New DirectX 12-To-Metal Translation Could Bring a World of Windows Games To macOS (arstechnica.com) 32
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple has made a tiny bit of progress in the last year when it comes to getting games running on Macs -- titles like Resident Evil Village and a recent No Man's Sky port don't exactly make the Mac a gaming destination, but they're bigger releases than Mac users are normally accustomed to. For getting the vast majority of PC gaming titles running, though, the most promising solution would be a Steam Deck-esque software layer that translates Microsoft's DirectX 12 API into something compatible with Apple's proprietary Metal API. Preliminary support for that kind of translation will be coming to CodeWeavers' CrossOver software this summer, the company announced in a blog post late last week.
CrossOver is a software package that promises to run Windows apps and games under macOS and Linux without requiring a full virtualized (or emulated) Windows installation. Its developers announced that they were working on DirectX 12 support in late 2021, and now they have a sample screenshot of Diablo II Resurrected running on an Apple M2 chip. This early DirectX12 support will ship with CrossOver version 23 "later this summer." The announcement is simultaneously promising and caveat-filled; getting this single game running required fixing multiple game-specific bugs in upstream software projects. Support will need to be added on a game-by-game basis, at least at first.
"Our team's investigations concluded that there was no single magic key that unlocked DirectX 12 support on macOS," CodeWeavers project manager Meredith Johnson wrote in the blog post. "To get just Diablo II Resurrected running, we had to fix a multitude of bugs involving MoltenVK and SPIRV-Cross. We anticipate that this will be the case for other DirectX 12 games: we will need to add support on a per-title basis, and each game will likely involve multiple bugs." In other words, don't expect Steam Deck-esque levels of compatibility with Windows games just yet. There are also still gameplay bugs even in Diablo II Resurrected, though "the fact that it's running at all is a huge win."
CrossOver is a software package that promises to run Windows apps and games under macOS and Linux without requiring a full virtualized (or emulated) Windows installation. Its developers announced that they were working on DirectX 12 support in late 2021, and now they have a sample screenshot of Diablo II Resurrected running on an Apple M2 chip. This early DirectX12 support will ship with CrossOver version 23 "later this summer." The announcement is simultaneously promising and caveat-filled; getting this single game running required fixing multiple game-specific bugs in upstream software projects. Support will need to be added on a game-by-game basis, at least at first.
"Our team's investigations concluded that there was no single magic key that unlocked DirectX 12 support on macOS," CodeWeavers project manager Meredith Johnson wrote in the blog post. "To get just Diablo II Resurrected running, we had to fix a multitude of bugs involving MoltenVK and SPIRV-Cross. We anticipate that this will be the case for other DirectX 12 games: we will need to add support on a per-title basis, and each game will likely involve multiple bugs." In other words, don't expect Steam Deck-esque levels of compatibility with Windows games just yet. There are also still gameplay bugs even in Diablo II Resurrected, though "the fact that it's running at all is a huge win."
12-To-Sand (Score:1)
FTFY
Processors are made of sand.
or get an pc with better video card for less then (Score:4, Insightful)
or get an pc with better video card for less then an apple system.
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or get an pc with better video card for less then an apple system.
Shh. The Mac people will get mad at you. Everyone knows the stylish brushed metal makes it go faster.
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You know, of all the criticisms you can level at Apple, making fun of the aesthetic probably shouldn't be one of them.
"Regular" computer cases are just fugly. They get dressed up to look like some 15 year old's fever dream, but they're just unsightly chunks of technology better off hidden. The best computer case is nowhere to be seen. Sleek and unobtrusive is a good compromise.
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Bang for the buck is my main criticism. Fine when the company is paying for it, less fine when I have to pony up the cost myself. And that is where I don't really care what it looks like. When I'm trying to render a couple thousand photos in Adobe CC, resources beat cuteness every time. Which is why I gritted my teeth back in the day and switched from a G4 to a Windows box, despite hating Windows with a white hot hate. Because getting the job done and not going broke in the process are paramount goals.
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You know, of all the criticisms you can level at Apple, making fun of the aesthetic probably shouldn't be one of them.
"Regular" computer cases are just fugly. They get dressed up to look like some 15 year old's fever dream, but they're just unsightly chunks of technology better off hidden. The best computer case is nowhere to be seen. Sleek and unobtrusive is a good compromise.
RGB Lighting. Where are those options on the Apple store eh?
HAH!
Otherwise its under the desk. Aesthetics are the least of my worries, upgradeability is probably top. Apple loses massively on that score.
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RGB Lighting. Where are those options on the Apple store eh?
What! No fancy lights in the fancy system? Hard pass. I want my blue fans.
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RGB Lighting. Where are those options on the Apple store eh?
What! No fancy lights in the fancy system? Hard pass. I want my blue fans.
IKR! Blue or even whacky flashing patterns of fans!
Also, upgrades? Historically, Apple didn't seem to support upgrading the GPU with off the shelf hardware, so you'd be basically stuck with the GPU it came with.
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That said, you might want to wait a month or two... just right this moment they've got a nasty bug where the default Windows driver randomly installs over the official AMD one. Started a few months ago and they haven't been able to pin it down. Not their fault (it's Microsoft's doing). Ironically it's because AMD updates their drivers with Microsoft regularly that they got bit by it. Nvidia doesn't have an issue because their Micros
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if you're smart, you'd just use windows update blocker and MS can go pound sand.
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Buy AMD. Just don't buy an Asus or Gigabyte. Stick with XFX or Sapphire.
How dare you! I like Asus gear!! What have you got against it!?!?!?
Its like the Apple of the PC world. Oh... wait...
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What about AMD's (formerly ATI)?
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architecture? (Score:2, Informative)
This is great. I'm glad they're working on it. I assume, though, that they're only talking about DirectX translation, and not machine code translation. In other words, this is a solution for Intel Macs, not M1 or M2 Macs, at least for now.
But good on them for making the effort. And I'm personally interested in what they achieve in the Linux realm.
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Because that's the largest user base?
Re:uh no? (Score:5, Informative)
Because that's the largest user base?
Not anymore. Between people fleeing the butterfly key debacle and people wanting better battery life, there are somewhere around 64 million Apple Silicon Macs. As of five years ago (the latest data I could find), there were about 100 million Mac users worldwide. That number probably hasn't changed dramatically, which suggests that Mac users are more likely to be using Apple Silicon than Intel at this point.
That also explains the steep drop-off in Mac purchases in 2023. Once most users who were able to easily switch to Apple Silicon finished doing so, the rush to upgrade ended, so the remaining purchases are coming from a long tail of late upgraders and people upgrading when their existing machines become inadequate, both of which would typically involve longer replacement cycles.
Re:architecture? (Score:5, Informative)
codeweavers runs on M1/M2 series Macs as well. wine translates the windows calls to posix calls so isn't actually architecture dependant and already runs most of the compatible (ie, runs on intel) app library on M1/M2 today.
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I'm used to people not reading the article because they're too lazy to click through, but in this case it's literally at the top of this page. FFS!
now they have a sample screenshot of Diablo II Resurrected running on an Apple M2 chip
Performance? (Score:2)
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I wonder what the performance of Resident Evil Village and No Man's Sky was, even if Apple's GPU is good by integrated standards its probably quite poor when compared to discrete GPUs
Those were actual ports, not using the DX12-Metal compatibility layer mentioned in the rest of the summery.
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Yeah, good luck with that (Score:2)
Many companies did not recompile their X86-32-bit games to X86-64 when OpenGl was outdated but relevant.
And now suddenly, just by the appearence of a DX12-> Metal2 translator, suddenly the same companies will redo their games from X86-32 to ARM64 with the added headacke of validating the DX12->Metal2 layer?
Yeah, right! Good luck with that
Written from a MacMini 2018 with Sonos eGPU
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No one's recompiling anything.
It's just CrossOver running an x86 binary on ARM using Rosetta and they now have a DX12 to Me
Re: Yeah, good luck with that (Score:2)
Don't bother (Score:3)
If Apple wanted games on their computers they would not have left Khronos Group and would have adopted Vulkan. Enjoy your walled garden, the platform is good at things other than gaming. And there high bar of entry keeps some of the riff-raff out of the App Store.
I'll wait (Score:2)
...until they have a DirectX to Mental Translation.
Darwine come true! (Score:1)