gaming.

(Macs to me are PCs too, heresy i know 🤡)

 

[Yskas]

Yeah this definitely is annoying, its much worse than it was even on Intel Macs and it irks me when people say "Oh well you don't buy Macs to game" thats the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Oh you can get some modern games running on your Mac at average settings at around 30-40 FPS, but get ready to do all kinds of emulation to get it to work.

Yes the jank is unacceptable for a commercial product, I'm going to Google for ARM based Pop OS or Ubuntu, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

(EXTREMELY WELL PAID) Apple OS team dropping the ball on M1, my God.

 

[Slartibart]

Yes the jank is unacceptable for a commercial product, I'm going to Google for ARM based Pop OS or Ubuntu, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

(EXTREMELY WELL PAID) Apple OS team dropping the ball on M1, my God.

Welcome to MR, I see you are new here. Because you seem to use a Mac and while knowledgeable - deducing from your balanced comment- you might be not aware of the spelling checker MacOS provides. If you on an iDevice - excuse my foolhardy assumption, and please refer to this document. You. Are. Welcome.

 

[MisterSavage]

As a gamer it's really frustrating. Everyone once in a while when the Epic Games Store has their weekly freebie the Mac will be a supported platform for that game but it doesn't feel often.

 

[ADGrant]

Yes the jank is unacceptable for a commercial product, I'm going to Google for ARM based Pop OS or Ubuntu, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

(EXTREMELY WELL PAID) Apple OS team dropping the ball on M1, my God.

What jank are you referring to? Are you expecting the Apple OS team to develop games for MacOS?