Play Mac OSX Games on Apple TV
If you want to air play games you are going to have to do some things to get it to work properly and you can get good results.
1. The better the mac is the better it will be able to handle the ability to push two monitors, unless you can disable one, mirroring games doesn't always work properly better to extend if possible.
2. Which game you are playing matters, if you are going to play call of duty you are going to need a mac that can play this game at a high level if you can barley run it on you mac it will not work. Example if you can run call of duty at 35 fps you will probably get 20-25 max.
3. you must have a complete Ethernet wired setup from the computer to the apple tv, its the only way you can reduce latency it doesn't matter how fast you can transfer files from your computer over wifi or how fast your movies load up on the apple tv, an ac router will not help you all that matters is latency. Because the most the apple tv really needs to sustain a 1080p feed that is converted from the Intel on board decoder is going to be around 15-20 mbps at a max of 60fps. bandwidth is totaly a non issue bandwidth wise in this certain scenario. that is also why i believe is the reason why the apple tv is only 10/100 and not gigabit
one disadvantage to the apple tv is there is no way, that i have found to test latency the result from pinging the apple tv will be incorrect becouse tcp packets have last priority if someone has found a way to get the audio/video service latency please let me know. So the only way is to use good networking tricks and go blind.
4. i would recommend cat 6 cables because cat 5 or 5e may be subtable to interference even thou pepole might say there is no advantage. When it come to trying to play game in a minimum lag environment basically you will try and get every little ms you can get and your goal is to minimize lag below 50 ms anything bellow 50 should not be noticeable.
5. I would also recommend that people use static ips for all there devices this will help greatly.
6. Disabling DHCP will reduce chatter on the network.
7. I would recommend disabling any unused services on the network there for reducing noise
8. Also pointing the apple tv dns directly to your isp dns will help, this has nothing to do with you internal network but for some reason if the apple tv needs to ask the router to translate the dns it slows down the apple tv. and if for some reason if you connection to dns is somewhat flakey for what ever reason the apple tv will go crazy.
9. Make sure your tv is set to gaming mode if your tv does not have a gaming mode then make sure any unessarly post processing are disables example Motionblur, super resolution dynamic contrast. this will make a huge difference this will probably shave at lease 20ms.
10. by this time if you did all these things you should notice that its totally playable and it will be like a console even fast action games like batman arkham, and call of duty should be playable.
If this is still not enough and you feel you need more you can do these things and see if it helps.
11. I would usually recommend not to mirror but rather extend the monitor if possible and play the game on the tv you want. you can also get an app like disable monitor to disable one monitor this will help your gpu on slower macs, especially if you are only using the intel gpu.
12. Usually if possible, its a good idea to enable anti-aliasing this will help the look of the frames being outputed to apple tv. but only if your videocard can handle it.
13. Make sure your controller is not giving out any unnecessary lag apple mouse and keyboard sometimes have lag issues.
I have done all the things above on my imac and i can play games pretty much like i am at the monitor, and it works great. I know it seems like alot but it should cost you anything but a bit time, and if its something you really want you will be pleased with the results and convenience afterwards.
