Metal Developer Tools on Windows Offer New Gaming Opportunities

[Azrael9]

I don't think that's true on the Mac+PC, and that's definitely false if you include all Apple platforms.

And 'all' Apple platforms with potent A14 variant hardware...on iPhone, iPad, AS Mac and possibly the ATV?

Will have a Tsunami of power, metal and 'tuning' that no other platform can match. Millions of Apps coming to 'Mac' as soon as the first salvo of Mac AS consumer hardware is launched. The Mini, MB 13 and iMac AS 24 will suddenly look a whole lot more attractive with Apple GPU than Intel's crap iGPU. Not to mention 8 core AS14 variants plus tuned co-processors.

The last gen consoles will be surpassed and the low bar of consumer Intel Macs will be dwarfed. And this will just be the beginning.

'Rebirth.'

Azrael.

 

[mi7chy]

Doom Eternal is one of the few Windows games using Vulkan - most others using Direct3d. Not convinced it would help the Mac providing Vulkan support.

Answer to that is DXVK DirectX to Vulkan wrapper for unix OS.

 

[topdrawer]

Answer to that is DXVK.

are you suggesting instead of workin on their own api they supply layers for whatever features other companies choose to employ? that's sound business

 

[yurc]

I know real capabilities of promised Apple ARM chips, but I wonder it’s still sustain enough for prolonged gaming with mostly thin chassis on most Macs? They don’t have same cooling capacity like Mac Pro which is still resemble traditional PC box.

Besides of that, Apple still allowing TB3 connection for within USB 4 specification, so probably eGPU still came in play to crank up graphics performance.

 

[mi7chy]

are you suggesting instead of workin on their own api they supply layers for whatever features other companies choose to employ? that's sound business

Depends if you want to play PC AAA games now on MacOS or make excuses and wait another decade going on fourth decade of irrelevancy. Apple just need to work with AMD to release MacOS Vulkan drivers which AMD has already done for Linux.

For PC game developers to support a platform these criterias need to be met:

- capable hardware (now possible with 5600M on MBP 16" and W5700X or Radeon Pro Vega II on Mac Pro Tower)
- support industry standard API for ease of porting games (Vulkan since DirectX is platform specific as well as Metal)
- sizable marketshare to offset cost and be profitable (this is a bigger problem than API but Apple has a ton of money and can subsidize)

Or, continue to endure the inconvenience of bootcamping Windows to play AAA games.

 

[jeanlain]

Supporting an industry standard API is not a requirement. Direct3D is not an industry standard, nor is the Playstation API.
I'm not worried about the GPU performance of ARM Macs either. Yes, they may not run Cyberpunk 2077 maxed out, but that type of gaming is really niche. Most gaming PCs have midrange GPUs.
The market share is what matters the most, and the Apple user base has some potential.

 

[mi7chy]

Supporting an industry standard API is not a requirement. Direct3D is not an industry standard, nor is the Playstation API.

It is when you don't have marketshare. Windows and Playstation have majority marketshare in PC and console markets respectively.

 

[topdrawer]

Depends if you want to play PC AAA games now on MacOS or make excuses and wait another decade going on fourth decade of irrelevancy. Apple just need to work with AMD to release MacOS Vulkan drivers which AMD has already done for Linux.

For PC game developers to support a platform these criterias need to be met:

- capable hardware (now possible with 5600M on MBP 16" and W5700X or Radeon Pro Vega II on Mac Pro Tower)
- support industry standard API for ease of porting games (Vulkan since DirectX is platform specific as well as Metal)
- sizable marketshare to offset cost and be profitable (this is a bigger problem than API but Apple has a ton of money and can subsidize)

Or, continue to endure the inconvenience of bootcamping Windows to play AAA games.

it's naive to think even with vulkan support AAA wouldn't be delayed coming to mac or even released on mac at all. that decision is more based on market share and it aint there.

just look at studios that use unreal and unity. they already support metal, cross platform can't get any easier than that and yet the games aren't on mac.

 

[diamond.g]

That still doesn’t make sense. Xbox One. One. PS5. Five. 1 < 5. So naming it Xbox two wouldn’t matter.

And yes I do believe parents will be confused between the Xbox One X and Xbox One Series X. "Maybe my kid meant the Xbox One X". I know even a few gamers, pc gamers but know hardware, that are confused before I told them.

Microsoft named the Xbox One that way because originally they wanted it to replace your STB on Input 1. The new system is dropping the One from the name (well it is replacing it with Series). As it stands we believe there will be two next gen consoles. The Series X is the full on 12TB unit, while the Series S is rumored to be a less powerful system for a cheaper price.

 

[konqerror]

For PC game developers to support a platform these criterias need to be met:
...
- support industry standard API for ease of porting games (Vulkan since DirectX is platform specific as well as Metal)

Counterexample: PS4/PS5. Completely proprietary graphics and sound APIs, runs basically FreeBSD.

In fact, the Xbox One supports industry standard APIs like you say, but the PS4 has all the same games and double its sales.

And on that note, Direct3D gives you Xbox and Windows, whereas Vulkan gives you nothing.

 

[groove-agent]

I've long given up on Mac gaming. But I do have to admit that Apple Arcade is the one area where Mac gaming could slowly grow because the iPhone is much more popular and especially once Macs are on AARM. Kinda sad I'll have to give up Bootcamp on future Macs, but that just gives me an excuse to finally build a gaming PC like I used to do many years ago. Or maybe just push me to 100% console gaming.

Being a minimalist, I used to game on my MacBook Pros but now I much prefer having a dedicated Windows desktop for this purpose. For gaming, you would potentially want a different keyboard, mouse (non-wireless), and even monitor. Plus Windows is a better OS for gaming, and a desktop computer's cooling options are a huge advantage, and I can shove those noisy fans below the desk not on it. Keeping the divide mentally is good too: Mac is for productivity/ creativity, and the desktop is for games. When I'm not gaming, the desktop serves media via Plex.

That being said, I wouldn't mind a couple cutesy iOS games on my MBP if I could find one I liked. There was a cool multiplayer iOS racing/ obstacle course game from Micromachines that I thought was fun but by the time I got my iPad Pro to play it on a decent sized screen, it was no longer functioning. Ugh.

 

[M3gatron]

When talking about Apple's move to its in-house, souped-up ARM silicon it's not just the CPU getting swapped. Apple builds systems-on-a-chip (SOC), meaning their silicon bundles the CPU, GPU and a plethora of other processing units and accelerators. That's what the GPU has to do with the CPU.

I haven't followed the discussions closely so I don't know where the bar has been set in this particular exchange, but Apple GPUs have for a long time shown performance well above Mac IGPUs. So maybe that's what's being referred to.

You obviously didn't understand what I wrote as you left out the essential "much better graphics" part.
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I don't think that's true on the Mac+PC, and that's definitely false if you include all Apple platforms.

Well, I'm obviously talking about PC games not something else.
Anyway I verified the info before I wrote it so you can rest assured, it's true.

 

[Puonti]

You obviously didn't understand what I wrote as you left out the essential "much better graphics" part.

Don't worry, you'll get it eventually.

 

[M3gatron]

Don't worry, you'll get it eventually.

Nobody is taking about IGpu's here because such is discussion is irrelevant in the context of AAA games. Don't worry, you'll get it eventually.

 

[Gerdi]

Answer to that is DXVK DirectX to Vulkan wrapper for unix OS.

Thats why i was proposing a DXMetal wrapper instead of Apple supporting Vulkan - gives you compatibility with a much bigger subset of Windows games. Vulkan just does not make sense for a handful of Windows games.
The DXMetal wrapper might turn out to be useful for Virtualizing Windows as well.

 

[diamond.g]

Thats why i was proposing a DXMetal wrapper instead of Apple supporting Vulkan - gives you compatibility with a much bigger subset of Windows games. Vulkan just does not make sense for a handful of Windows games.
The DXMetal wrapper might turn out to be useful for Virtualizing Windows as well.

Eh. It is missing DX12 support.

 

[Gerdi]

Eh. It is missing DX12 support.

If Apple is to develop an DXMetal wrapper it might not necessarily lacking DX12 support. However some features are just not available under Metal like for instance mesh shaders or raytracing.
Of course some features can be implemented without special HW or metal API support like DX12 raytracing - with a performance trade-off mind you?

 

[nylonsteel]

yes - games for mac os pale compared to pc win games - a shame

 

[mi7chy]

Thats why i was proposing a DXMetal wrapper instead of Apple supporting Vulkan - gives you compatibility with a much bigger subset of Windows games. Vulkan just does not make sense for a handful of Windows games.
The DXMetal wrapper might turn out to be useful for Virtualizing Windows as well.

Unless you know something, DXMetal is non-existent and MoltenVK hasn't had an update in two years on YouTube in my search for finding progress.

In comparison, Wine and DXVK are actively progressing and now rival Windows frame rate.

 

[pankajdoharey]

Nope, Apple was notoriously behind. They never updated or fixed bugs. The last version Apple shipped was OpenGL 4.1, which was 5 versions and 8 years behind when they announced it was deprecated in Catalina.

Basically, Apple stopped updates of OpenGL in 2010.

I agree the version they support is old, but they are not buggy. I was referring to the quality of drivers. The reason Apple doesn't support anything about 4.1 is because they were planning Metal, and since 2014 we have Metal there is no need for OpenGL support anymore Metal is superior.

 

[jeanlain]

If Apple is to develop an DXMetal wrapper

Won't happen. Apple wants everyone to code with Metal directly.

 

[robinp]

maybe in a mac pro with a proper gpu, and not a mobile option. laptops have pretty lackluster gaming performance and that's even when bootcamping windows and running drivers made by someone who knows what they're doing

People use iPad Pro for playing fortnite at 120hz. The integrated GPU in the A12 is really quite powerful. Similar to Xbox one of PS4 from what I understand.

Expect the A14 to be much more powerful.

 

[MacBH928]

Open GL is dead on the Mac platform. Why support Vulkan? Do you think Apple is going to be subject to the whims and fantasy of the same 'ball game?'

Why bother fixing GL.

Do something better yourself. And they are. And they can tune it to their own hardware without waiting or going cap in hand to someone else. We've seen the fruits of what you can do with iPhone when you control the software or hardware. Same in iPad. They're class leading devices.

Now try to imagine the Mac as a class leading computer in apps and gaming. (No. Really. Try to imagine it...because it's coming.)

3 decades of mostly crap Open gl performance with Macs as 2nd rate gaming citizens. 'Good bye to that.'

Metal is in millions of iOS apps. They're coming to 'AS Mac' from day one. They don't have to get 3rd parties on board. They're already here.

Consumer AS Mac? BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Apps. Millions of them.

That's an order of magnitude that sweeps aside their previous puny two decades of 'failure.'

Azrael.
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Increasingly it seems to be more about the bottom line at Blizzard since the merger with Activision who seem to be slowly gaining control in that merger of 'equals?'

Azrael.
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And that would explain where Apple is going with its initiatives in gaming and moving the Mac to the 'A' family of chips.

Who wants to be an 'after' thought?

Azrael.

Well, according to your statements I would be excited to play GTA VI on my future MacBook, lets see if that happens.

 

[diamond.g]

Well, according to your statements I would be excited to play GTA VI on my future MacBook, lets see if that happens.

Rockstar hasn’t ported GTA 4 or 5 to iOS or MacOS yet. It isn’t clear why not. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up on 6 happening any time soon if at all.
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People use iPad Pro for playing fortnite at 120hz. The integrated GPU in the A12 is really quite powerful. Similar to Xbox one of PS4 from what I understand.

Expect the A14 to be much more powerful.

How do we know the render settings are similar enough to compare between console and iPad versions?

 

[Obioban]

This is very dependent on studios porting their games to Mac including optimizing for the Mac. There is a reason why people still play the Windows bootcamp version over the native Mac version. If studios just port over their mobile game to desktop, that is solving a problem few asked for.

So yes, it’s still very much debatable.

Nothing you said refutes a change in demand.... So not sure where the debate is
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Rockstar hasn’t ported GTA 4 or 5 to iOS or MacOS yet. It isn’t clear why not. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up on 6 happening any time soon if at all.
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How do we know the render settings are similar enough to compare between console and iPad versions?

GTA5 can run on (was sold on) the Xbox 360, which is running a PPC.