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Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

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Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#51

Post by DCKing »

mort96 wrote: post #29
DCKing wrote: post #25

From what I gather, Game Porting Toolkit is two things - a fork of Wine, and their own adaptation/extension of open source projects for DirectX compatibility. Some observations: Windows compatibility: * Windows platform compatibility is achieved with a slightly patched version of Codeweavers' Wine fork - virtually all of the hard work of Windows compatibility has been achieved by the Wine developers and Codeweavers a…

It's sad that D3DMetal isn't open source. Worth noting that this stuff is exactly why people should strongly consider using a copyleft license. It's pretty annoying that nobody can build on top of Apple's work here or incorporate any improvements into DXVK, but that's the license the DXVK project chose.

I don't care much for it being open source or not, it's just a shame Apple is making attempts to limit its use cases through licensing [1]. It's on brand for Apple and totally expected, but still sad. It's not going to stop a bunch of homebrew efforts springing up around it, but it will likely be enough to stop third party app stores like Steam from opening up a huge game library on the Mac in a straightforward way like what happened with Proton.

[1] The license is probably actually meaningless in a lot of jurisdictions, but it still has a chilling effect for commercial parties using it. That's probably exactly what Apple intends.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#52

Post by wslh »

yreg wrote: post #34

As John Siracusa discussed on this week's ATP[0], it's incredible how much effort Apple puts into this considering the result. Apple built it's own little parallel gaming stack world that works really well on their hardware and the hardware is also amazing for the power envelopes it is wrapped in. But then Apple doesn't ship devices with actually powerful GPUs, so it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are fa…

Don't you think that Apple could tackle the performance issues in GPUs in the following years?

The core issue here, business wise, is the price tag. People of all social classes use gaming consoles and it is difficult to think Apple can be relevant in this market even if they tackle all other issues.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#53

Post by microtonal »

nailer wrote: post #26
microtonal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses a proprietary framework that implements Direct3D on top of Metal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36224057

Your link confirmed that it uses wine. And your description sounds exactly like how codeWeavers wine implements direct 3D upon opengl. I imagine it’s simply a proprietary product based on liberally licensed (LGPL) open source code, much in the same way Safari was built upon KHTML.

Sure it uses Wine, but the Direct3D API is handled by the proprietary D3DMetal framework, which implements Direct3D on top of Metal. This is different than CodeWeaver's CrossOver approach, which uses Wine's DirectX-on-Vulkan implementation and then MoltenVK to run Vulkan on Metal.

So, it is not just Wine. It is Wine plus a large proprietary Apple Framework that has most of the Direct3D magic sauce.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#54

Post by AltruisticGapHN »

Man if Apple somehow could have their own Windows emulation layer similar to Valve's Steamdeck developments - I could see myself returning to the Mac. It would be so amazing. The Mac would become truly a gaming platform, regardless if it costs twice the price of an equivalent PC - since people who appreciate Apple's hardware and software will see its value.

Having said that there's still the issue of upgrades. But again, I have to replace pretty much my entire PC every 5 years (new CPU needs a new mobo, needs new RAMs etc). So hmm.

edit: as an aside an interesting question.. I wonder if Valve's efforts, having incentivized developers to make their games more Steamdeck compatible - and hence more "predictable" in terms of how they access Windows APIs - would also make it easier for Apple to translate the games - even if the target is different.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#55

Post by GeekyBear »

DCKing wrote: post #40
GeekyBear wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows platform compatibility is achieved with a slightly patched version of Codeweavers' Wine fork If by "slightly patched" you mean "DirectX 12 support on Apple Silicon was added, then sure. Codeweavers recently announced their own effort to support DirectX 12, but so far only one game, Diablo II Resurrected, works with it.

No, I mean slightly patched. The list of patches is included in the Homebrew formula [1]. The D3DMetal framework and its DirectX 12 support are independent of that Wine work. [1]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/homebrew-apple/main/...

If you ignore the part where they added DirectX 12 support, it's only slightly patched?

You do you.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#56

Post by captainbland »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #6

Keep in mind, it's getting 15fps at 1440x900. It's not saying that Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 is a great experience. It's merely pointing out that it's technically possible (which is a massive achievement).

I think it's a network effect thing as much as anything else. If it's good enough to get people playing games on their macs at all (even if at relatively sub-par settings), that builds the market, shows there are people willing to spend money on games to play them on their macs.

Then at that point games developers might be more inclined to give the platform explicit support.

Otherwise it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation: people aren't playing games on their macs because the library isn't there, the library isn't there because no developers will support a platform where there aren't gamers and so on.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#57

Post by nailer »

microtonal wrote: post #53
nailer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link confirmed that it uses wine. And your description sounds exactly like how codeWeavers wine implements direct 3D upon opengl. I imagine it’s simply a proprietary product based on liberally licensed (LGPL) open source code, much in the same way Safari was built upon KHTML.

Sure it uses Wine, but the Direct3D API is handled by the proprietary D3DMetal framework, which implements Direct3D on top of Metal. This is different than CodeWeaver's CrossOver approach, which uses Wine's DirectX-on-Vulkan implementation and then MoltenVK to run Vulkan on Metal. So, it is not just Wine. It is Wine plus a large proprietary Apple Framework that has most of the Direct3D magic sauce.

Thanks for the info! I think a couple of us in this thread may be arguing cross purposes - I want to ensure that codeweavers gets credit for their open source contributions and you want to ensure technical accuracy. These are both good goals and don’t conflict with each other.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#59

Post by yreg »

wslh wrote: post #52
yreg wrote: post #34

As John Siracusa discussed on this week's ATP[0], it's incredible how much effort Apple puts into this considering the result. Apple built it's own little parallel gaming stack world that works really well on their hardware and the hardware is also amazing for the power envelopes it is wrapped in. But then Apple doesn't ship devices with actually powerful GPUs, so it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are fa…

Don't you think that Apple could tackle the performance issues in GPUs in the following years? The core issue here, business wise, is the price tag. People of all social classes use gaming consoles and it is difficult to think Apple can be relevant in this market even if they tackle all other issues.

Nevermind the low end (it will always be an uphill battle to compete with the consoles on price), the issue is that Apple doesn't even cater to the high end.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#60

Post by scotty79 »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #54

Man if Apple somehow could have their own Windows emulation layer similar to Valve's Steamdeck developments - I could see myself returning to the Mac. It would be so amazing. The Mac would become truly a gaming platform, regardless if it costs twice the price of an equivalent PC - since people who appreciate Apple's hardware and software will see its value. Having said that there's still the issue of upgrades. But ag…

Yeah but how can you stick a gtx 3090 in a Mac?
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