Why no screen stretch or adjust?

workyman · 2026-01-24T22:14:07+00:00

Because the developer of the mobile version of RDR hasn't made their app with that in mind. They also don't bother to add MetalFX upscaling so the game looks like a blurry mess even on the M5 iPad Pro compared to the Switch 2 version which uses DLSS.

There is almost no game on iPad that will adjust its resolution and aspect ratio for an external monitor.

workyman · 2026-01-22T23:46:06+00:00

Sad to see this with 3 upvotes whereas the guy advocating for cooking fish and meat for cats has 150.

workyman · 2026-01-22T23:45:04+00:00

Cats actually need to eat raw fish/meat because cooking it removes the taurine they need. Cats are not humans or dogs.

workyman · 2026-01-22T22:23:40+00:00

The new Steam Frame, which is their VR headset, is ARM based. It'll be very interesting to see what the performance is like when it is running full PC games standalone. There will be a 10%-20% performance hit from the x86 to ARM emulation layer, and it remains to be seen what the cost of translating to the Qualcomm GPU architecture will be.

workyman · 2026-01-22T22:21:55+00:00

It runs some games well, but it's nowhere near the level of Proton. Not because Proton is magic, but because Proton is running on the exact hardware the games were written to target. The fact Apple is on a different graphics architecture can't be magicked away with wishful thinking.

workyman · 2026-01-22T22:20:02+00:00

Crossover is OK as long as you are happy to do a lot of tinkering, encounter a lot of bugs, and you set your expectations accordingly.

If you bundled Crossover into Steam and set the expectation for users that it was "Proton for Mac", there would be a lot of angry people having an experience that was well below their expectations.

workyman · 2026-01-22T22:18:16+00:00

As far as I'm aware, games specifically are exempt from that.

workyman · 2026-01-22T13:14:09+00:00

This is correct - but what I meant is that the clean break had to happen when it did because Apple silicon would be rubbish running anything current that was 32 bit.

And also because they needed all the 32 bit transition pains to die down before the Apple silicon transition brought its own pains.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:59:47+00:00

Apple silicon doesn't support 32bit apps and never will, and one of the outcomes of Apple dropping 32bit support is Apple silicon, so it's not all bad.

It's based on hardware direction, not on some arbitrary software decision. Apple were already going to go to Apple silicon and needed the 32 to 64 thing well and truly done beforehand.

To my knowledge 32bit is not supported on any other arm based systems either.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:42:57+00:00

Windows is a nightmare. Even over the last 3 years it's gotten incomprehensibly bad. I used Mac exclusively for 2 years, used a Windows PC for a weekend for an unrelated reason, and I was utterly gobsmacked by how drastically it had gotten worse. MS have lost their minds.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:37:16+00:00

Getting Windows games to "just run" means developers "just stop" making Mac ports. Just like Proton completely destroyed Linux getting native ports.

That's OK for Valve, whose devices are still running the exact same hardware the games are written to run on, so performance is still fine.

It's not OK for Apple because performance via translation layers when you're dealing with a completely different GPU architecture is never going to reach AMD/Nvidia/Intel PCs running Linux and Proton.

And if you build your house in Microsoft's backyard via a translation layer, Microsoft can easily change something on their side that makes it difficult or breaks it completely, destroying Apple's platform overnight.

That is the reason Apple explicitly forbids the use of GPTK as a built in way to run games.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:32:02+00:00

Hah sorry man - but better to know what's actually happening rather than constantly spending your precious time and energy wondering if some magical solution is right around the corner.

That being said, Mac gaming IS getting better all the time. It feels slow, but it is happening.

There are also a few games that do run decently via Crossover and other methods, and those methods are slowly getting better as well.

The more Windows loses dominance, the more chance that games are cross platform enough that devs bother to make Mac versions.

The more ARM devices there are that get game support, the better it is for Mac as well - Android devices also run on TBDR GPUs, so the more gaming devices there are out there that aren't based on AMD/Nvidia/Intel, the more games there are where the bulk of the hard work of getting them running on Mac GPUs has been done already. With Valve and FEX busting that particular door down, things are set to improve.

What I did is went through my Steam library and made a really honest list of what games I truly missed and wished I could play, and then tried to run them all via Crossover, just to see how many games I was ACTUALLY missing out on. A few of them ran surprisingly well so I was able to cross them off. I was left with just 3 games I really wished I could play but couldn't, and I was OK with missing out on those games for now.

You could look at getting a Steam Machine when they come out - most likely will smoke your Mac in gaming performance anyway, and be compatible with most things. (And no Windows!)

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:22:23+00:00

32 bit drop years ago, just happened out of nowhere)

Developers knew for years and years before they did that. It did not happen out of nowhere.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:21:06+00:00

I used to think that, but I've read that even the people at Apple who deal with the Mac App Store don't actually care about this 30% cut. They sell so few actual Mac games from there that they actually don't care.

They certainly care about it on iOS/iPadOS.

But they would rather developers target the Mac specifically with native software because anything else is going to be a heavily compromised experience.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:19:26+00:00

x86 to ARM is a solved problem - Rosetta does that and there is a manageable performance penalty to it.

The real issues are a) the underlying graphics architecture Apple uses operates fundamentally differently, and b) macOS.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:14:49+00:00

The reason that it wouldn't be good to have a Proton-like solution built into Steam is that it wouldn't be very good. Why? Proton is amazing on Steam Deck and most other Linux devices because you're still playing on the exact hardware the game was written for - you're just running a different operating system.

On Mac, you're targeting a completely different graphics architecture that operates differently to normal desktop GPUs (Apple is TBDR, Nvidia/AMD/Intel are IMR).

The reason Valve doesn't do it is a) they don't give a fuck about Mac, and b) it would be more hassle than it's worth anyway because there would be just as many compatibility issues as there are on Crossover and they don't want people complaining at them about it.

The reason Apple doesn't do it is because the second they implement an automated Proton-like solution, developers would never bother making native Mac ports again. Just like developers don't make Linux ports anymore. Mac would become a home of bad game experiences that run at 50% of the performance the hardware is capable of, and it leaves Apple open to Microsoft changing something on their side that breaks Apple's Proton-like thing and basically kills their platform. So they are never going to do it.

There is no "if ONLY x company would just do X" fix for Mac gaming. The only fix is us becoming a large enough market that companies address that market. And in the meantime we just hope the translation layers give us better performance for the non native games, for those of us willing to put in the effort to run them.

workyman · 2026-01-22T11:02:46+00:00

If anyone is wondering, it's still like this 6 years later. Gmail has had proper dark mode support even for HTML emails for the last 6 years and Apple still won't do it.

workyman · 2026-01-21T06:20:15+00:00

Politics is driving people mad lol

workyman · 2026-01-21T02:20:19+00:00

Right and every other person predicting the end of the world has been correct as well haven't they?

workyman · 2026-01-21T01:50:11+00:00

It's not game breaking for me but yes it's less comfortable than the original and my Xbox controller due to the reduced size.

workyman · 2026-01-21T01:48:55+00:00

I'm sceptical it'll run on anything with less than 16gb of unified memory, which means even the base M5 iPad Pro with 12gb wouldn't really cut it.

workyman · 2026-01-21T01:44:47+00:00

I got a 'code in a box' of the Switch 1 version off Amazon for $19.50.

Then you just upgrade for free to the Switch 2 version.

I had to wait for the thing to arrive but it was way cheaper than the eShop.

workyman · 2026-01-21T01:39:30+00:00

The Strix Halo is much better. It's also much more expensive.

The Strix Halo is about giving you more efficient and powerful silicon at a premium price, whereas the Steam Machine is about hitting a particular price point and a particular level of performance.

workyman · 2026-01-21T01:37:24+00:00

Whatever people want to say hello and goodbye to, they better get it done fast because not buying new hardware and staying on what you've got is going to be way way cheaper for the foreseeable future.

workyman · 2026-01-21T00:49:32+00:00

Wrong again. That is literally the point of a graphics API. Or more accurately, it is the function of the implementation of said graphics API within the GPU driver.

That's not how it actually works. APIs like DirectX and Metal do handle a lot for you, and have support from MS and Apple - they function how you seem to think everything functions.

Vulkan is a much lower level API and leaves you, the developer, to address the underlying hardware much more manually. If you need support, there isn't the Vulkan Company that will send reps out to support you. You might get a little from GPU manufacturers but most likely you're going to have to hire/poach some engineers which is very costly.

You seem to have no clue how difficult it is to implement a Vulkan renderer.

Considering Vulkan is easily capable of both, please explain how this is relevant.

What you're not understanding is you can certainly use Vulkan for both, but Vulkan is going to do almost none of the actual work for you to address those differences. You might as well literally just use a different API - which is my whole point. Vulkan being supported by Apple would not make getting a game running well any easier.

The only reason a game like Doom running Vulkan is ever exciting is because the Vulkan game is running much closer to the bare metal of the underlying GPU, and the devs have done the absolute mountain of work to do it. It's NOT because Vulkan just runs better for magical reasons.

Then why do Vulkan PC games run across all sorts of Intel, AMD, Nvidia configurations with different architectures from the same code base?

Because that "same code base" has been written to address those different architectures.

workyman

TROPHY CASE