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

Valve drops VR support for macOS

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 287 posts

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#161

Post by ComputerGuru »

mekanicalsyncop wrote: post #142
ascom wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FPS games typically use raw input, which bypasses any acceleration settings in the OS. This works on both Windows and macOS, assuming the game is properly written. This is why I insist on keeping mouse acceleration enabled since it helps with everyday computing tasks and has no effect on at least the games I normally play. Regarding the comment above, it is definitely possible there are subtle configuration differenc…

Getting rid of Mac OS's acceleration isn't simply a matter of clicking "raw input" in a game's options. Even if you use the command line to actually disable it for some reason the mouse still feels off. If you google, for example "counterstrike mac os raw input" or something similar, you'll see lots of posts about people having the same issue. The raw input setting doesn't work properly. Granted the posts are from a…

I don’t think you understand what raw input means. It doesn’t mean telling the OS you don’t want it to mess with your input, it means bypassing the userland OS input framework entirely and grabbing the input at a lower level preventing the default OS stack from even processing those input events.

A well-designed game would do that, anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if the counter strike port for macOS doesn’t qualify as such.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#162

Post by detaro »

pengaru wrote: post #153
Danieru wrote: 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…

> 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. I build for OSX from Linux using clang all the time. You just need to grab the sdk from xcode and get your toolchain all setup. https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross

License terms explicitly forbid using any of the SDK on non-Apple hardware, so many companies will not be comfortable with ignoring that.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#163

Post by Tossrock »

wilg wrote: post #133
est31 wrote: 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…

I think Unity does it (sort of). But yea...

Unity does sort of do it, but even then, the result is not the same as compiling on OSX - in particular, I've noticed differences in the shaders emitted, around HDR/bloom.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#164

Post by leowoo91 »

detaro wrote: post #162
pengaru wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No cross platform builds allowed. We can compile to Windows, Linux, Android, Switch, PS4, Xbox One all from one windows build machine. I build for OSX from Linux using clang all the time. You just need to grab the sdk from xcode and get your toolchain all setup. https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross

License terms explicitly forbid using any of the SDK on non-Apple hardware, so many companies will not be comfortable with ignoring that.

What if linux is on apple hardware?

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#165

Post by dgellow »

wtallis wrote: post #147
dgellow wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They branded their Apple TV as a game platform. It has a controller that looks like a console gamepad and is one of the target platform of Apple Arcade.

That's obviously not in the same league. The gaming capabilities of Apple TV are still pretty much an afterthought. The games available are more likely to be ports from smartphones, not Xbox/PS platforms. The processing power is a small fraction of what a video game console or gaming PC requires, which is why Apple can use leftover old smartphone SoCs instead of having to invest in actual high-end chips for the devic…

Regarding the hardware, are you deliberately ignoring Nintendo? They have low cost, cheap hardware, good margins, and are able to get a huge part of the market.

I agree on the need of a shift in product development, but the hardware isn’t what is lacking here.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#166

Post by Kostic »

Danieru wrote: 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…

The backwards compatibility for games on Linux is being improved.

We do have Flatpak[0] which could be used for indy, DRM-free games.

Valve is also working on a Steam Linux Runtime[1] which uses Linux namespaces to make older titles work on newer distributions.

[0] https://flatpak.org/ [1] https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/16386755...

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#167

Post by pcr910303 »

willis936 wrote: post #36
pcr910303 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, Apple’s Metal was developed before Bulkan while tackling the same problem, and for the NVidia chips, the reason on the bad relationship of NVidia/Apple is mostly on NVidia, right?

Does it really solve the same problem? Can I run metal API on my windows or linux machines? Also, to answer your question: no. Nvidia is in the GPU selling business. They wouldn’t mind having their high priced GPUs in high priced laptops. Apple keeps control of what hardware they sell, which dictates what software gets developed. Why would Nvidia or Apple spend resources to make software for a computer that no one is…

The problem space Vulkan and Metal solves is not high level cross platform graphics (which OpenGL tries to solve), it’s low level control over the GPU.

That’s the problem they’re trying to solve, it’s not about cross platform.

You might ask, ‘Then why is OpenGL deprecated?’. The answer is that Apple is just deprecating it’s own support since there’s a more low level API, OpenGL should be implemented on top of Metal, which (for example) MoltenGL is.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#168

Post by ngcc_hk »

est31 wrote: post #62
olliej wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Compared to IBM computers, they are overpriced. Of course, if you want to test your software on Macs, you'll have to buy their hardware sooner or later, but even then you have to set up the build on the system instead of keeping it as pure test system. If you do it for your day job, it's probably justified, but if you are just a hobbyist, then even hundreds of dollars are expensive. Especially if you live in a poorer…

IBM computers!? Have not heard for quite awhile. Thought they quit the PC world to Lenovo for quite sometimes la.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#169

Post by pcr910303 »

phire wrote: post #157
pcr910303 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, Apple’s Metal was developed before Bulkan while tackling the same problem, and for the NVidia chips, the reason on the bad relationship of NVidia/Apple is mostly on NVidia, right?

It doesn't matter if Metal was first, or better. The problem is that it's unique and different. The problem is that I (as an open source developer for a popular gaming-related project with an OSX port) can't realistically develop and support a metal backend without having to buy an expensive mac with a good modern GPU. And with OpenGL being deprecated on Mac, with old and (sometimes) broken drivers that are missing 1…

I’ve mentioned it in a sibling comment, but I’ll just copy-paste my text:

> The problem space Vulkan and Metal solves is not high level cross platform graphics (which OpenGL tries to solve), it’s low level control over the GPU. That’s the problem they’re trying to solve, it’s not about cross platform. You might ask, ‘Then why is OpenGL deprecated?’. The answer is that Apple is just deprecating it’s own support since there’s a more low level API, OpenGL should be implemented as a library on top of Metal, which (for example) libraries like MoltenGL is.

Re: Valve drops VR support for macOS

#170

Post by hajimemash »

mekanicalsyncop wrote: post #61

Everyone's talking about the slower hardware. IMO the biggest hurdle to gaming is Mac OS's baked in mouse acceleration and whatever else makes 100% of mice feel absolutely terrible on a Mac. Even the magic mouse feels janky. I followed a bunch of online guides to do everything I can to disable the acceleration and everything else, but for some reason when I try to play a game it still feels terrible. Even when the ga…

Removing macOS mouse acceleration is mandatory for me to not go crazy. I'm using this script now: https://github.com/docwhat/killmouseaccel

Downside is it's a one-shot sensitivity which can't be adjusted, owing to the hacky nature of it, which was semi-found-by-chance to boot. After lots of searching on threads, seems this is one of the only hacks that works, so doesn't seem to be much support from macOS on this stuff.

Used to have an app format of this so I didn't have to run the console command every time at login, but need to find an updated solution for Catalina.

Post reply on HN