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

I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

andrewethanzeng.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 102 posts

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#41

Post by culi »

al_borland wrote: post #29
culi wrote: post #17

If you don't wanna pay $74 for CrossOver, there's also Whisky which impressed me and I've had great success with. It's an open source Wine wrapper for macOS https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky EDIT: it seems that at some point in the past month the author stated whisky is no longer maintained!

I see the repo has fairly recent updates, but the website says the project is no longer actively maintained. https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice

Interesting! It wasn't the case when I first downloaded it last month!

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#42

Post by haberman »

These days I game on a PC in the closet streamed to my Mac via Sunshine/Moonlight. Keeps the wires and fan noise out of the office, which is nice.

There’s a tiny bit of latency, but I’m not playing twitch reflex games on it.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#43

Post by culi »

havaloc wrote: post #28
culi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a free open source alternative like Whisky https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky

No longer maintained as of very recently: https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice

FWIW it still works and I doubt it'll stop working any time soon. Maybe for games released a year from now it won't be feasible

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#44

Post by p_ing »

ddtaylor wrote: post #35

Does Mac not do Steam gaming the same way? In Linux I just press install and it works with my AMD card. I haven't pressed any other buttons. Fedora 42

Linux works because it runs the most stable Linux ABI is available— Win32.

Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#45

Post by roxolotl »

darkteflon wrote: post #15
roxolotl wrote: post #6

I recently finished the latest iteration of a gaming PC and haven’t even bothered installing windows on it. Not Mac but it seems that Linux gaming is also basically Windows gaming at this point. It could probably play games on Ultra vs High if I used Windows but ads in the menu bar is a bridge too far for me.

Linux gaming is absolutely incredible right now. After an essay of several months, however, I recently switched my gaming rig back to Windows 10 for three reasons alone: the multiplayer game I mainly play with my buds is one of the very, very few that won’t work on Linux due to anti-cheat shenanigans, Steam Big Screen has a persistent bug with Nvidia cards even as of 560.x, and I could never quite get Sunshine + Moon…

So I actually tend to prefer couch gaming and I stream to a MacBook pretty often with Steam. Got an Xbox controller and the latency is basically 0. If you really want max quality, or you’re playing competitive fps games it’s not going to work but for single player games it’s been great.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#46

Post by santoshalper »

If gaming is important to you, build a good desktop gaming PC. If you enjoy games casually and don't want the money/hassle of a gaming desktop, get a Playstation, Switch, Steam Deck, or buy a lower-end gaming laptop.

If you enjoy tinkering, setting up Linux or a Mac for gaming can be a fun project, but it's not a good use of your time if your goal is to play games well. You'll jump through a lot of hoops and maybe get something 70% as good.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#47

Post by p_ing »

jsheard wrote: post #25
relativeadv wrote: post #11

i love my studio displays but they would be absolute dogwater for gaming

Yeah, unfortunately Apple have backed themselves into a corner there with their ~220ppi Retina display standard. Nobody makes monitor-sized panels that dense which also support high refresh rates, they're all limited to 60hz. The Apple monitors still don't support VRR either, even though the software support has been in place on macOS for a while it only works with third party monitors.

I have a 27” 5K display with 218 ppi running at 75Hz. It’s a newly released monitor from Viewsonic.

75Hz would be acceptable however macOS has funky mouse acceleration that makes gaming feel weird.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#50

Post by svennidal »

I do my work on a mac because I don't like the nuisance of trying to do it on windows. There is always some wonkiness that I don't even bother to remember the details of, because the solution is just to do it on mac.

I rather play games on windows because I don't like the nuisance of trying to do it on mac. There is always some wonkiness that I don't even bother to remember the details of, because the solution is just to do it on windows.

Post reply on HN