Except no. Metal was released far too recently for that. Creating a new engine from scratch for an API is not a fast process - especially if you want to get some decent performance from it. Additionally, Metal would not solve the issue of underpowered GPUs.
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Blizzard's Upcoming Game 'Overwatch' Won't Be Coming to OS X
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I agree 100%.
The big question is this:
Is Overwatch just a one off game that Blizzard refuses to port to OS X or is it the start fo a trend where more of it's new games will have no OS X support?
Still supporting Vista today is just bad. Terribly bad. As good as Blizzard is, they are not perfect. This is one example of this.
The Macs have better than the Intel® HD Graphics 4400 and that's supported for Overwatch. Your underpowered GPU arguement usually would be valid but not this time. The game requirements for the low end are not all that high at all.
LOL what? It would solve those problems exatcly. If the GPU was hovering around 30 FPS on OpenGL then with metal it would above 30 FPS easily and the game that was unplayable would be very much playable.
All the UI animation in Yosemite were glitchy and now in El Capitan all of it is smooth as silk.
As I already said - not even the current RMBP 15'' dGPU is comparable to a GTX 460 cited in the minimum specs.
Metal makes it easier to max out existing GPU resources - by reducing the time spent waiting on the CPU where the GPU has no work assigned. Yosemite's animation processing was very 'slow' - and thus resulted in a lot of wasted time, time that El Capitan eliminated.
Additionally - the benefits of closer-to-metal APIs is already well benchmarked. Mantle provides plenty of examples where the API helps, and where it doesn't. Similarly, DX12 benchmarks also have this demonstrated. Furthermore, there have already been some Metal based 'game' benchmarks - where the pattern also repeats.
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Well either i don't understand the point or you. On iPad there is a huge difference in performance after Metal in the same game. There are more details and performance is still same or better, so how is going to be different in OS X?
Many people are whining here about the lack of GPU's in macs, and if they are implemented it's a medium card...and such.
But that's no different in the PC world where most sold laptops and pc's have integrated or outdated GPU's too!
The Alienware products and laptops or pc's with high end GPU's is a niche market.
So forget about the GPU's this is a strategical decision!
But that's no different in the PC world where most sold laptops and pc's have integrated or outdated GPU's too!
The Alienware products and laptops or pc's with high end GPU's is a niche market.
So forget about the GPU's this is a strategical decision!
Don't bother. The people complaining are the same people who are SHOCKED when their "MAXED OUT 5k iMac, or MAXED OUT 15" rmbp" can't run new games, on ultra, at native res.
One of the low end GPU options is the Intel® HD Graphics 4400. Blizzard proved you wrong.
OpenGL 3 is equivalent to DirectX 9. OpenGL 4 is equivalent to DirectX 10.
So if Overwatch uses DirectX 11 features, OpenGL on Mac will be a problem (and Apple's OpenGL is generally not good to begin with anyway, so it's going to be a problem anyway.)
If Overwatch uses DirectX 10 features, Metal is a poor fit as well.
People keep pointing at the hardware, but the Iris Pro should actually be good enough to run Overwatch decently well. It's the software that's not good.
I feel like gaming has shifted for Apple to ipad, iPhone and apple TV. Osx is just not designed to be a gaming platform and that's fine I think. Apple TV will become the gaming console of the future IMHO it might just become the third place one after a few years killing Nintendo in the process.
I am and will put a lot of this in the Blizzard court as well. They managed to get Hereos of the Storm to run on OSX and had the game in the Mac launcher giving everyone hope. I'm not going to support this game and it will be the first one from Blizzard that I won't purchase. Ohwell.
ImperialForces
macrumors regular
Very easy to blame Apple now especially since there's a full-on GTX 980 (NOT the 980M) in a mobile form factor now. If they'd wisen up and cool their iMac properly, you could have a halfway capable gaming machine with no thermal throttling.
Yes and no. At the resolution it would be running on a Mac, you need more than Intel HD 4400.
720p on minimum graphics? Maybe 20 fps. Playable to some. But definitely not doable on any higher resolutions.
Maybe he has come to the realization that Apple has abandoned OS X... so there just isn't much future there.
I have the current MBP 15" with AMD Radeon R9 M370X dGPU. As far as I know it's a 3 year old card consisting of AMD's GCN 1.0 architecture, advertised as 'brand new' by Apple marketing. No way this can perform better than the GTX 460.
Yeah that's really unfortunate, it was a game that I was look so forward to. But to be fair Apple has done very little to promote Gaming on the Mac.
Not sure how well it'd perform on a Mac, but to be honest almost all ports that I've seen never seem to perform as good as Windows versions. So I don't think It's unreasonable to assume that the requirements may be higher on the Mac side of things.
But I'm sure there will be user made ports available online, there are many available on websites like porting team.
Not sure how well it'd perform on a Mac, but to be honest almost all ports that I've seen never seem to perform as good as Windows versions. So I don't think It's unreasonable to assume that the requirements may be higher on the Mac side of things.
But I'm sure there will be user made ports available online, there are many available on websites like porting team.
My source is Blizzard mac forums, which I have been participating in for 10 years now. There's only one official poster who posts about engine related news and the MVP's always talk about how limited Blizzard's mac team is and only one guy doing all engine work. MVP's don't work in Blizzard HQ but they still know quite a bit.
The thing is, Blizzard has been trying to hire mac engineers for 3 years now. They just cannot find any. A multibillion dollar company cannot get mac engineers whenever they want because mac engineers who have experience with desktop gaming is a very small group.
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I highlighted the important part in your quote. Playable to some is all we want. We will take 720p if we can play the damn thing on OS X. Blizzard says no. But Blizzard will allow you to have your 720p and 20fps experience with the Intel HD 4400 on your Windows PC using the now ancient Vista OS.
This is not about Apple hardware being too weak or OS X being too old or antiquated in certain ways. It's a revenue (not enough Mac gamers for Overwatch in Blizzard's eyes) issue and Blizzard have no want to do the OS X port. If Blizzard really wanted to do it, they would have found a way to do it.