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So I have a question then: If it's Wine but with DirectX 12, could we use this ourselves for existing Windows games and get them running right now? Because if so, then that would be big and essentially means CrossOver got Sherlocked. It could potentially mean Steam Proton could come back to Mac as well

No, it's for evaluating the perfromance when porting to Metal, but since it's open source and based on Wine Codeweavers can use it without having to put a lot of work into it. Codeweavers solution was per title and not a complete solution for the whole system. With this every game should work right from the start. With this you wouldn't need Steam Proton.
 
No, it's for evaluating the perfromance when porting to Metal, but since it's open source and based on Wine Codeweavers can use it without having to put a lot of work into it. Codeweavers solution was per title and not a complete solution for the whole system. With this every game should work right from the start. With this you wouldn't need Steam Proton.

Just give me a compatibility layer that doesn't cost $500 and I'll use it
 
If it's Wine but with DirectX 12, could we use this ourselves for existing Windows games and get them running right now?
Is it the Game Porting Toolkit? Is it difficult to install?

It looks like you can launch a game with this command.
1686073744885.png


Update: Apple has updated the repo with instructions.
Using the game-porting-toolkit formula requires downloading the Game Porting Toolkit from developer.apple.com
 
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Is it the Game Porting Toolkit? Is it difficult to install?

It looks like you can launch a game with this command.
View attachment 2213953

Update: Apple has updated the repo with instructions.

So how do we use this? We just copy the entire game folder of a Steam game, put it on our Macs, and then just run the command?
 
And the price of the Vision Pro? $3499! It looks like they didn’t go the non-profit route for pricing, nor did they call it a developer kit.
I checked in during the keynote and was waiting for a meltdown on this forum because of the price. But... I think the price is absolutely ok, I just think their marketing is off, way off. Now, Vision Pro isn't doing anything I've not seen in research the past couple of years. But Apple made a nice all in one package. Ignore the external battery, the battery life, the fact that no one will walk around with this thing on all day long and everything they showed. You get a nice AR/VR solution. Consider a VR costs about $1k and something like a HoloLens is similarly priced to Vision Pro. Despite marketing it towards the mainstream market, it's a specialised tool for specific applications. We've done VR/AR tools to train astronauts, to coordinate search and rescue missions, fire fights, assist workers with repair tasks and so on. That's where it will shine. No, people won't run out and buy one to play games on it, watch TV, FaceTime, etc. This should be marketed as an industry tool and that's where they'll sell quite a few of these and the price won't be an issue.

Just give me a compatibility layer that doesn't cost $500 and I'll use it
You mean Crossover lifetime? Watch that go up or be cancelled with DX12. Crossover didn't crack DX12, their DX12 support works on a per-title basis. Try something, doesn't work or with glitches, then specifically patch for that game. They've already stated that. No imagine the effort to roll out a patch for every single game. Maybe not every one buy every 2, 3, 5? They'll be busy patching stuff all the time.

Now, game porting toolkit isn't much different. It's for testing. It has basic support and above that, "fix it yourself" (if you're developing your game). But it's more, it's an option to translate HLSL to Metal. Again, a basic option. If it works, great - if it doesn't, patch it. We've had those tools for years. The idea to provide "Wine" directly, optimized (at least on the Apple end) and open is interesting though. That would allow for open source "Crossover" or emulators in a similar way as emulators. Try to play a game, if it's bugged, someone might put the work into it and patch it. No, not everything will run and no, some stuff won't be fixed. But it's a nice playground for people passionate about "hacking", similar to the console emulator world.
 
I checked in during the keynote and was waiting for a meltdown on this forum because of the price. But... I think the price is absolutely ok, I just think their marketing is off, way off. Now, Vision Pro isn't doing anything I've not seen in research the past couple of years. But Apple made a nice all in one package. Ignore the external battery, the battery life, the fact that no one will walk around with this thing on all day long and everything they showed. You get a nice AR/VR solution. Consider a VR costs about $1k and something like a HoloLens is similarly priced to Vision Pro. Despite marketing it towards the mainstream market, it's a specialised tool for specific applications. We've done VR/AR tools to train astronauts, to coordinate search and rescue missions, fire fights, assist workers with repair tasks and so on. That's where it will shine. No, people won't run out and buy one to play games on it, watch TV, FaceTime, etc. This should be marketed as an industry tool and that's where they'll sell quite a few of these and the price won't be an issue.

Price is fine since it's a portable 4K display you can wear anywhere. But yeah it's clear this is the pro headset hence why it's Vision Pro. I just hope the consumer model isn't far behind because god dammit I want this thing.

You mean Crossover lifetime? Watch that go up or be cancelled with DX12. Crossover didn't crack DX12, their DX12 support works on a per-title basis. Try something, doesn't work or with glitches, then specifically patch for that game. They've already stated that. No imagine the effort to roll out a patch for every single game. Maybe not every one buy every 2, 3, 5? They'll be busy patching stuff all the time.

Now, game porting toolkit isn't much different. It's for testing. It has basic support and above that, "fix it yourself" (if you're developing your game). But it's more, it's an option to translate HLSL to Metal. Again, a basic option. If it works, great - if it doesn't, patch it. We've had those tools for years. The idea to provide "Wine" directly, optimized (at least on the Apple end) and open is interesting though. That would allow for open source "Crossover" or emulators in a similar way as emulators. Try to play a game, if it's bugged, someone might put the work into it and patch it. No, not everything will run and no, some stuff won't be fixed. But it's a nice playground for people passionate about "hacking", similar to the console emulator world.

CrossOver is honestly the one app I wanted Apple to Sherlock, and I'm so happy it's finally happened. When I get home I'm gonna copy some of my favorite games and see if they'll work (as soon as I figure out how to work this thing)
 
So how do we use this? We just copy the entire game folder of a Steam game, put it on our Macs, and then just run the command?
There's a bit of initial setup required, including installing Homebrew and doing some Wine configuration. It also won't work for every commercial game; there are notes in the readme about compiling a Windows executable without AVX or DRM.

It also "currently" requires an Arm Mac with OS 14. Since I have an Intel with 12, I can't give it a go myself.

Screenshot 2023-06-07 at 7.51.23 AM.png
 
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There's a bit of initial setup required, including installing Homebrew and doing some Wine configuration. It also won't work for every commercial game; there are notes in the readme about compiling a Windows executable without AVX or DRM.

So does that include Steam DRM? What if we ran Steam itself through this? It wants a Windows executable so I wonder if similarly to regular Wine we could just run a wrapper around Steam then install the games through that wrapper.

If not, well poo. But on the bright side, there is one really big game that doesn't have DRM that would be a perfect test bench

Cyberpunk_2077_box_art.jpg
 
Codeweaver just made an announcment about Apple Game Porting Toolkit. A win-win situation!

"We are ecstatic that Apple chose to use CrossOver’s source code as their emulation solution for the Game Porting Toolkit. We have decades of experience creating ports with Wine, and we are very pleased that Apple is recognizing that Wine is a fantastic solution for running Windows games on macOS. We did not work with Apple on this tool, but we would be delighted to work with any game developers who try out the Game Porting Toolkit and see the massive potential that Wine offers. Our PortJump™ team has perfected the art and science of creating ports of Windows applications using our Wine technology, and we welcome inquiries about how we can help get your game working on macOS.

We are also excited by the potential that the Game Porting Toolkit can offer CrossOver. We announced last week that we have preliminary DirectX 12 support on macOS coming in CrossOver 23, and we are eager to build on that momentum."

 
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I thought Crossover converted DX12 to Vulkan, then used moltenVK. Does it converts DX12 to Metal directly?
 
I thought Crossover converted DX12 to Vulkan, then used moltenVK. Does it converts DX12 to Metal directly?

CrossOver is game by game. DX12 is not fully implemented. Apple basically beat CodeWeavers to full DX12 compatibility on macOS, hence why I said that Apple essentially Sherlocked CrossOver (thank god)
 
So...who's gonna install the Sonoma developer beta and try the porting kit out? I'd do it myself, but this is my personal Macbook Pro and I do not want to risk it on the dev beta lmao. So I won't be able to toy with it until the public beta comes out next month
 
Easier development certainly is, as Proton has done wonders for Linux gaming since you no longer need to put the work in on a Linux port anymore. You can just develop for Windows now and your game instantly works on Linux with no issues, sometimes running even better than it does on Windows.

Now in practice, you gotta get people to use it and we need to see results from it, and so far all we got is Kojima using it with Death Stranding Director's Cut. If Kojima can't convince AAA devs to come back to Mac, nothing will.


Have you seen MrMacRight's latest video from today?



He's featuring a list of 10 games announced at WWDC 2023:

1. Death Stranding: Director's Cut
2. ELEX 2 (DX12 game running via Rosetta 2)
3. Layers of Fear: Remake (first Unreal Engine 5 Mac game, and the first Mac game with Ray-Tracing)
4. Stray (MetalFX upscaling on Unreal Engine)
5. SnowRunner (MetalFX Upscaling)
6. No Man's Sky
7. Fort Solis (Unreal Engine 5, using Metal 3)
8. The Medium (Uses the Porting Kit)
9. Firmament (Metal 3 and HDR)
10. DragonHeir: Silent Gods (Metal 3, HDR, and VRR)

I'm more optimistic than he is, over all.
 
And Apple is offering it via an open-source license.

Apple is potentiolly Sherlocking Crossover AND Parallels, by offering it as a free product!

I'm VERY glad I didn't spend hundreds on lifetime licenses of Crossover and Parallels.

Yes, I know but there is no free product from Apple. Apple has made a huge contribution to Wine project by adding DX12 support. Now Codeweavers can add it to Crossover or people can add it to other Wine projects like Porting Kit or PlayonMac. Remains to see which comes first. I got my free Crossover license by becoming a BetterTester and making some contributions. It's easy if you don't want to pay. I don't think this means every DX12 game will work right out of the box. That's where Crossover comes in. Codeweavers can perhaps tweak this further to include more games. We'll see how it evolves. :)
 
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Yes, I know but there is no free product from Apple. Apple has made a huge contribution to Wine project by adding DX 12 support. Now Codeweavers can add it to Crossover or people can add it to other Wine projects like Porting Kit or PlayonMac. Remains to see which comes first. I got my free Crossover license by becoming a BetterTester and making some contributions. It's easy if you don't want to pay. I don't think this means every DX 12 game will work right out of the box. That's where Crossover comes in. Codeweavers can perhaps tweak this further to include more games. We'll see how it evolves. :)
Yeah, I think it's quite clear Apple intends this as a method to aid ports, and that is their focus. Having said that, Ive seen one of the engineers responsible retweet people's joy at using it to run games, so I doubt they mind too much if its used for fun!

As you said, others can run with the heavy lifting done for dx12 and make a product I imagine.
 
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The new Metal shader converter is very exciting news. The difference between the native port of The Medium and the translated/emulated port was also very interesting to see.

Skärmavbild 2023-06-07 kl. 04.48.22.png
 
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