Apple Improving Open-GL?

[Kagetenshi]

Kelmon: I'd advise taking your Powerbook in for servicing. I play UT2k4 on low-mid specs on an iBook with 32 megs of VRAM, so unless you're exaggerating seriously there's something badly wrong with your machine.

~J

 

[JesseJames]

Geez, about friggin' time.
All this talk about gaming.
What's the prospects for the really high-end graphics accelerators coming to Mac with all of this?
Maybe finally, Discreet er, Autodesk will port some programs for the Mac platform? Instead of snubbing us?
Can Apple finally quash SGI and take its rightful place as THE graphics potentate?

 

[bushgreen]

i dont get why comes halo runs smoothly on an xbox, when a xbox has only 32mb video ram and 700mhz processing power. my pc with 64mb 5200 video ram 2.6 ghz p4 struggles on halo. how comes when my pc has a much higher spec than an xbox.

 

[Lynxpro]

Apple appears to be actively recruiting individuals to improve their Mac Open-GL implementation according to a post on the Mac Open GL mailing list.



Gaming on the Mac platform won't improve seriously until Apple ditches the last vestage of proprietariness on the PowerMac line, that being the need for specialized Mac videocards. When Joe User can drop by Worst Buy or CompUSA and pick up the latest videocard and be able to drop it into their PowerMac will be the first day of the beginning of Mac gaming improvements. I don't understand why Apple still clings to this. They use standard memory, standard IDE/SATA hard drive connectors, PCI Express/AGP/PCI expansion slots, and made USB safe for the masses. Why cling to this last remnant of proprietary architectures? Its holding the Mac platform back.

Second, Apple should set up a limited licensing program with another vendor like Alienware that essentially created the high-end gaming computer platform. Unless Apple is serious about this niche, they should seek a more experienced player to partner on this. Having a major secondary OS X hardware vendor would extra credibility to the platform from the gaming companies perspectives, as well as the actual hardcore gamers.

Third, treat games as loss-leaders. The PC gamers market is much larger than the actual sales figures, since probably half the gamers pirate the titles. Apple should subsidize the cost of the popular titles being made available on Macs, or buy stock in many of the developers to insure Mac development. Apple has experience in this, since all Apple branded software is meant to be used as loss-leaders to encourage further Mac hardware sales...

Fourth, one would hope that there's some positive spill-over in terms of Mac gaming considering all three of the next generation consoles (Sony Playstation3, Microsoft Xbox Next, and Nintendo Revolution) use Cell/PowerPC G5 derived chips and most likely the development packages run on Mac hardware (the Xbox Next developer kits do for a fact).

 

[csubear]

i dont get why comes halo runs smoothly on an xbox, when a xbox has only 32mb video ram and 700mhz processing power. my pc with 64mb 5200 video ram 2.6 ghz p4 struggles on halo. how comes when my pc has a much higher spec than an xbox.

The xbox only has to deal with a TV resolution,IIRC 320x200. Half the resolution that any PC/Mac gamer would run halo at.

 

[hayesk]

The xbox only has to deal with a TV resolution,IIRC 320x200. Half the resolution that any PC/Mac gamer would run halo at.

Standard NTSC TV resolution is approximately 640x480 (it's actually wider, but the "pixels" aren't square).

Connect an iBook or PowerBook to a TV and you can see all of the pixels at 640x480.

But that's part of the reason a console doesn't need a fast CPU like a computer. Also, the path from the CPU to the graphics card is short and fast. It was designed to give priority over that than other I/O subsystems.

 

[hayesk]

Yes that would rock.... although large games wouldn't have room for both platforms on 1 CD/DVD

A CD/DVD can be burned with a shared section. You don't need level, music, character files, etc. to be platform specific. You only need one copy of those files.

Only the executable (a very small part of the game) needs to be platform specific, and thus separate copies.

 

[AidenShaw]

No Mac has PCI-Express

[Apple] use standard memory, standard IDE/SATA hard drive connectors, PCI Express/AGP/PCI expansion slots, and made USB safe for the masses.

No Mac has PCI-Express - did you mean PCI-X instead?

 

[sinisterdesign]

This is something I've always been pointing out; Apple should be focusing on graphics development because that was the driving force of the Macintosh in the first place! What a bunch of dorks.

yeah, kind of ironic. i used to snub my nose at all my PC friends w/ their paltry 256 colors when i had 16k or even MILLIONS. now i have to special order a 128MB grx card just to bump up the detail levels on Worlds of Warcraft.

(and i'm not complaining too much b/c at least i HAVE WoW. a few years ago i would have just been on the sideline watching the PC'ers play...)

it would be nice to have comparable texture detail & framerates again, though...

 

[sinisterdesign]

The xbox only has to deal with a TV resolution,IIRC 320x200. Half the resolution that any PC/Mac gamer would run halo at.

unless your Xbox is running it at 16:9 high-def, then it's cranking out a litte more than NTSC resolution (which is 640x480, as another poster pointed out), which mine does quite well.

i like both platforms (console & desktop) for games. i tend to go back & forth, i'll play Xbox for a couple months, then get hooked on WoW on my G4.

 

[Eric5h5]

i dont get why comes halo runs smoothly on an xbox, when a xbox has only 32mb video ram and 700mhz processing power. my pc with 64mb 5200 video ram 2.6 ghz p4 struggles on halo. how comes when my pc has a much higher spec than an xbox.

It's not that good of a port, apparently. Also your graphics card isn't helping...video RAM is only a small part of what makes them fast or not. With Halo, my 2.5GHz G5 with an X800 graphics card stomps all over the Xbox when it comes to resolution (stuck at 640x480 on Xbox) and frame rates (stuck at 30 fps max on Xbox). Well, it better, considering the price difference. But it could have been optimized a bit more for computers...although I think they added in some extra graphics detail.

--Eric

 

[bushgreen]

but what i still dont get with is that my pc has way more power than an xbox so it should run smooth on at 1024x840. my pc has more than double the power of the xbox so why can the xbox run halo so smooth.

games that come out on ps2 and xbox need much higher specs on pc why?

 

[jouster]

...But it could have been optimized a bit more for computers...although I think they added in some extra graphics detail.

--Eric

I think they care a lot more about the XBox version simply because they sell so many more than the computer version iirc.

 

[jouster]

but what i still dont get with is that my pc has way more power than an xbox so it should run smooth on at 1024x840. my pc has more than double the power of the xbox so why can the xbox run halo so smooth.

games that come out on ps2 and xbox need much higher specs on pc why?

Well, your PC has a far more complex and demanding OS to run at the same time.

 

[Kelmon]

Kelmon: I'd advise taking your Powerbook in for servicing. I play UT2k4 on low-mid specs on an iBook with 32 megs of VRAM, so unless you're exaggerating seriously there's something badly wrong with your machine.

Probably a reasonable suggestion. Both UT2003/2004 are playable at the lowest resolution both its no fun and nothing close to what I had with the PC that still sits unused with a P4 and GeForce4400 graphics card. Call of Duty, for some reason, runs pretty well in 1024*768 if the detail is turned down but Enemy Territory ran like crap earlier today when I tried it out, even at 800*600. I'm hoping that Tiger may sort some of these issues out when the laptop is scrubbed but aside from that I need to have a word with Apple about my Airport card as its playing silly buggers at the moment (won't connect to my Airport Extreme network without being turned off or even rebooted completely sometimes).

So, slight exaggeration...

 

[BenRoethig]

Apple appears to be actively recruiting individuals to improve their Mac Open-GL implementation according to a post on the Mac Open GL mailing list.



Gaming on the Mac platform won't improve seriously until Apple ditches the last vestage of proprietariness on the PowerMac line, that being the need for specialized Mac videocards. When Joe User can drop by Worst Buy or CompUSA and pick up the latest videocard and be able to drop it into their PowerMac will be the first day of the beginning of Mac gaming improvements. I don't understand why Apple still clings to this. They use standard memory, standard IDE/SATA hard drive connectors, PCI Express/AGP/PCI expansion slots, and made USB safe for the masses. Why cling to this last remnant of proprietary architectures? Its holding the Mac platform back.

Second, Apple should set up a limited licensing program with another vendor like Alienware that essentially created the high-end gaming computer platform. Unless Apple is serious about this niche, they should seek a more experienced player to partner on this. Having a major secondary OS X hardware vendor would extra credibility to the platform from the gaming companies perspectives, as well as the actual hardcore gamers.

Third, treat games as loss-leaders. The PC gamers market is much larger than the actual sales figures, since probably half the gamers pirate the titles. Apple should subsidize the cost of the popular titles being made available on Macs, or buy stock in many of the developers to insure Mac development. Apple has experience in this, since all Apple branded software is meant to be used as loss-leaders to encourage further Mac hardware sales...

Fourth, one would hope that there's some positive spill-over in terms of Mac gaming considering all three of the next generation consoles (Sony Playstation3, Microsoft Xbox Next, and Nintendo Revolution) use Cell/PowerPC G5 derived chips and most likely the development packages run on Mac hardware (the Xbox Next developer kits do for a fact).

The only thing that makes a Mac card a mac card and a PC card a PC card is the firmware. With marketshare what it is, there's not much of an incentive to make the Mac versions.

 

[Kagetenshi]

Just to clarify, I play UT2k4 on said iBook at 1024x768 resolution (though with detail mostly low), so if it's just playable at lower resolutions see my comment about servicing.

Actually, how much RAM are you working with?

~J

 

[wrldwzrd89]

<snip>
Gaming on the Mac platform won't improve seriously until Apple ditches the last vestage of proprietariness on the PowerMac line, that being the need for specialized Mac videocards. When Joe User can drop by Worst Buy or CompUSA and pick up the latest videocard and be able to drop it into their PowerMac will be the first day of the beginning of Mac gaming improvements. I don't understand why Apple still clings to this. They use standard memory, standard IDE/SATA hard drive connectors, PCI Express/AGP/PCI expansion slots, and made USB safe for the masses. Why cling to this last remnant of proprietary architectures? Its holding the Mac platform back.

I hate to break this to you, but my understanding is that's the case because Macs use PowerPC CPUs and no BIOS, therefore requiring different firmware to work. Apple would NEVER use a standard PC BIOS (they believe that Open Firmware is FAR better, which I agree with); the likelyhood of Apple switching away from PPC is close to nil, unless serious PPC manufacturing problems develop. Therefore, this issue you point out will ALWAYS be there.

Second, Apple should set up a limited licensing program with another vendor like Alienware that essentially created the high-end gaming computer platform. Unless Apple is serious about this niche, they should seek a more experienced player to partner on this. Having a major secondary OS X hardware vendor would extra credibility to the platform from the gaming companies perspectives, as well as the actual hardcore gamers.

Third, treat games as loss-leaders. The PC gamers market is much larger than the actual sales figures, since probably half the gamers pirate the titles. Apple should subsidize the cost of the popular titles being made available on Macs, or buy stock in many of the developers to insure Mac development. Apple has experience in this, since all Apple branded software is meant to be used as loss-leaders to encourage further Mac hardware sales...

I don't see how Apple could do this and not ruin themselves. They have found a distinct niche; attempts in the past to break out of that niche proved disastrous.

Fourth, one would hope that there's some positive spill-over in terms of Mac gaming considering all three of the next generation consoles (Sony Playstation3, Microsoft Xbox Next, and Nintendo Revolution) use Cell/PowerPC G5 derived chips and most likely the development packages run on Mac hardware (the Xbox Next developer kits do for a fact).

This I agree with 100%. Having more customers for PowerPC chips will help IBM more than it helps anyone else. It will help Apple only if the new customers aren't taking supply away from Apple, which I suspect will be the case.

 

[BenRoethig]

I don't see how Apple could do this and not ruin themselves. They have found a distinct niche; attempts in the past to break out of that niche proved disastrous.

The last attempt was a decade ago. At that time the only difference between a Mac and PC was a colored Apple on the beige case and the OS. Alienware and Apple are in distinctly different niches.

 

[Apple Hobo]

Re Mac gaming sucks

Allow me to reminisce about old 1990s-era beige-box Macs...

Does anyone remember what Mac gaming used be like during the '90s? Same for regular software. I remember when stores would have less than one half-empty shelf devoted to Mac software/games. Even I was disappointed with the available software--games especially.

But now we have Apple stores with aisle upon aisle of games and quality software--many of which are also PC titles. Mac gaming still leaves a lot to be desired, but it's been growing over the years. It's great that we have titles such as Doom...even if doesn't run as well as some people would like.

Now I'm off to genuflect in the moonlight, remembering Macs of days past.

 

[BenRoethig]

Allow me to reminisce about old 1990s-era beige-box Macs...

Does anyone remember what Mac gaming used be like during the '90s? Same for regular software. I remember when stores would have less than one half-empty shelf devoted to Mac software/games. Even I was disappointed with the available software--games especially.

But now we have Apple stores with aisle upon aisle of games and quality software--many of which are also PC titles. Mac gaming still leaves a lot to be desired, but it's been growing over the years. It's great that we have titles such as Doom...even if doesn't run as well as some people would like.

Now I'm off to genuflect in the moonlight, remembering Macs of days past.

I remember it well. Rex, Sears, WalMart, and Staples were Apple dealers. I could buy software at WalMart, Staples, and this cool little store across the street from the mall. The first piece of software I bought after I got my performa 5200 was the Mac exclusive Marathon, which was the first first person shooter on any platform to feature mission objectives. Now I have to drive three hours to the Apple store in either Milwaukee, Chicago, or Des Moines and the right to my beloved Marathon are owned by Microsoft.

 

[shompa]

Since the next generation consoles will use PowerPC chips.
Wont more games for Mac appear?

The Xbox 2 dev kit is Dual G5 computers afterall.

Xbox 2 PowerPC
NewNintendo PowerPC
Playstation 3 Cell

 

[shompa]

Apple should also start to working on SLI wrappers for the next G5case with SLI.

SLI Powermac G5 would be a real reason to someone to upgrade if its truly faster in applications like FCP, Adobe CS.

And of course games

 

[Kagetenshi]

SLI is like a department-store Santa, a lot of talk but nothing in the sack.

~J

 

[shompa]

SLI is like a department-store Santa, a lot of talk but nothing in the sack.

~J

I dont understand it.
SLI worked on the old Woodo cards.
Dual cards = dual perfomence.

The new Nvidia cards with SLI.
Why do tahy need wrappers to them?
Its strange.

But
Dual graphic cards is the way to go.