OS X Playing battlefield 3 on mac

[NickkyJ]

I see a bunch of youtube videos of people playing this game on mac (or claiming they are) and was wondering is it possible for me to download the game from the origin store and just run the game as is or do i need bootcamp

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I see a bunch of youtube videos of people playing this game on mac (or claiming they are) and was wondering is it possible for me to download the game from the origin store and just run the game as is or do i need bootcamp

You'd need bootcamp for acceptable performance and also because there is no Mac version of the game. Just be sure to review the system requirements for Battlefield 3 vs the hardware your particular Mac has to make sure you can run it okay.

 

[Nightarchaon]

Bootcamp for best performance,

Or if you have an i7 iMac with a bucket of ram (say 16gb) it does run in Parallels , but the performance is noticeably lower (like having to run at 1280 res rather than native)

as is always the case with gaming, unless the game is 3 or 4 years old and your hardware is the latest revision, Bootcamp is the best solution

 

[Raima]

Or if you have an i7 iMac with a bucket of ram (say 16gb) it does run in Parallels , but the performance is noticeably lower (like having to run at 1280 res rather than native)

That's not the issue, it's lag. Your keyboard and mouse doesn't respond as quick when you run games in virtual mode.

 

[Nightarchaon]

That's not the issue, it's lag. Your keyboard and mouse doesn't respond as quick when you run games in virtual mode.

Pointer Lag is certainly bad under Wine, lags a pain under wrappers like that, however under Parallels there is no lag, because i assign the mouse as a dedicated device to the virtual machine (leaving the macs pointer on the trackpad), and keyboard lag is non-existent as far as I've experienced so far.

this of course comes under the "your Virtual Machine settings have to be right" to begin with.

the only problem I've had with Parallels so far has been the fact that you get a small fraction of the video cards capabilities, its kind of like having a PC with an Intel HD4000 and an Nvidia Titan and only ever using the HD4000 gaming, just stupid, better to bootcamp and use your hardware directly.

Parallels for me is a convenience tool, i can pop into older engine games (mostly Unreal Engine games like Mass Effect) with no noticeable drop in quality for an hour without have to interrupt my workflow on Mac OS, i can close the game and go back to what i was doing, (or play the game whilst i wait for things to complete)

If i want to go play BF3 or Skyrim i boot to bootcamp, i need the full , bare metal horsepower.