Live data from Hacker News

Valve drops VR support for macOS

techcrunch.com

101–110 of 287 posts

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#101
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking about Vulkan. Why are you asking about D3D?

There are Vulkan and OpenGL -> metal libraries. The original post gave windows (where the better performing native api is direct3d) As an example.

>TBF, Apple’s Metal was developed before Bulkan while tackling the same problem

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#102
post #56

I remain skeptical of the long term viability of VR; I’m old enough to remember when 3D TVs and monitors were going to change the face of both TV and video games, and yet here we are. I priced out VR recently and I was unimpressed with the price per value available, with most systems adding $500-$1,000 to my gaming system’s cost, and some requiring that I modify my room to work properly. And that’s not even accountin…

I never heard anyone really passionately speak about the 3D experience. It was always marketing speech with movie-goers sometimes buying into the expectation. But after experiencing it, no one ever was really passionate about it. At most they would slightly prefer, and even so I think it was because the confounding factor that 3D sessions are also played in the largest screens and the best sound system. But for VR? I…

From the perspective of everyone not in the niche, the difference between it fading away and being a niche is minimal.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#103
post #2

I don't understand why a Mac is such a bad platform for gaming, what is the technical challenge here? Can someone enlighten me?

Game developers who insist upon working a certain way and insist that they have to target a certain kind of high baseline hardware say this.

Game developers who want to reach a broad market and are willing to meet their deployment platforms halfway do not say this. They just port and ship.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#104
post #96
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think adaptive refresh rate is what that post was referring to. Instead, I think it was referring to the difficulty in doing frame synchronization when the game is running on the discrete GPU but the display is connected to the integrated GPU. But I don't know how Apple's hardware is set up on that score.

Yeah, the problem was making sure we didn't have screen tearing. T he only path to video was through the mobile integrated graphics interface even when using the external graphics chip. On a desktop CPU you can DMA into graphics memory directly and get the frame sync. I think you have to do this if you want to be able to switch between integrated and external. Which we didn't care about but perhaps most people do?

> I think you have to do this if you want to be able to switch between integrated and external. Which we didn't care about but perhaps most people do?

Most people need to be able to power down the discrete GPU when they're done gaming in order to have reasonable battery life, and the most user-friendly way to make that possible is for every application but the video game to use the integrated GPU.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#105
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say that the newer MBPs have decent video cards. They’re not great, but they’re ok-ish.

How is the proportion of MBPs in the macOS users?

Probably high as long as you include work machines, and otherwise low.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#106
post #50
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No cross platform builds allowed. This is SO annoying. I can cross compile to Windows from GNU/Linux quite easily. In fact with Wine I can even get MSVC running. But Apple, even though they employ many of the Clang/LLVM developers, believes that you must use their OS to target any Apple product. Your only reprieve outside of buying their extremely expensive hardware is using CI services like Travis or Github act…

Sorry, since when is a few hundred dollars “extremely expensive”?

A few? I was just looking at getting MacOS hardware so I could do iPhone builds of a Flutter app. The bottom-end Mac Mini is $800 with 8 GB of RAM, and $1400 with 32 GB, which is what people on forums were recommending for running XCode properly. Is that what you'd call a few?

Looking at System76's equivalent mini, it's $555 for the low end, which has the same RAM and a faster, newer processor. Going to 32 GB takes it all the way to $700, or half what Apple's charging. So yes, "extremely expensive" is what it seems like to me.

Especially given that it should be entirely unnecessary. Just let me do a cross-platform build!

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#107

I remain skeptical of the long term viability of VR; I’m old enough to remember when 3D TVs and monitors were going to change the face of both TV and video games, and yet here we are. I priced out VR recently and I was unimpressed with the price per value available, with most systems adding $500-$1,000 to my gaming system’s cost, and some requiring that I modify my room to work properly. And that’s not even accountin…

Come back after you played HL: Alyx, Beat Saber, and No Man's Sky VR. Any one of these experiences is proof that VR is a huge deal.

I’m not floating that much money to try a game, and I’m unaware of anyone in my social circles who owns any level of headset.

“Go spend a few hundred to prove the value” is a hard sell.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#108
post #12
post #6

Mac is a horrible platform to support for video game developers. Speaking from experience the issues are: 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. 2. Shifting sand of non-backwards compatibility. Notice how of the above list everyone except Linux and Android have solid back compat stories. Video games are in development f…

How is using something like unreal engine not able to compile to all operating systems. I'm not a game developer so pardon my ignorance but can you not just run macOS on a VM from Windows to compile? Hardware isn't horrible from Apple. It's just more expensive for macOS and the complete build quality that has been slipping over the years. All Apple users know we're paying more for the hardware than machines preinstal…

> Did Steve Jobs really dislike games?

'[Steve] claimed to have never read a comic book in his life (“I hate them more than I hate video games,” he told me)...' — https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/bob-iger-remembers-s...

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#109
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, since when is a few hundred dollars “extremely expensive”?

A few? I was just looking at getting MacOS hardware so I could do iPhone builds of a Flutter app. The bottom-end Mac Mini is $800 with 8 GB of RAM, and $1400 with 32 GB, which is what people on forums were recommending for running XCode properly. Is that what you'd call a few? Looking at System76's equivalent mini, it's $555 for the low end, which has the same RAM and a faster, newer processor. Going to 32 GB takes i…

The Mac mini amazingly has user expandable RAM. Crucial sells kits for up to 64GB. It is still too expensive a machine got what you get.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#110
post #6

Mac is a horrible platform to support for video game developers. Speaking from experience the issues are: 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. 2. Shifting sand of non-backwards compatibility. Notice how of the above list everyone except Linux and Android have solid back compat stories. Video games are in development f…

On the other hand, Apple is a top dog in mobile gaming. Maybe it should not be generalized as "Apple doesn't like games".
Post reply on HN