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

171–180 of 287 posts

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#171

Post by jay_kyburz »

mrtksn wrote: post #122
IntelMiner wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more a factor of having a large install base than actively courting or targeting "gamers"

Apple actually has a gaming platform called Apple Arcade and gaming is a separate and prominent category in the App Store. They do "game of the day" and editorials all the time, there's a platform called Game Center that can be used as an account between devices and a place to keep scores. Their graphics performance on iPhones has been top of the line for many years now, they always boost about the graphics performan…

While Apple Arcade was a nice idea, its clear now that is has been out a while they they are still not taking gaming seriously. New game releases are slow and the games are very shallow. There are very few games in the Arcade that you would play for more than a day or two.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#172

Post by forgingahead »

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…

Have you tried the Quest? It's a gamechanger in my opinion for ease-of-use. Hardware isn't top of the line, but it's good enough for a great experience, and they are doing all sorts of fancy things with the existing headset via software that is wringing more mileage out of it (Oculus Link, Virtual Desktop, Hand Tracking, pass-through, etc).

Quite bullish that the next generation will be absolutely incredible. I bought an upgraded dev machine to try out VR dev because of the Quest -- it seems like it will be the next mass-computing interface.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#173

Post by izacus »

paxys wrote: post #65
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.

> No one is making money off gaming hardware.

Where does this nonesense come from? There's a whole market segment just catering to PC non-console games with companies manufacturing RGB lighted RAM, specialized motherboards and plenty of gaming periphelias. Even gaming laptop market is booming.

And that's even ignoring "tiny" companies like nVidia.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#174

Post by izacus »

ashtonkem wrote: post #13
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…

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

Those GPUs are horribly underpowered for the screen they're driving. They would be fine on a 1920x1080 display, but on a Mac display the GPU barely squeezes stable 30fps on modern games... even in lowest settings.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#175

Post by saagarjha »

leowoo91 wrote: post #164
detaro wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

License terms explicitly forbid using any of the SDK on non-Apple hardware, so many companies will not be comfortable with ignoring that.

What if linux is on apple hardware?

Then why not run macOS?

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#176

Post by saagarjha »

cpeterso wrote: post #156
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…

> 1. No cross platform builds allowed. Mozilla cross compiles Mac (and soon Windows, I believe) Firefox builds on Linux build machines.

Someone had mentioned this previously and I was curious if you were linking against the SDK or TBD files.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#177

Post by jdietrich »

wtallis wrote: post #88
whymauri wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one is making money off gaming hardware. Huh? I mean, surely nobody is making Apple-money from gaming hardware. But plenty of companies of various sizes are decently profitable and making money in this space.

It wasn't that long ago that gaming consoles were being sold at an astonishing loss, to be made up on services subscription revenue. They're mostly not loss leaders anymore, but the hardware sales are definitely not responsible for significant profits. Video game console hardware has lower margins than gaming PC components, which are already a very low-margin market segment (except where companies can get away with a…

>Video game console hardware has lower margins than gaming PC components, which are already a very low-margin market segment

The high end has quite generous margins and the volumes are absolutely insane, which is why we're now doing HPC and ML on what is basically gaming hardware. Nvidia have a broad spectrum of markets, from the high margin and low volume Quadro to the low margin and high volume GTX - in a business that's dominated by NRE costs, that's a good place to be.

Apple providing support for gaming wouldn't necessarily be profitable in itself, but it'd potentially provide the volumes to improve their offerings for professional rendering applications. Apple refuse to do business with Nvidia and they've been hamstrung by AMD's weak offerings, but a gaming-focused Apple could acquire some IP and tape out their own GPUs.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#178

Post by agys »

chaostheory wrote: post #124
smnrchrds wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't played Beat Saber, but I remember Avatar. As beautiful as it was, it remained unique. All new films for the past decade have been released as 3D, but I cannot think of a single one other than Avatar that I would prefer watching in 3D over 2D. Is there reason to believe Beat Saber would not become VR's Avatar?

Avatar did not wow me in 3d. Beat Saber and the current VR games like Alyx and Pistol Whip made me a believer in VR.

A believr. (sorry)

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#179

Post by mcot2 »

numpad0 wrote: post #90
ihuman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to mount the trashcan mac pros with unofficial mounts, its just awkward and definitely not intended [0]. You can also mount iMac Pros [1]. [0] https://twitter.com/brianstucki/status/800778773998145536 [1] https://www.macstadium.com/imacpro

It's also possible to outright buy Mac Pro Rack, a $6500 full depth 4U server, that is 1CPU all the way up, that offer neither any redundancy nor any remote management, if that kind of trash matters at all.

The lack of dual power supplies and remote power on/off and good PXE support is crazy for a rack mount computer (won’t even dignify it by calling it a server).

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#180

Post by girvo »

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…

As one of the few who tried to game on macOS using an eGPU; I don’t blame you. Also, Tiny Metal rules :)
Post reply on HN