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Anyone daring to try Skyrim on the MBA?

Sweet! That resolution and getting those fps on the Air?? That's pretty incredible for a current generation game! The witcher 2 only gets 15 fps at 1280x800 on my Air.
 
I have been playing this game for a couple hours now at 1440x900 and low settings w/AA set at 2x. This game looks stunning on the Macbook Air and plays smoothly around 28-30 fps average (in the open world environments!)

I am trying to figure out why this game looks and plays amazing on the Air, while the Witcher 2 looks and plays somewhat janky on the same machine.
 
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Wrks great looks pretty awsome so glad i purchased it
 
Nice comparison! You should see the Air at 1440x900 resolution! It's even more impressive! I play the game on keyboard and mouse, but just tried the Xbox 360 wireless controller with the game on the Air. I prefer the keyboard; however the controller is very good as well. If you have the 360 controller, you may want to give it a go with your Air.
 
I was bored yesterday I tried installing Skyrim through Wineskin. Wineskin basically packages a windows game as a mac app that runs it through an embedded version of Wine. Amazingly, it worked pretty well. On medium settings in fullscreen I got maybe 15 fps. Sure, its not 100% bug free - I had a crash and noticed some 3d rendering glitches, but overall it worked and was actually playable.

Maybe it's not the best solution, but my point is - if it runs that well under Wine, I can't imagine it won't run very smooth if you dual-boot into windows and run it from there.

This was on a 1.6Ghz 11" Air from 2010 by the way.
 
gman901 said:
I have been playing this game for a couple hours now at 1440x900 and low settings w/AA set at 2x. This game looks stunning on the Macbook Air and plays smoothly around 28-30 fps average (in the open world environments!)

I am trying to figure out why this game looks and plays amazing on the Air, while the Witcher 2 looks and plays somewhat janky on the same machine.
Click to expand...

Probably because Skyrim is using an engine that scales well to low end hardware, while the witchier 2 is very much using a high end engine that does not scale very well at all.
 
Because the Witcher is using that absolutely terrible performance NWN2 engine (Electron). Fun games but I have never seen that engine run smoothly, ever, period. Same w/the NWN1 Aurora engine. It doesn't matter what your hardware is, the engine has deeper problems..
 
2011 MBA 13" basic model, boot camped Win 7 Pro. Would it be better to run Skyrim in Lion or Win 7? I'm thinking of buying a physical disc but I'm not sure which one to get.
 
Bob Coxner said:
2011 MBA 13" basic model, boot camped Win 7 Pro. Would it be better to run Skyrim in Lion or Win 7? I'm thinking of buying a physical disc but I'm not sure which one to get.
Click to expand...

Skyrim isn't available for OS X, so the choice is pretty easy 🙂
 
I've found it to be very playable on medium settings, no AA, no AF on my 2010 MacBook Air. Admittedly, I haven't put in much play time on my Air (that's what my PC desktop is for), so I can't say how well it will perform in effect-heavy dungeons or areas.

Honestly, I'm surprised it runs as well as it does, especially since the 320M in the 2010 Air is only a 256 MB card and the minimum Skyrim "requires" is a 512 MB card.
 
ya thats because gaming in a virtual machine is not even a good idea to begin with...specially on the air..
It is possible but not worth it
Just partition, install bootcamp win7 and install skyrim there and play on win7 side youll get alot better feel and you can if you have an 320m or dedicated graphics, Clock it up a bit just so you can get those extra frames to make the game look that much better 😉

to bad osx will not see any of these new titles at all...
 
cluthz said:
Skyrim runs ok, but not great on my 2011 MBA in OSX 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX1ChrCytx0&feature=related
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Thanks for making this video, great to see this game actually runs on an MBA. I suppose you run it under some wineskin port ? If so, I would suggest to use the same resolution on full screen. Running a game full screen will get you a few extra fps (comparing with the windowed mode of the same resolution).
 
antonis said:
Thanks for making this video, great to see this game actually runs on an MBA. I suppose you run it under some wineskin port ? If so, I would suggest to use the same resolution on full screen. Running a game full screen will get you a few extra fps (comparing with the windowed mode of the same resolution).
Click to expand...

I know, the video was just to she it's running in osx.
I'm not gonna play on the MBA anyway, as I have a gaming rig already
 
Have any of you played with the ini / pref files yet? If so, has it helped? I tried it for a few minutes tonight and it seems to make a difference (seldom drops below 25) but it seems to be a bit unstable when quitting (really not major but kind of annoying).

I turned v-synch and smooth scrolling off. I'm using gamebooster.

What is everyone else doing?
 
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vintagejoel said:
Have any of you played with the ini / pref files yet? If so, has it helped? I tried it for a few minutes tonight and it seems to make a difference (seldom drops below 25) but it seems to be a bit unstable when quitting (really not major but kind of annoying).

I turned v-synch and smooth scrolling off. I'm using gamebooster.

What is everyone else doing?
Click to expand...

It's also working at an ok but not great framerate on my mid-2011 MBA 13" (15-25fps) on low(ish) settings.

I've made the following adjustments in the ini/pref files:

- Disabled Mouse acceleration
- Set X and Y axis sensitivity as the same

I've also made the exe large address aware and installed the Skyrim Better Performance mod.

The mouse's responsiveness is much better, but the low fps makes some areas seem a bit clunky (primarily indoor areas)... But then again, that seems to be the nature of many Elder Scrolls games upon release.

What settings are others using? Anyone try post-processing?
 
Are there any performance dips during combat or lots of action on screen? I've seen a few youtube videos but they are mostly outdoors with nothing going on.
 
Runs smoothly on my base 2010 11" (1.4Ghz, 320M, 2GB) in bootcamp.
Stock drivers, no OC.

Getting 30 FPS outdoors and more inside. Settings at low and textures on medium.
No AA, no FFAX.

Forcing V-sync off via Nvidia control panel increases FPS considerably (beyond 30 FPS) but also causes tearing.

I'm really blown away by how well this plays considering that Fallout NV chugged.

Xbox 360 controller is a must imo.
 
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