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Valve drops VR support for macOS

techcrunch.com

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Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#201

Post by [deleted] »

Fiezah7e wrote: post #198
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…

I've been owning a VR headset (a htc vive) for more than a year, now, and I concur with other comments : it's something else, and I think the only reason it's not taking over is the high price tag for a setup. That being said, I use my VR headset probably even less than my 3d printer. As mindblowing as it is when I put the headset on (and truly, it never gets old), I realized it's just not for me. I usually play game…

[deleted]

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#202

Post by arvinsim »

rajlego wrote: post #188
llarsson wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a technical problem, but a legal one. It is that they do not want to expose themselves by violating agreements with Apple. Do you want to be the genius that saved a few dollars on hardware with a Hackintosh only to get the company sued?

I hadn’t considered this at all mainly because I haven’t heard of apple taking legal actions against people promoting hackintosh related things and methods. Though I guess it could become a problem for a company.

It's only because most hackintoshers don't make money by selling them.

It also takes a lot of time to setup so hackintoshing will never gain mainstream numbers.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#203

Post by happymellon »

rajlego wrote: post #125
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…

You could build a hackintosh instead. Pain to get software set up just right but when it is it works great.

Of you are thinking of a hackintosh just to compile, then it would probably be easier to just virtualize it.

https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#204

Post by dgellow »

lostgame wrote: post #186
dgellow wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the hardware, are you deliberately ignoring Nintendo? They have low cost, cheap hardware, good margins, and are able to get a huge part of the market. I agree on the need of a shift in product development, but the hardware isn’t what is lacking here.

This certainly has not always been the case. Nintendo lost money on consoles same as SEGA and everyone else.

Not sure how that’s relevant to what is discussed here. Would you only consider game console companies that never lost money?

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#205

Post by f1refly »

eschaton wrote: post #111
numpad0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac tends to fail meeting minimum graphics requirements. There’s no practical way around it.

Sure there is: Design your game for the systems the majority of the users who will want to play it—after you’ve marketed it to them to them—will have. Don’t start with system requirements first and make a game targeting that because you want to show everyone how elite a hacker you are. If Sony didn’t require games achieve 60FPS at 1080p on PlayStation 4 before they’d allow them on the platform, most of the developers…

Yeah well but then your game looks like garbage for most of the people who will proceed to buy some competing product that's more up to their standards. If you want to make a game and sell it only to the low end mac audience go for it, just don't expect to get your investment back. I don't expect game devs to target my 2011 thinkpad in the 2020 gaming market, that'd be ridiculous.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#206

Post by arvinsim »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #145
ashtonkem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The install base of your buyer matters, not the install base of Apple. I doubt that the average MacBook Air buyer is the average Mac video gamer, and I bet that MBPs are over represented in Mac video game uses.

I would bet otherwise. Most gamers are casual and casual games usually run on integrated GPUs. Only top-end MBPs are half decent for gaming anyway.

I have a gaming PC but also used my MBP for gaming on non GPU intensive games.

I was happy with this setup until Catalina killed 32 bit support. Most of the games I played on the MBP was 32 bit.

Killed Mac Gaming for me.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#207

Post by growse »

whymauri wrote: post #80
paxys wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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.

Given the size of the iPhone gaming industry, I think Apple is making Apple-money from gaming hardware.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#208

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

If Apple ever changes their mind, they could own this market though.

I have a 6 year old imac 5K. I don't game a lot but I always had a weak spot for x-plane. X-plane 11 came out shortly after I got this machine and I've been running it throughout. It has improved a lot over the years and they just released a beta with metal support. It's quite amazing that I can get decent performance with this version in 2020 that is better than what I got in 2015 with the same hardware. I run it with number of objects maxed out at a low resolution and mostly can keep the fps above 25-30, which is the minimum for an acceptable experience in a flightsim. The GPU is a still pretty decent AMD R9 M295X with 4GB ram.

However, my Steam library looks pretty depressing. As of Catalina, only a handful of games actually still work. I wasn't really playing most of them but I did spend money on this stuff at some point. I've actually been considering switching to Linux recently specifically because of Steam and having access to a bit wider selection of games. Apparently a lot of stuff works pretty well these days; certainly much more than what works on macs.

IMHO if Apple ever does a move on the gaming front, they have a good shot at domininating this market. If they can manage to mass market a good enough product, the numbers start adding up. That's why the IOS store is such a money maker. I've always been puzzled why they never made more of an effort to position the Apple TV as a gaming console. They tried, a little, but it never added up to much.

Apple making their now widely rumored move to their own CPU/GPU could unlock this. IMHO any VR/AR plans they may have are probably dependent on that. I doubt they'll make life easy for the likes of Steam to run in such an environment though. Apple has never liked middlemen.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#209

Post by grawprog »

Arelius wrote: post #140
ac29 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say more or less the same thing... but for people who aren't native english speakers: a "few hundred" means $300, perhaps $350. Apple doesnt sell anything this cheap, and if you're comparing used Apple hardware to new PC hardware, thats a bit unfair.

well, maybe $400, $500, and maybe you could stretch it to $600 but I agree $800 is well beyond the reach of "a few hundred"

For me $500 and up becomes 'several hundred'.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#210

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

olliej wrote: post #199
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32 bits was dropped this year, not a decade ago. That killed hundreds of macOS games. Another major issue is broken OpenGL: bad drivers, very old version and nowadays deprecated. In 2010 macOS gaming was in a good spot. Nowadays, Apple is making sure you don't use Macs for games.

No, 32bit hardware was dropped a decade ago. There has not been a Mac sold that isn’t capable of running 64bit software for even longer. 32bit was dropped in Catalina, the prior release a year earlier started making it clear it was going away. Neither intel nor amd sell 32bit only desktop processors, and possibly not even laptops. Game developers complain about performance all the time, but given simply recompiling y…

32-bit hardware has never been dropped. All your Macs are capable of running 32-bit. In fact, they can even run 16-bit operating systems.

It is software support that was dropped in Catalina.

"Simply recompiling" for games is impossible for technical, legal, financial and other reasons. Some companies do not even exist.

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