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

Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

rosenzweig.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 372 posts

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#31

Post by littlecranky67 »

babypuncher wrote: post #27
littlecranky67 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why their efforts are largely doomed I'm not as certain about that as you are. I think there are - as always - different streams withing that mega corporation. It is probably sales-oriented people wanting nothing but AAA games on the App Store and be okay with the Mac not being a major choice for games if that doesn't happen. The other stream is probably more enthusiastic (especially with the Apple Silicon…

> hoping we will see a proton-like GPTK that can run my steam library. I would absolutely LOVE this! I also know a lot of people who would be a lot more interested in buying a Macbook if this were a thing.

Well regarding the Macbook/Laptop case vs. Desktop: With me typing this on the MacMini M2 base model (8GB/256GB) retailed at 650€ I can assure you, it is a nice gaming machine hardware-wise. Not for latest and greatest AAA games of course, but I played through all the Tomb Raider reboot games on this machine (using Rosetta2 as they are non-native on Steam) on High details with 1080p. Now the major issue is software, there is just not enough games available. I do use Heroic+Crossover Wine to run some other games, but it is just finnicky and only for the pro user - not average casual gamers.

Saying this, Apple could launch a 999€ Mac Mini with focus on gamers with a custom M4 design soon, if they had a proper Proton-like layer. Heck, size & noise wise, the Mac Mini beats the current PS5 and Xboxes. But they only treat GPTK as a solution for developers, not gamers. And I highly suspect, this is only due to the fact that they won't get any percentage from games sales, as Steam is the dominant player here.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#32

Post by bilbo0s »

rowanG077 wrote: post #5
talldayo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be a small bit of irony if the gaming experience on Asahi ends up easier and more straightforward than MacOS. Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late.

Why would that be ironic. Apple wilfully is holding gaming back on OSX by ignoring Vulkan and having a pure shit opengl implementation.

You may have a good point with the opengl thing. But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small that we can't credibly say that not having a Vulkan driver holds Apple back on gaming. I'd bet any money that the number of games that work on Metal is wayyyy higher than the minuscule number of games that run on Vulkan. Which should tell you how few Vulkan games there are.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#33

Post by wmf »

aurareturn wrote: post #6

I wonder if this effort to add Vulcan to Linux and then translate DirectX in Asahi Linux would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon. Apple would like AAA developers to port their AAA games over to Metal so that the game has one code base but can run on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the Vision Pro. Perhaps Mac gamers will install Asahi Linux in order to play AAA PC titles.

Apple already released the Game Porting Toolkit.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#34

Post by Almondsetat »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #10
aurareturn wrote: post #6

I wonder if this effort to add Vulcan to Linux and then translate DirectX in Asahi Linux would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon. Apple would like AAA developers to port their AAA games over to Metal so that the game has one code base but can run on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the Vision Pro. Perhaps Mac gamers will install Asahi Linux in order to play AAA PC titles.

> would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon Apple's dream is not to have AAA games land on Apple Silicon - they can do this with Proton-like layer, like they did with GPTK. Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store - not on Steam or Epic Game store. That is why the GPTK effort is only have assed (and the license prevents Valve integrating it into steam directly).

What has proton got to do with x86 -> ARM ?

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#35

Post by talldayo »

bilbo0s wrote: post #32
rowanG077 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be ironic. Apple wilfully is holding gaming back on OSX by ignoring Vulkan and having a pure shit opengl implementation.

You may have a good point with the opengl thing. But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small that we can't credibly say that not having a Vulkan driver holds Apple back on gaming. I'd bet any money that the number of games that work on Metal is wayyyy higher than the minuscule number of games that run on Vulkan. Which should tell you how few Vulkan games there are.

> But the number of games that run on Vulkan is so vanishingly small

Really? 7 out of the 10 most popular games on Steam work fine if you have Vulkan 1.3 drivers: https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#36

Post by babypuncher »

galad87 wrote: post #26
babypuncher wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan is how Direct3D is implemented on non-Windows operating systems, thanks to DXVK.

I know, but why make a Direct3D wrapper on Vulkan when in the end you are going to run only Direct3D games anyway.

Because DXVK already exists, and you do still want to run Vulkan anyways. There are AAA games out there using it instead of Direct3D. Natively re-implementing Direct3D APIs would be a tremendous amount of work for little or no real benefit.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#37

Post by littlecranky67 »

Almondsetat wrote: post #34
littlecranky67 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon Apple's dream is not to have AAA games land on Apple Silicon - they can do this with Proton-like layer, like they did with GPTK. Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store - not on Steam or Epic Game store. That is why the GPTK effort is only have assed (and the license prevents Valve integrating it into steam directly).

What has proton got to do with x86 -> ARM ?

x86 -> ARM is already done by apple (rosetta2). What they need is a wine layer to mimmick the Windows API to allow a large amount of existing games to run on macOS without the devs porting. Which DOES exist, it is called crossover (and uses wine and GPTK). But it is a 3rd party company.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#38

Post by dagmx »

talldayo wrote: post #30
dagmx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertions aren’t backed by history though. Prior to metal and Vulkan, many games used Cider to target Mac despite having the same APi (at that point, an up to date OpenGL). And many of the current game devs do have Metal versions of their engines that they target towards iOS, yet don’t have a macOS version. The fact of the matter is that it comes down to market share. Macs have historically not had a large user…

I mean I owned a Mac back then, I remember pretty fondly that pre-Catalina MacOS was a fairly well-targeted platform. OpenGL was working for them; you could play first-person shooters, online games with fancy graphics, the kit and kaboodle. Things weren't perfect , but there was a lot of functional cross-platform software back when Apple commit to maintaining common APIs. You cannot deny that an entire ecosystem of s…

Go back and see how many of those games were running Cider though. The switch to kill 32-bit games killed more games than the deprecation of OpenGL did. The number of games that targeted OpenGL was ALSO shockingly low.

This is something that OSS fans do not want to reconcile: Open source graphics APIs have LONG lost out to proprietary graphics APIs in gaming. OpenGL had a very small base in games, Vulkan is even smaller.

and again, you went exactly back to where I knew you would and pre-empted it because it's the obvious playbook of answers. Vulkan didn't fix gaming on Linux. Proton did. And again, you ignore the key part of the sentence: NATIVE

Linux has fewer *native* AAA games than macOS. Vulkan has not solved that.

The SteamDeck is a product targeted at gamers that provided a new value proposition: AAA gaming on the go. Which further reinforces my point that API is irrelevant to the discussion, its about demographic. Apple has a strong gaming demographic on the mobile side (with metal no less).

The steam deck didn't introduce new Vulkan/Proton capabilities. Why was Linux gaming stagnant before it? Doesn't that exactly reinforce that its the form factor proposition that made it skyrocket?

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#39

Post by snarfy »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #10
aurareturn wrote: post #6

I wonder if this effort to add Vulcan to Linux and then translate DirectX in Asahi Linux would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon. Apple would like AAA developers to port their AAA games over to Metal so that the game has one code base but can run on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the Vision Pro. Perhaps Mac gamers will install Asahi Linux in order to play AAA PC titles.

> would impact Apple's dream of landing AAA games on Apple Silicon Apple's dream is not to have AAA games land on Apple Silicon - they can do this with Proton-like layer, like they did with GPTK. Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store - not on Steam or Epic Game store. That is why the GPTK effort is only have assed (and the license prevents Valve integrating it into steam directly).

Your comment puts it very succinctly.

They don't care about your gaming experience on Mac. They care about money.

I wish they weren't so short sighted here. They can't see through the trees that maybe they won't make money selling games through the app store, but they would make money selling more Macs.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#40

Post by talldayo »

dagmx wrote: post #38
talldayo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I owned a Mac back then, I remember pretty fondly that pre-Catalina MacOS was a fairly well-targeted platform. OpenGL was working for them; you could play first-person shooters, online games with fancy graphics, the kit and kaboodle. Things weren't perfect , but there was a lot of functional cross-platform software back when Apple commit to maintaining common APIs. You cannot deny that an entire ecosystem of s…

Go back and see how many of those games were running Cider though. The switch to kill 32-bit games killed more games than the deprecation of OpenGL did. The number of games that targeted OpenGL was ALSO shockingly low. This is something that OSS fans do not want to reconcile: Open source graphics APIs have LONG lost out to proprietary graphics APIs in gaming. OpenGL had a very small base in games, Vulkan is even smal…

> switch to kill 32-bit games killed more games than the deprecation of OpenGL did.

It did. If you want to parade around how cool Cider is, it doesn't make much sense to venerate the update that killed it.

> Linux has fewer native AAA games than macOS. Vulkan has not solved that.

Imagine all the Steam Deck users that are pissed because they can't play Resident Evil 8 and Tomb Raider natively! They must be super upset, and envious of Apple's superior native version. Surely.

Hey, here's a magic question for you; which do you think will get supported longer, a DirectX title running on Proton or an Apple-native title running on Apple software. Do you trust Apple to keep supporting your game as long as Proton would keep supporting it?

Post reply on HN