Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Valve drops VR support for macOS

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 287 posts

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#61

Post by mekanicalsyncop »

Everyone's talking about the slower hardware. IMO the biggest hurdle to gaming is Mac OS's baked in mouse acceleration and whatever else makes 100% of mice feel absolutely terrible on a Mac. Even the magic mouse feels janky.

I followed a bunch of online guides to do everything I can to disable the acceleration and everything else, but for some reason when I try to play a game it still feels terrible. Even when the game has a high framerate the mouse never feels smooth.

Tried multiple MBPs. Multiple gaming mice from multiple manufacturers, etc.

Has anyone ever had any luck making a mouse feel as smooth as it does on Windows? If so, what did you do?

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#62

Post by est31 »

olliej wrote: post #50
est31 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No cross platform builds allowed. This is SO annoying. I can cross compile to Windows from GNU/Linux quite easily. In fact with Wine I can even get MSVC running. But Apple, even though they employ many of the Clang/LLVM developers, believes that you must use their OS to target any Apple product. Your only reprieve outside of buying their extremely expensive hardware is using CI services like Travis or Github act…

Sorry, since when is a few hundred dollars “extremely expensive”?

Compared to IBM computers, they are overpriced.

Of course, if you want to test your software on Macs, you'll have to buy their hardware sooner or later, but even then you have to set up the build on the system instead of keeping it as pure test system.

If you do it for your day job, it's probably justified, but if you are just a hobbyist, then even hundreds of dollars are expensive. Especially if you live in a poorer area or are still a student.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#63

Post by ekianjo »

reom_tobit wrote: post #28
ashtonkem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say that the newer MBPs have decent video cards. They’re not great, but they’re ok-ish.

It’s not necessarily about the hardware, but (for me at least) more to do with the OpenGL hacks I have to do to get reasonable cross platform support rolling. Took about 2 days to take a win project to linux, that same win project took about 3 weeks to port to mac. That was the first time I’d done it of course (to either mac or linux), but I just found the mac documentation to be severely lacking. Also all macs are n…

There is no Vulkan support on Mac as far as I know, except with MoltenVK...

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#64

Post by sysbin »

deadbunny wrote: post #45
sysbin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a gamer with a macbook pro. I just use shadow to play games over the cloud. Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics.

> Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics. You're not going to get very far without drivers an you'll be stuck on OpenGL 4.1 and Metal. That and you'll have the problem that there are less games built for MacOS than Windows an Linux + Proton. Investing in a GPU for MacOS for gaming would be a huge waste of money IMO.

People can bootcamp if they want to run windows with a good gpu on their laptop. You're also missing the cloud gaming part.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#65

Post by paxys »

Danieru wrote: post #6

Mac is a horrible platform to support for video game developers. Speaking from experience the issues are: 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. 2. Shifting sand of non-backwards compatibility. Notice how of the above list everyone except Linux and Android have solid back compat stories. Video games are in development f…

Agree with everything except

> 4. Culture. Steve Jobs disliked games, it shows in Apple's support.

IMO their lack of support has less to do with hate and more that they just didn't find value in that demographic. No one is making money off gaming hardware. On the other hand Apple has put in a LOT of effort into iOS gaming. Steve Jobs himself had multiple games showcased in his keynotes.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#66

Post by sysbin »

fortran77 wrote: post #48
sysbin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a gamer with a macbook pro. I just use shadow to play games over the cloud. Otherwise I would invest in a eGPU. So it's not like apple gamers are missing out if they want to game with good graphics.

What? You'll run an unsupported card over 4 slow PCIe lanes over thunderbolt in some third party box? That's a terrible experience.

See other comment and it hasn't been a bad experience for me. Have you personally tried it? I used to have a windows desktop just for gaming and before I decided to limit what I own.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#67

Post by kbumsik »

olliej wrote: post #52
willis936 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really solve the same problem? Can I run metal API on my windows or linux machines? Also, to answer your question: no. Nvidia is in the GPU selling business. They wouldn’t mind having their high priced GPUs in high priced laptops. Apple keeps control of what hardware they sell, which dictates what software gets developed. Why would Nvidia or Apple spend resources to make software for a computer that no one is…

Can you run direct3d on your Linux and Mac systems?

The point is that Windows has an alternative to their proprietary APIs, but mac doesn't

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#68

Post by paxys »

ashtonkem wrote: post #19

I remain skeptical of the long term viability of VR; I’m old enough to remember when 3D TVs and monitors were going to change the face of both TV and video games, and yet here we are. I priced out VR recently and I was unimpressed with the price per value available, with most systems adding $500-$1,000 to my gaming system’s cost, and some requiring that I modify my room to work properly. And that’s not even accountin…

The peak of 3D TVs was like 5-7 years ago, so you hardly need to be "old enough" to have experienced that. Pricing is the easiest hurdle for a new technology to get over. As long as there is a market fit and steady demand, VR will get affordable.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#70

Post by sysbin »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #35
sysbin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is using something like unreal engine not able to compile to all operating systems. I'm not a game developer so pardon my ignorance but can you not just run macOS on a VM from Windows to compile? Hardware isn't horrible from Apple. It's just more expensive for macOS and the complete build quality that has been slipping over the years. All Apple users know we're paying more for the hardware than machines preinstal…

You cannot run macOS virtualized on anything but Apple hardware. It's against the Apple Terms of Service. Is it technically possible to do? Yes. However most companies will not do so because that's ground for getting sued, or having your developer licenses revoked. For the same reason as macOS games must be build on Apple machines, iPhone and iPad applications must also be build on Apple hardware. There is an entire…

Sure, you're right about running macOS on non apple hardware but I know a lot of windows user do that and if you're a serious developer why not just buy an apple computer. I really doubt the cost of the apple computer to then compile isn't going to be paid off from macOS users if the game is any good.

Renting out a mac mini isn't raising the cost or complexity to something unreasonable either. It's like people are forcing their ideology upon a company that decided whats best for itself.

The hardware comment your wrote in regard to mine is cherry picking out the part where apple users know they're overpaying for the hardware they get.

Post reply on HN