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Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

rosenzweig.io

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Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#41
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

of the top 10, I count 3:

Counter Strike 2 Dota 2 Stardew Valley

How are you getting 7/10 unless you're also counting games that happen to run under Proton, which aren't native? And regardless, that's a really small sample size to extrapolate from, when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total.

https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games

Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#42

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).

This is a bit of a tangential rant, so I apologize. But I recently tried to update Death Stranding, the flagship AAA game that Apple landed on macOS and in the App Store. The game itself is 77.5 GB; it had required a little over 150 GB to install. I shrugged that off at the time; they haven't figured out how to decompress on the fly, whatever.

I had about 50GB free on my (1 TB M1 Max) machine at the time of the update, and the App Store told me I didn't have enough free space to update. I balked and looked at the update description, which was just "Various minor bug fixes." The update size was...75 GB. They expect me to re-download the entire game for various minor bug fixes.

(I would "just blame the developer" here, but Apple clearly invested a lot into having this game available on macOS, in the App Store, and got Hideo Kojima to show up at WWDC (a full year ago, remember) and brag about how nice the entire experience is. Some of Apple's engineers probably worked directly on this port.)

It then sunk in that I didn't just need 75 GB of free space. I needed 150 GB. The App Store will completely download and completely decompress the entire game before replacing it. That is the patching process for the game. You need 231 GB free at all times on your machine to have and update a 77GB game.

This is completely insulting given Apple's storage prices, and the fact that the App Store does not let you install apps on an external drive.

Apple clearly doesn't get it. They act like they're nominally putting in the effort, but then it's still just completely half-assed even when things are played exactly like they want.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#43

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).

This makes no sense to me. Apple does nothing to prevent AAA games on the App Store also being released on Steam. I think it’s more likely that the GPTK license is to encourage developers to make high quality native ports rather than devs checking a box to make their game available on Mac.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#44

    Their shaders contain a peculiar construction:
    
    if (condition) {
       while (true) { }
    }

    condition is always false, but the compiler doesn’t know that.
What is the purpose of this other than to be a poison pill for people writing compliant shader compilers?

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#45
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

of the top 10, I count 3: Counter Strike 2 Dota 2 Stardew Valley How are you getting 7/10 unless you're also counting games that happen to run under Proton, which aren't native? And regardless, that's a really small sample size to extrapolate from, when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games…

I'm sorting by playercount, which seems to be corroberated here: https://steamcharts.com/top

I am counting Proton games because they very explicitly are supported by sufficient Vulkan coverage. In case you weren't paying attention that's kinda the only reason anyone cares about Apple Silicon getting Vulkan 1.3 coverage in the first place.

> when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total.

You're right, when we push it out to 1000 titles it gets closer to 80% playable: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard

> Of which, a massive percentage are based on engines that have Metal support as well.

...yeah, you keep telling yourself that. One day, they'll definitely flip the switch on MacOS support. Certainly.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#48

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).

> Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store This is why their efforts are largely doomed. I'd love to play more AAA games on my Macbook, but too many of them require a separate purchase from the App Store to make that happen, rather than just putting the Mac versions on Steam alongside the Windows version. If you're going to make me choose between playing a game on my laptop and playing it on…

What do we do as Apple users stuck in this ecosystem whose main goal is to extract more money from our pockets? I hate Windows with all my gut but at least I had a sense of freedom about the software I wanted to install on Windows, including games.

On Mac, I'm constantly reminded that beyond this facade of user-friendly UI and nice visuals, there's a greedy company whose market cap is $3T but doesn't give a flying f* about the end-user because it wants to make even more money.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of the top 10, I count 3: Counter Strike 2 Dota 2 Stardew Valley How are you getting 7/10 unless you're also counting games that happen to run under Proton, which aren't native? And regardless, that's a really small sample size to extrapolate from, when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total. https://www.vulkan.org/made-with-vulkan https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games…

I'm sorting by playercount, which seems to be corroberated here: https://steamcharts.com/top I am counting Proton games because they very explicitly are supported by sufficient Vulkan coverage. In case you weren't paying attention that's kinda the only reason anyone cares about Apple Silicon getting Vulkan 1.3 coverage in the first place. > when it's easy to get a more extensive list that is around ~250 games total.…

Okay, so you're counting non-native games when the discussion is AGAIN clearly about native games. If we're talking about translation layers, then it's irrelevant because Whisky/Crossover can run them as well.

This is just you being completely disingenuous now and purposefully avoiding the actual point of the discussion.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#50

Their shaders contain a peculiar construction: if (condition) { while (true) { } } condition is always false, but the compiler doesn’t know that. What is the purpose of this other than to be a poison pill for people writing compliant shader compilers?

Is this how shaders "panic"?
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