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Another Mac port gets cancelled due to Apple's poor graphics support

C

Cougarcat

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 19, 2003
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From Feral's Facebook page:

"While our aim was to bring F1 2015 to Mac, there were complications with the OS that put a spanner in the works. We didn't want you to end up with a game that doesn't handle well, so F1 2015 will not be appearing on OSX. However, we do have some fast developing plans for racing on the Mac that we think you’ll enjoy. Stay tuned (up)."
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This almost certainly has to do with the terrible state of Apple's graphics support––the same reason Blizzard gave for Overwatch not coming to the Mac. Feral also had to recently cancel Arkham Knight, but the port was also a mess on the PC side, so it might not have been OS X's fault.

Unless 10.12 delivers, these problems are only going to accelerate as we get further into this console generation. Here's to hoping Apple has nice Vulkan and Metal 2.0 announcements for WWDC.
 
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Cougarcat said:
From Feral's Facebook page:



This almost certainly has to do with the terrible state of Apple's graphics support––the same reason Blizzard gave for Overwatch not coming to the Mac. Feral also had to recently cancel Arkham Knight, but the port was also a mess on the PC side, so it might not have been OS X's fault.
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Arkham Knight was great after the patch. The issue was that they released the game too early.

I also think Vulkan will be ignored for a while in favour of Metal. Apple didn't even update OpenGL for ages.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Arkham Knight was great after the patch. The issue was that they released the game too early.

I also think Vulkan will be ignored for a while in favour of Metal. Apple didn't even update OpenGL for ages.
Click to expand...

You are probably right. I just think it would be valuable for Apple to have a modern graphics API for OS X that is cross platform, in addition to Metal. Talos Principle recently got a Vulkan update for Linux/Windows. I could see them not bothering with a Metal update for just one platform, but if OS X were to have Vulkan support, the work would largely be already done for them.

Apple can push Metal on iOS because of its popularity, but it doesn't have the luxury on the Mac.
 
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At the very least, they are promising something in the future.

But if you're even remotely serious about gaming, a Mac will always be a compromise, even if you dual-boot into Windows.
 
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SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Arkham Knight was great after the patch. The issue was that they released the game too early.

I also think Vulkan will be ignored for a while in favour of Metal. Apple didn't even update OpenGL for ages.
Click to expand...

Arkham Knight has still not been fixed on PC and it was abandoned by WB games. Can you get it to run, yes, can you get it to run well, no. Even at its best it misses countless gmx effects which are on the console versions and the frame rate is all over the place, and that's on my sons 4ghz i7 and GTX 980 Ti gaming rig.

He was fortunate enough to get a refund and ended up playing it on my PS4.
 
Cougarcat said:
Here's to hoping Apple has nice Vulkan and Metal 2.0 announcements for WWDC.
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Um Apple has barely supported Metal, let alone wanting them to support Vulkan and some elusive Metal 2.0. Metal 1.0 is that freaky Uncle from your family reunion nobody wants to be associated with. It lacks many shaders and vectors that're integrated in most top games that we'll see more and more game company simply quit releasing games for OS X soon enough. I remember Metal being boasted as a way to bridge between PC and Macs. So far, that bridge has become even more broken than ever.


Cougarcat said:
You are probably right. I just think it would be valuable for Apple to have a modern graphics API for OS X that is cross platform, in addition to Metal. Talos Principle recently got a Vulkan update for Linux/Windows. I could see them not bothering with a Metal update for just one platform, but if OS X were to have Vulkan support, the work would largely be already done for them.

Apple can push Metal on iOS because of its popularity, but it doesn't have the luxury on the Mac.
Click to expand...


Apple would beg to differ just how valuable it'd be to support modern graphic APIs outside their lovechild that is iOS, which is to say they don't support most APIs including their own. It's silly imo.



Paulk said:
Is this true of Retina? Mine has excellent graphics.
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100% guaranteed if you were to play on a top end pc machine, you'd see instantly just how vastly different the graphics in gaming is.
 
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MacAlien said:
Um Apple has barely supported Metal, let alone wanting them to support Vulkan and some elusive Metal 2.0. Metal 1.0 is that freaky Uncle from your family reunion nobody wants to be associated with. It lacks many shaders and vectors that're integrated in most top games that we'll see more and more game company simply quit releasing games for OS X soon enough. I remember Metal being boasted as a way to bridge between PC and Macs. So far, that bridge has become even more broken than ever.
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You're confusing 'support' with 'features'.
It's almost certain Apple will add features to Metal.

I've also never heard of Metal being promoted as a way to 'bridge between pc and macs'.
 
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I think what is going to happen over time is that Metal development will bring it up to snuff with other leading graphics APIs for desktop computers and at that time the situation will return to what is has been roughly with OpenGL except that it should ultimately wind up being better if they can attain feature parity or close at some point with DirectX in particular. Personally, I don't think Vulkan is going to wind up being all that relevant over the long haul other than as a successor which replaces OpenGL. I think its importance rides on adoption of SteamOS/Steamboxes along with Linux and I don't see a bright future there either. The major publishers have shown no real interest in supporting SteamOS and why would they when Windows development with DirectX already gives them one easier port in either direction with the XBox One?

I think the issues with porting to OS X for some AAA titles may get worse before they get better but then it will turn around and things just may wind up better, not worse than they were up to this point.

As far as Mac gaming goes I think the bigger concern is the hardware coming up not the software but that's a whole topic unto itself.

Those are just my thoughts and I am no fortune teller but that's how it looks to me currently.
 
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IMO, they should have abandoned OpenGL after they had a Metal version at least on par with it. Losing market's faith is not good, and it is difficult to win it back, even if/when they release a full-featured Metal API.

Instead of the above, in El.Cap. they "froze" the - already old from the yosemite era - OpenGL in the same old version, and released Metal that cannot fully stand in today's game standards. Therefore, abandoning the platform (from a dev's point of view) seems more and more probable. What can we say ? Bad decisions are bad.
 
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Guys, what you need to read about is this: Shader Model 5.0 and 6.0. HLSL, GLSL, Direct3D12, Mantle, Vulkan, DirectX12.

Mantle is low-level API, that had become a functional base for most of current APIs. Vulkan is Mantle + GLSL. DirectX is Mantle + Direct3D12/HLSL.

HLSL has become lately completely Open Source.

All of this has been developed with VR in mind. Games for VR will use DirectX 12 and Vulkan. If they want to be part of VR revolution, they have to use industry standards. And those are the ones that have been described in this post.

For Apple would be enough if they would add HLSL/Direct3D12 to the Metal. Nothing more is required here.
 
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hi i been reading mac rumors for a long time , i always wanted to register so i can write but my english is not 100% perfect , anyway i decided this is the right time , i just want to share this , i discovered this like a month ago , i just want to hear what you guys think of this

https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/

i understand is still under development but i think there is hope
 
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MacAlien said:
100% guaranteed if you were to play on a top end pc machine, you'd see instantly just how vastly different the graphics in gaming is.
Click to expand...

The M370X in the MacBook Pro is at the low end of mid-range mobile graphics cards. The Retina iMac's M395X is inferior to the GeForce GTX 970M. I replaced my MacBook Pro with a gaming notebook that has a GTX 980M, and I'm amazed at what I've been missing.

As it seems likely that Apple with stick with AMD for its GPUs, especially since their OpenCL and professional application performance far exceeds that of non-Quadro NVIDIA chips, I have to say that the company's Polaris (aka M400) line looks promising. As usual, it will be up to Apple to make sure the hardware can be exploited in OS X, but for that I am not hopeful.
 
Elite Dangerous: Horizons is another one. The initial version supported Mac, but subsequent seasons are PC only (and soon, Xbox One) due to the lack of Compute Shaders in OpenGL on OSX. Add to that no TrackIR support, no Oculus support..

It's a real pity, I've never bought anything but Macs all my life (and been an Apple intern, employee, contractor, tester, developer, even had Apple as a client...) but my next machine will be a PC. I love the Mac (and will keep an MBP for my work machine) but whatever Apple's direction is, it's away from gaming and away from mine. :(
 
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iamtheonlyone4ever said:
this is exactly why i have a 5,000 dollar hackintosh
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Well, so do I (not $5,000, but better than anything Apple makes). But really, this is besides the point.

I didn't want this topic to derail to hardware. I see that as a separate issue. There is nothing hardware-wise in admittedly Apple's weak line that prevents Macs from playing these cancelled ports. Unless we start talking about VR, this is a software problem first and foremost.
 
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i know about the limitation in MAC OS X OpenGL and OpenCL, apple still using older versions of OpenGL and OpenCL compared to the newer version being use in windows, i don't remember the specific version # right now. but i know that the mac version is a few versions behind windows, software or hardware, i think is a little bit of both , let me try to explain most of macs come with weak GPU, not all of them but most of them, that's why i think apple don't even bother to update the software , is not an excuse but it might be a reason, you can't really upgrade macs that much but you can upgrade the old mac pro with newer and more powerful GPUS but even if you do that , changing the hardware won't help that much because the software is still using and outdated version of OpenGL and OpenCL, but having a weak GPU is even worse , that's why i said is little bit of both, like a said my english is not perfect so i hope you understand what i'm trying to say , vulcan is multi cross-platform so you don't need to port games from one system to the other if they are using the same API but the problem is apple if they don't want to use that technology , right now i think android and even linux are supported, i'm not 100% sure about linux i need to double check that, but one thing is for sure , right now the only big absent to the party is apple. i really don't understand why apple don't want to update the software so we can play games in mac , i do gaming in mac because i have 2 nvidia 970, of course i can only do SLI in windows but that another topic , why we don't get SLI in mac , i'm sure mac users also want to play good games in their macs and apple have and sales games in the app store but when it comes to hi resolutions games , we have to wait years for a buggy port, that is if one ever comes out, i hope apple come with something new in OS 12. nobody hates windows more than me , the only reason why i use windows is for gaming, for some games only and most of the time windows gets me so mad that not even the games, will make me login to the windows drive
 
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If Apple actually sticks a GPU in all of their MBPs and updates Metal to add some much missing features at WWDC we may have hope. I am also holding out hope that if Apple doesn't like DGPUs in their machines that they can work with AMD to generate some APUs (basically x86 SoC similar to their iOS A# line) and transition their Macs to use HBM2 memory. However, that doesn't change the fact that they need a quality 3D API (whether it's Metal or Vulkan) that is feature parity with other platforms.
 
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Cougarcat said:
Well, so do I (not $5,000, but better than anything Apple makes). But really, this is besides the point.

I didn't want this topic to derail to hardware. I see that as a separate issue. There is nothing hardware-wise in admittedly Apple's weak line that prevents Macs from playing these cancelled ports. Unless we start talking about VR, this is a software problem first and foremost.
Click to expand...


Hey, whenever you get the upgrade itch, I'll take your current rig off your hands.

Do you bootcamp?
 
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Ferazel said:
If Apple actually sticks a GPU in all of their MBPs and updates Metal to add some much missing features at WWDC we may have hope. I am also holding out hope that if Apple doesn't like DGPUs in their machines that they can work with AMD to generate some APUs (basically x86 SoC similar to their iOS A# line) and transition their Macs to use HBM2 memory. However, that doesn't change the fact that they need a quality 3D API (whether it's Metal or Vulkan) that is feature parity with other platforms.
Click to expand...

ok i understand and i agreed with you ,but i think this is the problem, windows games are written using DX so in order to makes those games playable in mac they need to be rewritten , that’s what i understand that a port is, feel free to correct me if i’m wrong but if you write the game using vulcan that means that the game doesn’t need to be rewritten because they are using the same api, that is what i understand for multi cross-platform of course you need a vulcan compatible card , a weak old card is not going to work because it doesn’t have support for shaders instructions etc, so this where the hardware topic comes in , i don’t think apple is going to drop or abandon metal but i think they should merge metal with vulcan or use both if is not too much to ask for , but only time will tell, i really don’t understand gaming is a multi billion dollar industry ,macs are not weak either is just the GPU problem and the problem with the software “old drivers” i know apple has money but even if they have money, what’s wrong with eating a piece of the pie, also what about their costumers.

something very important that i almost forgot to mentioned is the performance problem in ports
so no ports means no performance drop in games, that's another reason why games run slower on macs because they are ports , so we can't really blame everything on the poor macs, vulcan can fix all that
 
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