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Suh-weet! 3D VMWare

post #1 of 18
2/9/07 at 5:54pm
Thread Starter 
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/we...omments/12579/

mind u, this might be moot down the line with Apple's continuing growth. more and more software and game makers will be "switching" to the Mac platform as apple's market share grows. but very cool nonetheless.
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post #2 of 18
2/10/07 at 2:23am
Until we find out how Vista performs with games there's no use to say that more and more game studios will be switching to Macs.

Right now the Mac doesn't do OGL as good as Windows does because OGL is tied so directly into the OS and it actually hurts performance. Before Vista Windows didn't use the 3D capabilities of video cards for anything in it's interface so games were able to take up the full capacity of a video card running in either OGL or DX.

Now with Vista the whole interface relies heavily on the 3D capabilities of your video card and DX...if games are able to perform as well under Vista as they did under XP then the only thing that would make the games companies switch to Mac would be massive user migrations to Mac...on several orders of magnitude than is already happening.
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post #3 of 18
2/10/07 at 10:01pm
Quote:
Right now the Mac doesn't do OGL as good as Windows does because OGL is tied so directly into the OS and it actually hurts performance. Before Vista Windows didn't use the 3D capabilities of video cards for anything in it's interface so games were able to take up the full capacity of a video card running in either OGL or DX.
It would surprise me that Mac doesn't do OpenGL well. Whered you get that from? At any rate yea this is an extension of some of the work they have been working on in Workstation on Linux. Never tested it much, heard it would allow access but wasn't so fast at that point. I would be interested to see what works when they finish up though. Seablade Monthly check in
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post #4 of 18
2/11/07 at 12:42am
To clarify: Macs actually do OGL really well, but because it's so deeply ingrained in the OS software that uses OGL has to compete with the OS for access to the video card. The end result is a performance loss across the board.

Barefeats had a little write up on it when Doom 3 came out and was getting such abysmal frame rates compared to the PC version that everyone was wondering how it was so bad if it was supposedly optimised for OS X more than most game ports.
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post #5 of 18
2/12/07 at 10:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kakaze
Until we find out how Vista performs with games there's no use to say that more and more game studios will be switching to Macs.

sorry, should have said "i think it's likely..." i don't think it's an unreasonable assumption however. a "duh" comparison would be like saying in the early days of the iPod that as it's marketshare grew that companies wouldn't invest in the infrastructure (services, products, accessories) to take advantage of the brand. the more Apple grows it's Mac business, the more companies will take a chance on software for the OS. it's already begun imo.

btw, isn't MS trying to lock out OGL in vista as best they can?-to make it all DX code?
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post #6 of 18
2/13/07 at 5:40am
I don't know if they're trying to lock OGL out, but OGL is an anathema to Windows because it's open source and crossplatform.

One of the reasons that games take forever to be ported to Mac—Linux as well—is because all the DX code needs to be completely rewritten and all the models and scenes and lights and textures and everything else need to be converted and tweaked to work right under OGL.

MS does whatever they can to keep DX cutting edge so they can entice the game makers to use it so they can lock the games into Windows and make porting to any other platform a major undertaking.

Meanwhile, many OGL games are either developed cross platform from the start—thank you Blizzard—or they go through the traditional porting process after release but they get done much faster than they otherwise would.
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post #7 of 18
2/13/07 at 10:53am
Kakaze is dead on there unfortunatly.

MS pushes DX very hard, and as a result many games use it which limits them to the MS platform. I am curious about Trangaming's Cider Technology to see how that does on a Mac. Cedega is doing decently on Linux, not great but decently at least for video games.

Seablade
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post #8 of 18
2/13/07 at 3:31pm
Transgaming is making a mistake with their treatment of the Mac, IMO.

They should just work on making a Mac version of Cedega—a native one, no xwindows please like stupid CrossoverMac—instead of trying to get the game companies to include their technology with the games. I doubt many companies are going to take advantage of it because there's absolutely no reason for them to do so. By paying extra money for this technology they'll get a few extra users and they probably won't feel the extra effort and expense is worth it.
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post #9 of 18
2/14/07 at 9:04am
That depends on their pricing setup. If they charge little enough it is possible.

I agree I would love to see a version of Cedega for the Mac, but I also would be interested to see things compiled under Cider that don't need it.

I do think they are smart for seeking two different sources of income, but I do agree that abandoning one possibility might not be the right move in doing so.

Seablade
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post #10 of 18
2/14/07 at 5:33pm
Especially considering all the older games that won't be able to take advantage of their new thing but that Cedega would be great for.
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post #11 of 18
2/14/07 at 6:11pm
Can't argue with that one.

Then again the majority of older games is the reason I am getting a Wii. Screw High Def I wanna play the original Mario or Secret of Mana on a fullscreen TV again

Seablade
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post #12 of 18
2/15/07 at 2:55am
Haha...I just hooked my old SNES up a couple months ago and I went through Chrono Trigger, Secret of Evermore, and Secret of Mana. I never bought many SNES games though so I don't have many other games to play through again.
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post #13 of 18
2/15/07 at 10:25am
Never played Evermore, I heard it didn't live up to Mana at all though. Seiken Detsu I played for a bit, but didn't get far enough in it to make a decision, obviously that one I didn't play on the SNES console itself

Seablade
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post #14 of 18
2/15/07 at 8:38pm
Yeah, Evermore was kinda blah. I didn't even remember having played it before but when I loaded it up I saw two previous save games. Once I started I did remember some things from it but most of it was a complete blur.

Chrono Trigger and SoM, however...I remembered a lot about them. But they were awesome to begin with!
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post #15 of 18
2/16/07 at 12:22am
How the heck did we get onto 2D sprite based games on a console, from the possibility of 3D gaming on a computer in a VM?

HehHeh.

Seablade

The classics never die, they just get preserved for later.
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post #16 of 18
2/16/07 at 1:07am
I was just following your lead
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post #17 of 18
2/18/07 at 4:15am
Thread Starter 
off topic? :P
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post #18 of 18
2/18/07 at 4:36am
It was originally about the possibility of gaming in a virtual machine...we're still talking about gaming!

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