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The final blow for real gaming on the Mac, or the beginning of a new era?
- Thread starter Frankied22
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Ah. And since LoL is a game from 2009 it doesn't need any of the fancy stuff Metal (and Vulkan) provides.
Well, "fancy stuff" in this context is better, more predictable performance and more stability. That's always good to have
I can’t imagine a game this old runs under 60 FPS with everything on highest with existing hardware. Over 60 FPS isn’t helpful since no Macs have high refresh displays to take advantage of it...Well, "fancy stuff" in this context is better, more predictable performance and more stability. That's always good to have
macOS 11.0 has a very old (Version 4.1 at best) and depreciated version of OpenGL OpenGL is a zombie methods of doing graphic on a Mac.
Well, I wouldn't be so doom and gloom about it. From my (very) limited understanding, Apple tries to abstract away the low-level stuff in their dev environment. I think that while some things won't transfer over, it won't be any more dire than the current situation for Mac gaming. I really don't see the ASi move changing anything, there's so little that relies on low-level code anymore.
Actually there's plenty of reason high FPS is beneficial even without high refresh displays! Since a lot of engines tie game logic to frames, having a higher FPS means that inputs are read faster and other in-game logic (such as AI routines, loading/unloading, etc.) are completed faster as well. Even if the frames are only displayed at 60fps, you can still move the mouse or press keys, etc. and the input won't be subject to the frame displayed on screen.
That's a tough one. Normally I'd say "yes, there's a point that high-end computers have a separate GPU and CPU," but Apple may likely see far more benefit from making a monster APU, though I'm not sure how.
Well there is a good reason to have the GPU on the CPU - the speed the two can "talk" to each other. With them on the same chip there is no bus that they have to go through to communicate with each other.
IMHO the best thing would to look outside the AAA arena. Want a good version of Dungeon Keeper for the Mac? There is War for the Overworld. Want a replacement for Simcity? City Skylines (hopefully they recode it so it doesn't stop with 10.14) way "hi."
I imagine if you took the time you would find something close to what your kids want on Steam though their search function could stand for some improvement.
But what if I want a game like Control, Assassins Creed Oddessey, Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Ashes of the Singularity? What are the not-AAA Apple alternatives?
Yeah, I know... Here's to hoping, if there is an exclusive, it comes to the PS5 first...? I can play WoW on an Apple silicon Mac & GTA:VI on the PS5...!
Were did you get information about wow coming to Apple silicon Mac? I can’t find anything on the internet.
No Apple partner is allowed to talk about unreleased products.
Steam has a similar to option but it tends toward AAA games. Alternativeto is a little more robust but it is dependent on others for its database.
For Control there is the free option Slender: The Eight Pages.
Assassins Creed Oddessey at best has OpenMW and that still needs Morrowin to really be useful.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint produces several including Urban Combat and TrueCombat The old standby Team Fortress 2 is there too.
Ashes of the Singularity's comments on Steam show the developers are lazy as they go the "use bootcamp" route for the reason they can't be bothered to use either Metal or MoltenVK (which is open source) as an intermediator to do the translating for them.
As I said Steam's search function could use a little work in this regard as I has to use Alternativeto to find these.
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I think this is people speculating based on the fact that WoW is 64-bit clean and already runs on Metal (OpenGL support died several years ago). Unless Blizzard took shortcuts they shouldn't have recoiling it to run natively on ARM shouldn't be that much of a hassle.
Speaking as someone who used to play a lot of TF2, and loved the game, Valve is not gonna put one iota of effort into TF2. TF2 is incompatible with Catalina, and I believe that hell will freeze over before Valve makes any of their old properties compatible with Apple Silicon.
It's not like you'd wanna play TF2 anyway, it runs like garbage because Valve's only "contribution" to the game for years has been adding more lootboxes with artstyle-breaking cosmetics. Ones that they didn't even make, by the way.
I'd be surprised if Valve even updates Steam to work on Apple Silicon to tell you the truth, they're just too inept or lazy.
No, That is what Alternativeto was giving me :-( As I said it is dependent on others for its database and as a result there are GIGO moments.
Any comment from Blizzard at all? I'm torn between getting a new Radeon or a 3080... I run a 3440x1440 monitor
Nothing official. Though on the WoW Forums, some folk mentioned that the Alpha build appear to have preliminary support for the ARM based CPU's.
I'm not sure Blizzard can be considered a key partner anymore. Yes, they have ported WoW (as part as continuing support I suppose), but they haven't ported Overwatch and haven't announced any plan to do so, pretexting that Macs lack the technology (even though the game runs on the Switch). They've removed Metal support form SCII a while ago instead of fixing issues.