Gaming on El Capitan

[DJJazzyJeff]

Installed El Cap on mid-2012 Macbook Air and everything is working great except gaming! I tried Cities:Skylines on El Cap but I'm only getting 10 fps, where with the same setting on Yosemite I was getting 17 fps. The fps on Yosemite weren't amazing but I thought they would improve a little on El Cap.

Anyone else notice any changes in games?

 

[AlanShutko]

This is the first developer preview, on a release where Apple is doing substantial work to the rendering APIs. Right now, performance is certainly not where it will be once the final build is released to the public. Prerelease builds usually have additional debugging code built in which can actually reduce performance.

So basically, don't freak out now. You can start tentatively freaking out around dp6.

 

[DJJazzyJeff]

Lol sounds good. I didn't know if El Cap would actually increase gaming performance through software. Thanks!

 

[keviig]

Lol sounds good. I didn't know if El Cap would actually increase gaming performance through software. Thanks!

It will once (if) game developers implement support for Metal.

 

[Rekan_]

Wait till the developers update their game with Metal support. Then (hopefully) it'll be amazing.

 

[Noble Actual]

Lol sounds good. I didn't know if El Cap would actually increase gaming performance through software. Thanks!

Only if the developers support it. Valve is notorious for not doing it.

 

[MikhailT]

Only if the developers support it. Valve is notorious for not doing it.

They are? Can you explain or direct me to their posts saying they'd never support Metal? I find it hard to believe considering they've already announced they'll be supporting Vulkan API for the Source2 engine. While Vulkan/Metal are not the same, they're almost identical and Valve worked with Apple a few times in the past. I'd imagine Apple will try to do their magic to convince Valve to include Metal support.

 

[jeanlain]

Valve haven't discussed Metal, AFAIK, and I'd be surprised if they support it. They're all about Vulkan and Linux now. For those who don't support Vulkan, Source 2 will provide openGL. Also, Valve don't do iOS games, so I'm not sure they care much about Metal.
Their openGL ports were not very good before they ported Source to Linux, and consisted in some sort of wrapper for OS X. You just need to look at Steam to realize they're not interested in supported OS-specific APIs (except DirectX).

 

[Noble Actual]

They are? Can you explain or direct me to their posts saying they'd never support Metal? I find it hard to believe considering they've already announced they'll be supporting Vulkan API for the Source2 engine. While Vulkan/Metal are not the same, they're almost identical and Valve worked with Apple a few times in the past. I'd imagine Apple will try to do their magic to convince Valve to include Metal support.

Just look at the Steam interface for OS X. They haven't even updated to the new design that Yosemite brought. Then you google Valve actually 'trying' to improve Mac gaming experience and you get this...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=valve not optimized for mac

Valve's income and user base has never been because of Mac gaming so in the end it kinda makes sense that they haven't done anything to improve the experience.

Also your post made me laugh a bit. Just because Vulcan might be 'similar' does not mean anything. That's like saying because Swift 2 went open source...its now like this other language. I also wouldn't call Valve and Apple being in a relationship, when was the last time they worked on something together? Steam for Mac? Did Apple help Valve with the Steam Machine? In reality, Valve cares about PC gaming and Apple cares about making hardware and software for people to use. Mac gaming is not something they really work together on so in the end, Apple has no leverage on Valve. In fact, Valve probably has the leverage on Apple if Apple ever wanted to get serious about gaming.

Also realize...they are two competing APIs. Why the hell would Valve bow down and kiss Apple and just throw away their own?

For now, Vulkan appears to be a no-show on Mac OS X. That’s a bit surprising, given Apple’s membership in the Khronos Group, and it implies the Cupertino company would rather double down on its own custom API rather than supporting the low-level APIs of a different organization. This, in turn, could damage any push to create a truly universal graphics API.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...al-api-to-os-x-10-11-kicks-vulkan-to-the-curb

Sums it up perfectly.

 

[ErikGrim]

They haven't even updated Steam with retina graphics yet. I don't expect them to update to a Yosemite look let alone support Metal for the next decade or so.

 

[MikhailT]

Just look at the Steam interface for OS X. They haven't even updated to the new design that Yosemite brought. Then you google Valve actually 'trying' to improve Mac gaming experience and you get this...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=valve not optimized for mac

Valve's income and user base has never been because of Mac gaming so in the end it kinda makes sense that they haven't done anything to improve the experience.

Also your post made me laugh a bit. Just because Vulcan might be 'similar' does not mean anything. That's like saying because Swift 2 went open source...its now like this other language. I also wouldn't call Valve and Apple being in a relationship, when was the last time they worked on something together? Steam for Mac? Did Apple help Valve with the Steam Machine? In reality, Valve cares about PC gaming and Apple cares about making hardware and software for people to use. Mac gaming is not something they really work together on so in the end, Apple has no leverage on Valve. In fact, Valve probably has the leverage on Apple if Apple ever wanted to get serious about gaming.

Also realize...they are two competing APIs. Why the hell would Valve bow down and kiss Apple and just throw away their own?



Sums it up perfectly.

I don't know what you're talking about, you seem to be on a separate page than me. You're basing a few assumptions on the fact that Valve didn't update their stuff on OS X and some problems with webkit, neither of which has anything to do with graphic APIs support in their game engines, which is what I was talking about.

I thought you said they're famous for not including other APIs which is clearly not correct as Valve's Source engine has Direct3D/OpenGL suppport and soon Vulkan in Source 2 engine. Three different APIs in the same game engine. Valve wants developers to use their engine, the more games using their engine, the better.

Valve gives out Source engine for free now, so income is not factored in as far as I can tell.

If Apple gets serious with gaming and can freaking include better GPUs, having Metal API in Source 2 engine would really help. Both Vulkan and Metal are low level APIs that simplify a lot of the development. For now, they already have support from many of the big video game engine companies: Epic, Unity and EA.

 

[AlanShutko]

Valve's income and user base has never been because of Mac gaming so in the end it kinda makes sense that they haven't done anything to improve the experience.

Valve's income isn't really based on gaming anymore. When was the last time they released something new?

 

[Noble Actual]

I don't know what you're talking about, you seem to be on a separate page than me. You're basing a few assumptions on the fact that Valve didn't update their stuff on OS X and some problems with webkit, neither of which has anything to do with graphic APIs support in their game engines, which is what I was talking about.

I thought you said they're famous for not including other APIs which is clearly not correct as Valve's Source engine has Direct3D/OpenGL suppport and soon Vulkan in Source 2 engine. Three different APIs in the same game engine. Valve wants developers to use their engine, the more games using their engine, the better.

Valve gives out Source engine for free now, so income is not factored in as far as I can tell.

If Apple gets serious with gaming and can freaking include better GPUs, having Metal API in Source 2 engine would really help. Both Vulkan and Metal are low level APIs that simplify a lot of the development. For now, they already have support from many of the big video game engine companies: Epic, Unity and EA.

If they can't even update Steam for OS X, there's no way in hell they'll start supporting new APIs and stuff.

Don't know where you got the idea that I said something about them being famous for something. I reread the thread and it seemed like you in fact didn't know what I was talking about. One guy was surprised that gaming performance could be increased through El Cap. I said it could, but that it depended on developers (to implement it). Then I said Valve was notorious for not doing that.

Valve's income comes from...literally making a market where people sell weapons skins and crates. Guess where the vast majority of the people that play and conduct trade are on? Its PC...not Mac.

Apple won't get serious about gaming and they're so far behind it doesn't really make sense for them to play catch up on something they're not good at. Look at Game Center...its a joke. For the record, EA wasn't listed as a supporter of Metal during the keynote. Epic and Blizzard (Unity is an engine btw) were along with other non-gaming developers like Adobe but they've always been somewhat better with Apple. Unreal Engine has been showed off multiple times in Apple keynotes on iPhones and Blizzard has Hearthstone recently.

Valve on the other hand, really hasn't done anything for gaming on the Mac. That's just a fact and I don't really blame them.

So none of the things you said are really anything new....

 

[Noble Actual]

Valve's income isn't really based on gaming anymore. When was the last time they released something new?

Last time I checked CSGO crates and TF2 hats are still part of their games. Yes they don't make games anymore, but that doesn't mean they don't make money off the games they already made. Dota 2, CSGO, TF2, etc. are cash cows.

 

[jeanlain]

One thing to consider though is that Source 1 was barely used outside of Valve, but they want to set Source 2 as a competitor to Unreal, Unity, etc. At least they implied it (their PR department is completely broken. They make some bold announcements from time to time without actually showing the interesting stuff).
Anyway, if they're serious about source 2 and want to compete with the big boys, they should consider supporting Metal.

 

[jeanlain]

Just look at the Steam interface for OS X. They haven't even updated to the new design that Yosemite brought.

Heck, they haven't even adopted the design of Lion. Traffic light buttons have the Snow Leopard look.