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Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

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21–30 of 92 posts

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#21
post #20
post #13

Isn't the translation layer going away soon though?

Rosetta will go away. Game support won't. "Starting with computers using macOS 28, Rosetta functionality will be available only for certain older, unmaintained games that rely on Intel-based frameworks." https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527

Do they plan to have a whitelist of games? I guess they could remove rosetta support for most Cocoa frameworks while keeping OpenGL translation layer.

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#22
post #12
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a “Gamer” so I’m always surprised small things like this make a difference. As a rule of thumb, what is a minimum frame rate a game needs? From there how much does each extra fps make a difference, and at what point do you hit diminishing returns?

It depends wildly on the type of game. e.g. if you're playing a single player turn-based strategy game, you might be taking a few seconds between each decision & UI interaction. Some hard turns you might step away from the computer to think things through for minutes without touching the controls. 30fps for a game like that could be fine. 15-20fps might even be fine, especially if the game engine manages to avoid add…

input lag is a minor part of it. it depends on the game, but for example in CS2, refresh rate changes game mechanics like recoil, movement, even trajectories of thrown grenades.

i went from 60hz to 240hz, with <100fps average, and the difference was still immense. refresh rate is more important than fps, that's how big it is.

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#24
post #19

This, once again, misses the elephant in the room. The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort. The hardware has been good enough for a while now. I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very str…

I don't get this attitude.

It'll never be enough until it is. Making porting lower-effort and higher performance can only help.

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#28
post #19

This, once again, misses the elephant in the room. The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort. The hardware has been good enough for a while now. I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very str…

Isn’t the point that significantly reducing the effort required changes the “is it worth it” equation?

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#29
post #24
post #19

This, once again, misses the elephant in the room. The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort. The hardware has been good enough for a while now. I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very str…

I don't get this attitude. It'll never be enough until it is. Making porting lower-effort and higher performance can only help.

Apple is getting kind of a PR problem with developers. In theory they don't do all the same things on Mac as they do on iOS, but as long as they continue to do them on iOS and keep feature creeping the gatekeeper stuff, people are hesitant to end up stuck with Apple taking 30% of their revenue or denying their app for opaque reasons after they've spent big money to develop it.

At which point who is going to spend development resources helping the platform of the company they're most afraid of screwing them if it becomes more popular? Half the reason more game developers are targeting Linux is a hedge against Microsoft doing that sort of thing, and Apple is on the opposite side of where they want to move.

Re: Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

#30
post #19

This, once again, misses the elephant in the room. The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort. The hardware has been good enough for a while now. I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very str…

Personally I would gladly switch to mac as my actual personal PC if games ran well on it.
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