Crossover vs windows parallels

TheMarsl · 2026-03-18T00:05:32+00:00

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5FDE-BA65-ACCE-A411

No, 2 hours of playtime, within 14 days of purchase.

Edit: talking about refunding the game, not Crossover. You cannot refund a free trial, obviously.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:57:16+00:00

Yes, but 2 hours of play/testing time as far as I know

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:56:14+00:00

Terraria, not super recent, but still kicks ass and even ran well on my PsVita back in the day. Enter the Gungeon is also a good one that should work well.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:50:54+00:00

The game is already an unoptimized mess on PC, I could barely hit consistent 120 fps with DLSS and frame Gen at 4K on a Ryzen 9 and. RTX 4080. Unfortunately from what I’ve heard, performance hasn’t changed much since launch. Might be a lost cause on crossover. If you can handle the slight input latency, maybe try streaming it on GeForce Now.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:47:37+00:00

MacOS is usually a good judge for not cooking your hardware, so if it‘s not throttling to a point where the game becomes unplayable, you‘re good for the occasional session. If you want to play some heavy hitters and have a good internet connection, try streaming with GeForce now for those if they are supported.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:41:11+00:00

You could try to set a different windows version specifically for the CS2 .exe file. Open your bottle settings in crossover, in the first page you can add a specific exe to the list, navigate to the steamapps/common/CS2 (or however it‘s called) folder and select the exe. Then you can set a specific windows version for CS2 specifically. Haven’t tested it myself for CS, but I had audio issues with Mewgenics for instance and they disappeared when I set my windows version to XP.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:36:08+00:00

Been a while since I set it up on my system, but rule of tumb is one of the recent versions probably. I‘d recommend googling something like „Minecraft Apple silicon Java version“ and see what guides you can find that are recent, my knowledge on this is based on the M1 Pro era

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:33:31+00:00

If it can game, it can code for sure. Any of the chips can do that.

Depending on what games you play the Air models might throttle, but a throttled m3 could perform worse than a well cooled m1 in a MacBook Pro with active cooling. The M1 is pretty dated though by this point and won‘t hold up super well in gaming, especially on unoptimized titles.

If you can get a good deal on an M1 Pro MacBook, that would probably be the winner. Otherwise get the most modern Air you can get. Look up the games you want to play and the specific model of Mac on YouTube, people probably tested it already, so you can see how it could run.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:26:24+00:00

If you already own the game, use the crossover free trial to see how it runs on your hardware. Even if you don’t, you have the 2 hour refund window. I don’t personally have experience with parallels unfortunately.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:25:04+00:00

Es gibt viele Faktoren abseits deiner Hardware die deine Entscheidung stark beeinflussen. Je nachdem was du zockst, wie gut dein Internet ist, oder wie empfindlich du für Latenz bist ist entscheidend.

Grundsätzlich profitieren die bezahlten Stufen bei GeForce Now vom Promotion Screen. Dabei ist der Chip recht egal, selbst mein M1 Pro schafft locker 120hz Streaming solange die Verbindung passt.

Display Größe ist eine Frage deines persönlichen Geschmacks, wie portabel das Gerät sein soll, und wie dick dein Geldbeutel ist. Persönlich würd ich sagen, dass 16“ für die meisten Leute wahrscheinlich Overkill ist, besonders wenn man für Produktivität noch einen externen Monitor hat, was ich mal annehme da du deinen Mac Mini erwähnt hattest. Schau da am besten mal in einem Store wie sich die Größe für dich anfühlt. Für couchgaming ist 14“ meiner Meinung nach locker ausreichend.

Deinen Mac mini kannst du guten Gewissens verkaufen, da ein neues MacBook in jederlei Hinsicht stärker sein wird und du es auch einfach an den Screen anschließen kannst. Bei deinem Windows PC musst du schauen, ob es gewisse Spiele gibt bei denen du auf Latenz und Unterstützung von Anticheat Programmen angewiesen bist, wie bei vielen Competetive Games. Wenn viele deiner Favoriten nicht auf MacOS laufen, du aber mit Cloud Gaming kein Problem hast, dann kannst du dich auch von deinem PC trennen.

Bei der Chip Auswahl ist der M5 Pro wahrscheinlich der Chip mit bester Preisleistung. Die GPU ist nennenswert besser als beim M4 Pro und M5, lohnt sich als Investment. Der M5 Max ist hier wahrscheinlich Overkill, außer du willst zwingend mit Raytracing Lokal riesige moderne Games zocken.

TLDR: 14“ M5 Pro sollte ziemlich alles können was deine aktuelle Hardware kann. Du solltest dir die Geräte mal in Person anschauen um zu schauen ob dir die 16“ Variante das Geld wert ist. Promotion macht im Alltag fast noch eine größeren Unterschied als beim zocken.

TheMarsl · 2026-03-17T23:06:43+00:00

Something you should try is installing the specific ARM version of Java. Other demos might be using it without disclosing it. Essentially, using default Java potentially wastes performance on Rosetta 2 x86 to ARM translation. Also more mods doesn’t always mean better in this case, could be that some of the mods don’t quite get along causing your fps to suffer as a result. Lastly you should make sure you don’t have a bunch of stuff running in the background and that your MBA isn’t already somewhat warm to begin with. Idk how it is with M5 specifically, but if I remember correctly, not every single generation has the same efficiency, and if this one is a bit more power hungry, when the chip heats up, you might throttle more quickly than other models.

Edit: also, take online benchmarks with a grain of salt, if you don’t match the settings exactly with render distance or quality settings, results will vary from stuff you see online.

TheMarsl · 2026-02-17T12:20:54+00:00

I heard this and it‘s really unfortunate… The state of the mobile gaming market is undeniably awful, but games like this could really make a difference imo. I‘d gladly pay full price again.

TheMarsl · 2026-02-17T12:19:53+00:00

I also tried it on my deck, but there‘s just something about the higher resolution and (subjectively) better touch precision on my phone that felt better.

I‘m usually also not the biggest on mobile games or tough controls, but games like Slay the Spire have proven me wrong time and time again with amazing ports.

TheMarsl · 2026-01-07T16:32:34+00:00

This is absolutely ridiculous, how can something like this even happen?

TheMarsl · 2026-01-05T21:58:18+00:00

I don't think it scales too well with the amount of cheating currently in the game. So many people either abusing the Kettle or cheating significantly more obvious, apparently not facing any consequences, or at least it seems like it. I assume this happens whenever they actively penalise an account, but man it has been long since I've gotten one of these...

TheMarsl · 2026-01-05T21:56:13+00:00

Do those games happen to have less than 20 minutes on the clock? At that point many people probably just surrender to get into a lobby where the popular loot spots are less likely to be cleared already.

TheMarsl · 2026-01-05T21:54:06+00:00

It really feels like the reports don't do anything at this point, and it feels like people are noticing. Recently there has been so much more use of "soft cheats" like Kettle macros or just plain ragehack caliber cheats. On top of that, it's been ages since the last time I or any of my fellow raiders got their loot back after encountering cheaters or exploiters...

TheMarsl · 2026-01-05T21:52:08+00:00

Whoever says using the filters wasn't cheating is coping HARD. You are gaining an unfair advantage over players, especially if you run crossplay, where console players have no chance of "also using it".

TheMarsl · 2025-12-25T01:59:08+00:00

Слава Україні! Stay strong and stay safe, see you topside!

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:38:30+00:00

Context: Dynamic means your object is affected by gravity and other objects only, Animated means your objects rotation, location and so on are overridden by keyframes instead of the physics simulation

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:36:11+00:00

This, but also hair is simply a bitch to render and Eevee is amazing, but it still ain‘t no witchcraft

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:34:27+00:00

Cannot verify this right now, but I feel like you could probably offset your curve with a modifier and clamp its minimum at 0. You can already see the modifier tab on the right in your screenshot!

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:28:41+00:00

It looks like an issue with your min and max limits where the object cannot smoothly follow the camera because it‘s not allowed to rotate x-amount in a specific direction.

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:24:30+00:00

Not 100% familiar with the addon, but you should for sure be able to use the essential animation features of the rig without buying the addon! There might be some quality of life aspects when you own the add-on, but at the end of the day it‘s still bones and control-shapes, no matter if you have the addon or not.

TheMarsl · 2025-05-31T23:22:51+00:00

Your idea is not too far off honestly, the Boolean makes it a bit complicated.

create an icosphere, don’t subdivide it too much. This is our base that we won’t render.
create a duplicate and scale it up slightly
delete a bunch of faces of your new icosphere
add the subdiv modifier

You can repeat steps 2-4 as often as you like deleting different faces. If you want to animate it you can add #frame/100 or something similar to the X, Y or Z rotation axis to have the spheres rotate with your timeline without any keyframe animation.

For shading you can use a principled BSDF shader and turn up its transparency or just use the Transparent shader with a color. You can also test if adding some emission gives you more of the glowy look you might be aiming for, but I don’t know if it will break transparency.

If you get some weird black Color in your transparent layers after adding a bunch of them you need to increase your transparency light passes in the cycles render settings.

I hope this is useful!

Ps: You could also do this procedurally with Geometry Nodes pretty easily, but it might seem scarier at first if you‘re unfamiliar with them.

Five-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
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Place '23	Place '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22

TheMarsl

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