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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

#311

Post by musicale »

BryantD wrote: post #188
afavour wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are far less expensive and far more powerfull graphics-wise I don't think Apple is chasing the "dedicated gaming machine" crowd here. They want casual gamers to be able to load up a couple of games on the machine they're buying for non-gaming reasons. I'm exactly one of those people: I rarely play video games these days but when the pandemic hit I ended up installing B…

Mobile gaming and PC gaming are somewhat different markets. In particular, mobile game development companies don't have any choice but to work with Apple and Google, whereas AAA PC gaming companies have another outlet already. I like Apple and I like their products but I think if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple.

> if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple

If you're a sizable game developer used to working with Sony or Nintendo, how much harder is it to work with Apple?

For pure mobile devs, how much harder is it to work with Apple vs. Google, and why? If it isn't worth it, why bother? Android seems to have larger market share. How much higher are Apple's platform fees vs. Google's?

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

#312

Post by chrisco255 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #294
chrisco255 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use Macs to get work done Ok, uninstall Steam then, I guess? Games do currently exist on Mac, both in the App store and on Steam. It's just that there's a big swath of games that haven't been ported to Apple Silicon in particular, due to difficulty. I grew up playing games on the Mac, so I'm not sure what your point is.

So why the challenging and abrasive approach? Did what I write offend you? I certainly didn’t mean to, and apologize for my tone. I have no interest in picking fights online, especially in a professional venue, where folks that could have a significant impact on my career are watching how I interact with others.

Well HN has the ability to create arbitrary screen names to create pseudo anonymity. So there's that.

I guess what appears to be abrasive is just lacking tone. It's just me being mildly exasperated for effect. My point is to stress that the Mac has always been a general purpose computing device. Jobs may have chosen to optimize the Mac for productivity in the 90s, and that probably stemmed from the niches that were available to Apple in the Windows-dominated 90s and 00s (that he learned from running NeXT).

The lack of upgradeable components also held the Mac back in graphics technology which precluded it from premium games market. But the M1/M2 chips are game changers. But since they're newish and the Windows market is so established and ARM chips are different from traditional x86 based chips, it's tough to get devs to port for Mac. If they can provide tooling that automates it, it's a great win for Apple.

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

#313

Post by musicale »

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…

> Like how does all this Metal, compile-your-shaders, port-your-games stuff even get budgeted, when it's eventually dead on arrival?

I imagine Apple may be testing the waters. They're a trillion-dollar company, with many customers who play games, and they want to see if they can expand Mac gaming beyond iOS ports.

Consider that there are a large number of games which could run fine on this sort of technology (including much of my Steam game library that currently only runs on Windows) as well as existing macOS ports whose performance can be improved.

For example Final Fantasy XIV already runs on a Crossover/WINE type middleware layer, but at about half the frame rate of the Windows version on comparable hardware. Metal conversion is likely to greatly improve the frame rate, improving the experience for FFXIV players on macOS. If it helps Square Enix deliver a better FFXIV experience on Mac, perhaps they will be more likely to consider Mac ports of some newer games that are currently slated for Windows or consoles.

Moreover it's worth noting that Apple did claim that the M1 had comparable raw GPU performance to the PS5 (and Macs also use fast flash storage like the PS5.) So as the M-series evolves (and the PS5 ages) it may become more feasible to port PS5 games to Mac with decent performance. Solid ports of console games could greatly improve the Mac gaming landscape.

Also we don't know Apple's product plans. It's likely that they have some GPU improvements in the works. Unified memory architecture may also pay off as more games adopt ray-tracing and procedural textures and geometry.

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

#314

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

chrisco255 wrote: post #312
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why the challenging and abrasive approach? Did what I write offend you? I certainly didn’t mean to, and apologize for my tone. I have no interest in picking fights online, especially in a professional venue, where folks that could have a significant impact on my career are watching how I interact with others.

Well HN has the ability to create arbitrary screen names to create pseudo anonymity. So there's that. I guess what appears to be abrasive is just lacking tone. It's just me being mildly exasperated for effect. My point is to stress that the Mac has always been a general purpose computing device. Jobs may have chosen to optimize the Mac for productivity in the 90s, and that probably stemmed from the niches that were a…

> pseudo anonymity

Unfortunately, that "pseudo" is rapidly dwindling. I know that there are already AI "decloakers," that look at writing style, and do a damn good job of finding folks, based on that.

I was a UseNet troll, back in my day. It was not my proudest moment.

One of the reasons that I deliberately make myself known, is that it forces me to watch my words, just like IRL.

My career is done. I am retired (not by choice), and continue to work, but at what I want, and the way that I want to do it. Basically, a dream come true. I am not particularly worried about upsetting folks for my career, but I also feel I have a great deal of atonement due, because of my past behavior.

I like the Apple ecosystem. I've been using it to be highly productive since 1986, and have been playing games on it forever. I remember Pathways Into Darkness[0], thirty years ago, which I thought was awesome.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathways_into_Darkness

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

#315

Post by abujazar »

madeofpalk wrote: post #173
paulmd wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's supposed to be impressed by getting middling performance on Death Stranding 4 years after it came out? Literal definition of "also ran". Plenty of people are impressed at 3060/3070 performance in a 25W system-power envelope . You literally can't even run the memory chips for a 3070 in that power budget let alone the whole APU. Like I'd love to see the AMD equivalent APU to that "also-ran 3070 performance" mac…

That's neat and impressive, but that's all they have. They don't have a high end. For $3000 you can get a top end gaming PC. There's no amount of money you can spend on a Mac to equal that. I think you're missing the point that parent (and Siracusa) made - Apple invests a signficant into the software and graphics stack, only to fumble it at the last minute by not having high-end graphics hardware, and caring enough t…

For $3000 you can get a top end GPU, not a whole gaming PC. Most gamers have mid-range GPUs like those in the M2 Max.

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

#316

Post by npunt »

smoldesu wrote: post #310
npunt wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take a guess that Apple is shipping (far) more TFlops of GPU power than Nvidia or anyone else in the mobile GPU market. Few people are buying laptops with 80-150w TDP GPUs, as those start to stretch the definition of both 'laptop' and 'battery powered'. Big gaming laptops with an hour of battery life are more akin to the luggables of yore.

That's fair. Nvidia has issues scaling their full systems down to laptop spec, and Apple almost has the opposite problem. They're both impressive in their own right, but right now Nvidia has both the performance and performance-per-watt crown in this space. The disparity in 3D applications (like gaming and Blender[0]) so ugly it's not even close. And in all fairness - Apple's products might not need more GPU power. C…

Yeah I'm really curious what Apple's next-gen GPU (with raytracing and a bunch of other stuff) brings to fix some of these shortcomings. It was supposed to show up on last year's iPhone 14 followed presumably by inclusion in the M-series, and the 3nm process was supposed to be shipping this year, but everything got set back a year. In Mac-land the M2 wound up just being an overclocked M1, so we're left waiting for M3 to bring us a more competitive GPU.

The other half of the story is a lot of software (inc Blender, looking at these crazy results) just isn't well optimized and Apple is still struggling to win over developers in certain sectors of the market. Nvidia's decade+ investment in the software side has paid off so incredibly well for them, it's basically made the company.

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

#317

Post by musicale »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124
chrisco255 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I appreciate this effort, not for AAA games, because I never bought a MacBook expecting it to be able to...but for much more casual or lower poly games that are available on Steam for Windows users only, because it's too hard to port. There's tons of sub-AAA games that could easily be ported and enjoyed on a modern M1/M2 Mac.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

> It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer."

When did toys become a bad thing?

"Worst gaming platform in the world" may be something of an exaggeration - Apple Arcade isn't bad, and Macs can also run many iPad games.

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

#318

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

musicale wrote: post #317
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

> It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." When did toys become a bad thing? "Worst gaming platform in the world" may be something of an exaggeration - Apple Arcade isn't bad, and Macs can also run many iPad games.

Good point, but many Mac users are not aware of just How. Damn. Good. games play on gaming rigs. It's like being in a movie.

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

#319

Post by musicale »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #318
musicale wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." When did toys become a bad thing? "Worst gaming platform in the world" may be something of an exaggeration - Apple Arcade isn't bad, and Macs can also run many iPad games.

Good point, but many Mac users are not aware of just How. Damn. Good. games play on gaming rigs. It's like being in a movie.

Many console gamers aren't aware of how [well] games play on PC gaming rigs, or they don't care, and are happy to play games on Switch/PS4/PS5/Xbox.

Apple may very well be targeting mobile and console gamers rather than PC gamers with gaming rigs.

Personally I would definitely enjoy playing on a high-end gaming PC (especially as GPUs become easier to find at MSRP), but I already have a Mac and a PS5.

I wouldn't mind more of my Steam library working on macOS though.

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

#320

Post by astrange »

vore wrote: post #162
nightski wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game developers are not going to start mass adopting a JavaScript API.

WebGPU is not JavaScript only: https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/

Does it really work well for other use cases? Obviously you can call it, but typically a web API has many more security issues to handle than a native API, so I'd expect there to be a lot of compromises a game developer wouldn't want to deal with.
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