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Blurry rendering of games on Mac

colincornaby.me

61–70 of 328 posts

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#61

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

They sure don't care about games on Mac, but I think this specific issue is more due to trying to do "magic" for better or worse.

Introducing the notch creates this "here but not really usable" area that is specific to some displays, and Apple touts it as something that will just work thanks to their software layer.

Yet every app has to deal with it one way or another and most apps that care about screen estate or resolution will need hacks.

It will be the same for every feature that pushes the boundaries and offers an abstraction layer as an answer to how the issues will be solved.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#62
post #17

Interesting article, but I think the demonstration image isn’t doing its job. Neither side really looks good to me. They both look roughly the same.

Right? If it's vertically squashed, then at least draw the dividing line vertically so we can see a better difference! But yeah, both images seem like a janky rendering of an antialiased circle.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#63

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

I don’t try to game on my laptop, and I have always thought “gaming laptops” are somewhat akin to “racing-spec BarcaLoungers”. That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs. If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC.

White-hot take: you’re allowed to own a PC and a Mac. They aren’t like matter and antimatter, you won’t collapse the galaxy or anything.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#64

How can this be fixed without breaking existing software? Re-ordering the list?

They could do what Windows has done, and build OS code that checks if the running application is a known-legacy game, and lie to the game about various capabilities so that the game runs well and looks good. Not sure how much of that is still around but it was rampant for many years and likely a key to Windows success in gaming.

> They could do what Windows has done, and build OS code that checks if the running application is a known-legacy game, and lie to the game about various capabilities so that the game runs well and looks good.

Or, even simpler (and AFAIK modern Windows does that too): if the running application doesn't say in its application manifest "I'm a modern application which understands the new things from operating system versions A, B, C and features X, Y, Z", you know it's a legacy application and you can activate the relevant compatibility shims.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#65
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. Why would Apple be deliberately sabotaging the experience? They would gain nothing from it. That argument makes even less sense when you consider most of the games mentioned in the article are on the Mac App Store, Apple can take their cut . https://apps.apple.com/us/app/control-ultimate-editi…

Except for the handful of Mac ports exclusive to the Mac App Store, who with a lick of sense would choose to buy from there? Steam, GoG and Epic are all more feature rich, have more often sales/3rd party resellers and throw in the PC version too. On iOS there is no choice.

When No Man’s Sky first announced a Mac port, they promised to release on Steam and App Store. I waited a year after the Steam release for the App Store release which never came.

I am a very casual gamer and sometimes weeks go by without playing. My first experience with Steam was with Civ VI. Long flight, no internet, great I’ll play some Civ! But instead of opening up Civ, I was forced to open Steam which would then not allow me to play my own game because I hadn’t authenticated recently enough for them. Or I would try to play and Steam would say, oh first you need to download some huge update before you’re allowed to play your single player entirely offline game.

I know theoretically GoG is supposed to solve this issue but no Mac game I wanted was available there. Finally Cyperpunk 2077 launched on multiple stores and I bought on GoG. Even then, the default option became to use the GoG launcher. If I wanted DRM free download, there was some immediately complicated off putting set of instructions, downloading something like 20+ files, etc.

App Store experience, I click download, it downloads. I open it, it opens the app and not some launcher. Everything just works.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#66

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

I don’t try to game on my laptop, and I have always thought “gaming laptops” are somewhat akin to “racing-spec BarcaLoungers”. That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs. If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC. White-hot take: you’re allowed to own a PC and a Mac. They aren’t like matter and antimatter, you won’t collapse…

Valid and correct take, but I don’t want to own a Mac and a PC. I’d like to be able to run casual games on my MacBook. I don’t game often or heavily enough to warrant purchasing a rig for it.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#67

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

What? This seems like just games not defaulting to the correct resolution for the display they're on. The first thing I do in every game I play (on any platform) is go through the settings, and make sure the resolution matches the screen's physical resolution. If the game is dumb about it, I choose a smaller multiple or run in windowed mode or on an external display.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#68

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

I don’t try to game on my laptop, and I have always thought “gaming laptops” are somewhat akin to “racing-spec BarcaLoungers”. That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs. If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC. White-hot take: you’re allowed to own a PC and a Mac. They aren’t like matter and antimatter, you won’t collapse…

White-hot take: you are allowed to own an outhouse and a urine only toilet. They aren't like matter and antimatter, and so on.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#69

This just shows how little Apple cares about gaming on Mac. It's so sad that I spent thousands on multiple Mac devices (MBP, M Studio, etc.) only to be bottlenecked not by hardware, but by Apple's shitty approach to gaming software. I know why they do it though. Apple can't take their undeserved 30% cut of Mac games the same way they take their iOS cuts. We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true…

I don’t try to game on my laptop, and I have always thought “gaming laptops” are somewhat akin to “racing-spec BarcaLoungers”. That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs. If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC. White-hot take: you’re allowed to own a PC and a Mac. They aren’t like matter and antimatter, you won’t collapse…

>That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs.

Well that's where you're wrong then. It's perfectly possible to game on a laptop. Over the last decade with the development of the lightning ecosystem and docks it's become a very low friction endeavor as well.

There are a myriad of quality "gaming" laptops out there, but obviously that's not for everybody, and that's one of many reasons why workstation laptops exist (basically the same thing - ability to run at high loads for extended periods of time - without the gamer aesthetic).

There are many casual gamers out there who don't want to shell out for a dedicated gaming device, nor should they win a laptop is a perfectly adequate device to game on. It's not that hard to comprehend.

Re: Blurry rendering of games on Mac

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their bigger problem is there's shit for documentation. You get a big list of function signatures and if you actually want to know how you're supposed to use anything you find the WWDC session from 4 years ago and hope it's still accurate.

Somebody told me that the quality of a company is directly proportional to the quality of its documentation...

Boeing's documentation is probably excellent.

In general it is assumed that documentation is the boring part and paying attention to it is a sign of quality. But where do you put people who prefer writing and/or teaching to thinking long and deep about product issues ?

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