Graphics Intensive Games For Mac
Mar 20, 2013 OS X Any good strategy games for Mac? Thread starter Elektrikz; Start date Mar 12, 2013; Sort (Likes). Having been left with hundreds of pounds worth of Mac-native games that no longer worked on my new Lion Mac, I decided I'd had enough of Apple in this one respect. Run games that are not graphics intensive, 3D, or processor intensive. On average, doubling the amount of memory in your system will give you sample 'space' to work and will make an obvious difference in overall speed. This is especially true with today's memory-hungry applications such as office programs, multimedia editing packages, and graphics-intensive games. Jun 05, 2018 Apple encourages games and 'graphics-intensive apps' built with OpenGL to adopt Metal ahead of Mojave's launch, and apps that use OpenCL for.
Graphical prowess for games, even on mobile devices, is a must-have feature. Apple isn’t shy about boasting about this quality in games that are developed with its own API, Metal, but there are other, more industry-wide options out there.
The biggest, which Apple has shunned in favor of Metal over the years, is the cross-platform Vulkan GPU API. This is developed by the Khronos Group, which is a consortium that aims to bring cross-platform APIs and open standards to the graphics industry. And now it is finally coming to the macOS and iOS platforms, but not because Apple has finally decided to support it on its end:
“Today, that gap is being substantially filled, with the open source, royalty-free release of MoltenVK—a runtime for macOS and iOS that offers an almost complete subset of the Vulkan API implemented using Metal. Released under the Apache 2 license, MoltenVK will enable developers to build their Vulkan applications for Apple’s platforms, allowing for a single codebase to span Windows, Linux, Android, macOS, iOS, and more.”
The Vulkan GPU API is already a standard across the major platforms, including Android, Windows, Linux, and games consoles. It has been one of the more oft-requested elements for macOS and iOS game development over the years, but Apple hasn’t been keen on adopting it. Instead, Apple has nudged developers towards its own API, Metal (which is now on Metal 2).
As noted today by ArsTechncia, the benefits of using the new MoltenVK are already being discovered by companies like Valve, who is currently testing the mega-popular title Dota 2 on Mac with the new support. According to the report, Valve is seeing frame rates get bumped up to 50 percent better than what they have been seeing before using the Vulkan-in-Metal option:
“Valve is an early adopter of MoltenVK. The company has been testing MoltenVK for the macOS version of Dota 2, and indications are extremely promising: the Vulkan-on-Metal version of the game has frame rates as much as 50 percent higher than the version using Apple’s OpenGL stack. Apple’s OpenGL drivers have long been criticized, both for their poor performance and for Apple’s refusal to support the latest versions of the specification. The Dota 2 experience suggests that developers can reap big dividends by bypassing them.”
So while Apple is not officially supporting Vulkan (yet, maybe), the option is there now for developers that want to take advantage of it. And, based on Valve’s findings, it may result in some truly worthwhile gaming experiences on macOS and iOS.
Our Take
This is good news all around. Sure, it would be better if Apple were the ones announcing official support for Vulkan, but this option is apparently doing quite well for developers already. For the end user that also loves playing high-performance and graphics-intensive games on their Mac or iOS device, this is definitely good news. Play ios games on mac. It will be fun to see which games take advantage of the new option moving forward, and how big the marketing is for that element.
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By Andrew O'Hara
Wednesday, June 13, 2018, 08:10 am PT (11:10 am ET)
Let's be frank: Apple's Mac hardware is not well optimized for gaming. Making matters worse, the marketshare gap between Windows and macOS is profound. That said, the iPhone and iPad are gaming powerhouses for the mainstream consumer, and they aren't showing any signs of slowing.
While venues like Mac Gamer HQ covering Mac gaming still are about, nobody else really has much to say about the situation.
So, let's talk about it.
Apple's hardware is great, but not for gaming
Looking to hardware, Apple uses integrated graphical chipsets in many of their machines, leaving dedicated GPUs to the most high-end Macs. These machines are primarily geared towards creative professionals, and not gamers, leaving that audience underserved.
But, Apple does have a solid workaround for owners of modern machines thanks to the recent macOS 10.13.4 update.
Apple's macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 now supports external GPUs over Thunderbolt 3. Summarizing the situation, a Mac owner with Thunderbolt 3 can buy an external enclosure, and drop in a graphics card that can be upgraded over time.
This comes at a pretty profound price premium, though. With enclosures generally around $300, and a card with any heft hitting $300 and increasing dramatically, doing so is a non-trivial expense in addition to the computer itself. Plus, without hacks, Nvidia card support is non-existent.
BootCamp to install Windows on a Mac is workable, but eGPU support in BootCamp doesn't exist without workarounds right now. So, given Apple's GPU choices, it isn't a great one.
Graphics Intensive Games For Mac Download
Apple jumping into Virtual Reality
With the eGPU, comes Apple's first tentative steps into virtual reality. At the 2017 WWDC, while talking about eGPUs, Apple officially added support for VR as well. HTC Vive now works on macOS and Valve launched SteamVR at the same time.
Graphics Intensive Games For Mac And Cheese
This certainly paves the way, especially with an eGPU, for more immersive gaming on the Mac, even if adoption has been tepid to start.
Apple has the smallest gaming platform, and the biggest
Primarily when it comes to gaming, we think of large role-playing games like 'Skyrim' or first-person shooters like 'Destiny' or 'Halo,', but just counting these this ignores the biggest market for games. So-called 'casual' gamers by far make up the largest sector of those who play, and more often than not they do so on their mobile device.
According to Statista, in July 2017, iOS had over 783,000 games available on the App Store. This is a stunning amount of titles.
Apple's new frameworks for porting over iOS applications to the Mac might be a big deal for gamers. This probably won't help with huge AAA titles, but popular ones such as 'Alto's Adventure,' 'Clash of Clans,' and the like.
If this proves to be effective, it could encourage larger-scale mobile developers to give the Mac a second look, at least for more casual titles.
Apple has used this new platform to port a few apps of their own in macOS Mojave; News, Home, Stocks, and Voice Memos. It will become fully available for third-party developers in 2019.
32-bit apps, OpenGL, and Metal
Metal 2 also got screen-time at WWDC. Apple announced the official deprecation of OpenGL, with new titles expected to use Metal 2 as an alternative. Most games running on macOS already use OpenGL which has caused quite a bit of discontent among developers.
Games and graphics-intensive apps that use OpenGL will eventually cease to run as Apple's OS march continues, without maintenance by the developer. This is further complicated by Apple's declaration that 32-bit apps will no longer be supported after macOS Mojave.
But, Apple has provided the ability to make apps 64-bit for a decade. So, it's not like this is a big surprise, unless you're a Valve front-end developer apparently. As of June 13, 2018, the Steam app itself still isn't 64-bit.
Mac App Store, and Steam help —but aren't the solution
Don't get us wrong. Porting houses Feral Interactive and Aspyr are doing a fantastic job. But, they are only two companies and they are vastly outnumbered by the AAA publishing houses.
This all sounds pretty dire. But, popular titles have still shown up on Steam or the Mac App Store. Titles like 'Firewatch' launched on Mac at the same time as other platforms, and 'Civilization 6' was pretty close to day and date.
But, this also exposes some problems. 'Firewatch' launched towards the tail end of 2016 and to this day the Mac App Store is still promoting the game after minor updates. It is a fantastic game, but it shows the lack of other content the Mac App Store has to work with.
Steam, the go-to PC gaming platform, has been available on Mac for years at this point. But, as readers are likely aware, the vast majority of games on it are Windows-only. Looking specifically at the macOS games filter that Steam provides reveals a lot of small titles and new content highlights instead of new, popular games.
We saw this lack of availability recently as we were testing out Steam Link, which allows you to play powerful desktop games on your iOS/tvOS device using your Mac or Windows PC to do the heavy lifting. As we perused the top games Valve recommended to test, the vast majority were not available on macOS.
Valve and Apple have been working together lately, and though Apple eventually rejected the Steam Link from the iOS App Store, they are working together to make it available once more.
Even as Apple has made improvements to the platform, and fully embraced gaming on iOS with nods to it on tvOS, it still has not been enough to entice publishers to throw more weight behind the Mac. In the last several years, very little has changed overall with the lion's share of PC gamers clearly opting for Windows over macOS.
We aren't going to claim to be big Mac gamers. We have a few, but the couple of AppleInsider staffers who game have Windows PCs, or consoles —or just play on our iPads or iPhones.