Mac version running

[Molochmac]

Hi there !

 

Would you be interested to know that i'm running BoS under Mac OS, right now ?

 

It runs quite well : i've began the campaign mode, without a problem ! Joystick recognized (only force feedback is not working)…

 

I made a Wine port, using the technology described here (very simple) : http://wiki.winehq.org

 

I'm no developer nor programmer, so i guess that if i made it so far, you guys could program a Mac version of the game without a hick !

 

If you want to get some details (my Mac is a MacPro under OS 10.10) or see some pictures, just let me know…

 

Jean Luc S., France

[LukeFF]

The team isn't interested in programming a version for the Mac.

[Cybermat47]

The team isn't interested in programming a version for the Mac.

Source?

[Molochmac]

The team isn't interested in programming a version for the Mac.

Don't understand why a commercial team would/could turn aside from the Mac market, that is potentially so wealthy… Mac owners have money, and if the port from PC to Mac is easy job, that would be a good move !

[SharpeXB]

Don't understand why a commercial team would/could turn aside from the Mac market, that is potentially so wealthy… Mac owners have money, and if the port from PC to Mac is easy job, that would be a good move !

According to the Steam Hardware Survey only 3% are running Macs. That's why. The gamer market is almost exclusively PC. It wouldn't be cost effective to create a Mac version for an extra 3%

Edited March 8, 2015 by SharpeXB

[Molochmac]

According to the Steam Hardware Survey only 3% are running Macs. That's why. The gamer market is almost exclusively PC. It wouldn't be cost effective to create a Mac version for an extra 3%

 

I can understand that. But if your 3% are right, how comes that Steam proposes so many Mac games ? Have a look at the increasing number of ports, do you really think they weight only 3% ?

 

Numbers give a false impression. Look my own case : i bought BoS, but own a Mac, no PC !… And i know people and friends around me, in the Mac community, that would buy such Sim games if they were available !

 

Now for my concern, i don't really care, i'm happy with my own solution. It's working, it's all that matters ! ;-)

[-NW-ChiefRedCloud]

Molochmac are you running it via windows on your Mac? Just curious.

 

Chief

[Molochmac]

Molochmac are you running it via windows on your Mac? Just curious.

 

Chief

Yes and no : as i mentioned it, i used a "Wine" wrapper (Windows emulation), that launches the PC game under MacOS. I just have to double click on BoS, like a normal Mac game… :-)

[Pierre64]

Last December, BoS ran "not so slowly" @1920x1080 on my girlfriend's 2013 iMac 21,5" with Bootcamp.

Very useful to discover new functionalities after good old Friday's updates when we were not at my home.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Pierre64

[Georgio]

I've been running BOS very successfully through Bootcamp since early beta and can't for the life of me see any advantage of a native Mac port as apart from the obvious that it would run rubbish under OpenGL, none of my peripherals like the warthog or TIR would work.

Totally pointless imo.

[-NW-ChiefRedCloud]

Yes and no : as i mentioned it, i used a "Wine" wrapper (Windows emulation), that launches the PC game under MacOS. I just have to double click on BoS, like a normal Mac game… :-)

 

Well I'm no Mac man but I think that's pretty cool .... thanks for sharing ...

 

Chief

[Molochmac]

I've been running BOS very successfully through Bootcamp since early beta and can't for the life of me see any advantage of a native Mac port as apart from the obvious that it would run rubbish under OpenGL, none of my peripherals like the warthog or TIR would work.

Totally pointless imo.

 

I also installed it on my bootcamp hard drive, since the first beta. But having to reboot the computer just to run the game from time to time is really annoying to me…

 

The game runs smooth under Yosemite. I don't know your peripherals, i just got a Sidewinder 2 Force feedback…

[ToadKtodack]

Hello--

I downloaded Wine and Winebottler and successfully setup a prefix for BOS but when trying to run it says Invalid string UUID then program error and stops. BOS is not in the Wine Application data base. All of us Mac folks could use any special instructions that would help us get Wine to run BOS since a few people have been able to do it successfully. I don't see any help on the Wine websites other then were to download the apps.

 

Thanks

[Dave]

According to the Steam Hardware Survey only 3% are running Macs. That's why. The gamer market is almost exclusively PC. It wouldn't be cost effective to create a Mac version for an extra 3%

This is a feedback loop. Most Mac owners who play games dual boot to Windows because they are all but forced to by the game producers and this is reflected in the vast majority of Mac users being in the 97% reported as Windows. Sure there is Steam for Mac an Linux, but Steam is just a delivery vehicle and the Mac offerings on Steam are pretty limited. While players keep doing this game producers won't change.

 

There are other issues. Porting DirectX games is much more involved than OpenGL games and tier one games which have to push the limits of 3D rendering techniques to achieve the visual standards expected are necessarily very tightly coupled to their rendering platform - in this case DirectX.

I would love the stability of games built on linux or OS X but I don't see it happening just yet.

I am a software engineer who has developed on/for Linux and OS X since 1997. I hate Windows but for almost all my games I boot into Windows 7. I have to maintain a separate PC for gaming but then I have to do that anyway as my PC was built to far exceed the performance of any Mac available for less than $15000.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Dave

[SharpeXB]

Like you just stated above. Macs aren't good choices for gaming machines because they're just too expensive. Plus the iMacs are all-in-ones which are too difficult to upgrade compared to a traditional desktop. Gaming rigs need big cases which are easy to access and upgrade parts.

 

Also realize when you see that 3% on Steam. That's hardware ownership. Not sales. The sales figures for Mac vs PC are undoubtedly more lopsided as the heavy buyer segment is certainly on PC. Steam is just showing a survey of every account.

Edited April 11, 2016 by SharpeXB

[Dave]

The Steam statistics reflect client logins not what hardware you are running.

 

I have half a dozen Macs. Two are tower cases with upgradeable components contrary to popular misconception. Two are laptops easily capable of running any tier one game. One is actually a Hackintosh. The Hackintosh I built only because I wanted to experiment with liquid cooling and wanted sufficient PCIe 16/8x slots for quad-SLI.

Macs are great. Much more reliable than any yum-Cha Windoze PC I have ever owned (and I have owned literally hundreds of Mac/Linux/Windoze machines.

There is nothing inherently limiting about Macs for gaming. The game industry simply optimised for DirectX on Intel long before Apple changed architectures.

I develop for OSX and it is a development pleasure. I have developed for Windoze in the past and the tools were clunky and obfuscated by comparison.

 

Let's not turn this into a Mac ve Windoze thread.

[SharpeXB]

The Steam statistics reflect client logins not what hardware you are running..

Ok so 3.3% of the client logins to Steam are from people running OSX. I don't see how that helps the argument.

 

Here's the 10 top selling games of 2015. Only one of them is available for the Mac. They're fine machines but they are just not used for gaming.

 

Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)

Madden NFL 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Fallout 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Star Wars: Battlefront (Xbox One, PS4, PC)

Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One) 360, PS3, PC)

NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Minecraft (360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Mac)

FIFA 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Mortal Kombat X (PS4, Xbox One)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)

 

Let's not turn this into a Mac ve Windoze thread.

Well this question was answered in the 2nd post so the whole point is moot. Edited April 14, 2016 by SharpeXB

[Dave]

Ok so 3.3% of the client logins to Steam are from people running OSX. I don't see how that helps the argument.

No, 3.3% of the client logins to Steam are from the OS X Steam client. Some unknown proportion of the Windows Steam clients are running on Macs. There is no argument. I think you just haven't grasped the distinction being made between the Mac hardware and OS X running on it.

Here's the 10 top selling games of 2015. Only one of them is available for the Mac. They're fine machines but they are just not used for gaming.

 

Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)

Madden NFL 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Fallout 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Star Wars: Battlefront (Xbox One, PS4, PC)

Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One) 360, PS3, PC)

NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Minecraft (360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Mac)

FIFA 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Mortal Kombat X (PS4, Xbox One)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)

You don't seem to get it. The one game on Mac from that list was an OpenGL game which ports easily to OSX. The rest were all DirectX games on Windows which is painful to port and not worth the effort when most Mac users simply dual boot to Windoze for games anyway. When Apple migrated to Intel momentum for native game development by large publishers ceased because Mac users could now just install Windows as well if they wanted to play Windows games. Why would a game developer spend another $20,000,000 developing a native Mac client when Mac users were already happy to just dual boot. Mac users play plenty of games - on Windows. I would know - I'm doing it right now. None of this has anything at all to do with whether or not OS X or the Macintosh hardware platform (which is now just a PC anyway) is suitable for gaming. This is the moot question. The answer has been decided by commercial pragmatism rather than technical considerations. If you are old enough to remember, this is VHS vs Betamax again.

 

Well this question was answered in the 2nd post so the whole point is moot.

There was no question. The original post was just to inform Mac owners that the game ran fine under Wine. The OP misunderstood what this observation meant for the ease of porting the game. Wine is a DirectX translation layer for Linux/OSX and an application running under Wine says nothing about its viability as a native title. Edited April 15, 2016 by Dave

[SharpeXB]

If you are old enough to remember, this is VHS vs Betamax again. 

Yes I am. And yes it is. And Mac = Betamax.

And yes because an Apple Computer owner can just run Windows via Bootcamp there won't ever be a real reason to develop a game for OSX. If the big developers making those games listed above, like Treyarch and EA can't make it profitable to port Black Ops or Battlefront, which sell millions of copies, to OSX. How on earth could a small team like 1CGS afford to do that with a niche game like this?

The whole question is a non-starter.

[Dave]

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

[Spinnetti]

lol.. Lots of Macs are used for gaming.. They just run under boot camp because there isn't Mac ports... All the old "macs can't be expanded, not good gaming machines etc." is just rubbish. I pay under boot camp at full 5K resolution and maxxed out Graphics.. Can your PC do that?, 4.0 i7, 4gig video card 32gig memory etc.. runs everything on plenty fast. I don't need to ever expand it. In 5-8 years when it feels slower I'll get a new one. Just like the last 5 times. Mac people spend more.. I'd prefer to run things native, but there's always bootcamp... Now that good CAD runs on Mac, and my 3d Printing stuff does too, I'm almost ready to get rid of all things PC.

[SharpeXB]

I pay under boot camp at full 5K resolution and maxxed out Graphics.. Can your PC do that?,

 

 

Far Cry 4, Ultra Graphics, 3840x2160 89 fps

Edited April 17, 2016 by SharpeXB

[SharpeXB]

maxxed out graphics with what game? No graphics card today, certainly not a mobile laptop one is going to drive a 5K screen with the highest settings and a top frame rate

sure that screen is great for many things like photography etc but for gaming it's a handicap unless you've got the GPUs (yes plural) to run it.

 

iMacs are nice machines, we have one here too in my house. But don't go there with the comparisons to a PC specifically built for gaming.

Edited April 17, 2016 by SharpeXB

[Dave]

I run maxed out graphics settings on all my games.

 

My 3 year old Mac Pro has two GTX Titan Blacks with 6GB of VRAM each, two 3.46GHz hex-core Westmere CPUs (one of those apparently impossible upgrades), 32GB of ECC, a couple of Samsung SSDs and a hardware RAID array for longer term storage.

 

The Titans happily drive 3 27" 2560x1440 LG IPS monitors. Thats a bit over 11 million pixels. No matter which definition you chose that exceeds 5K.

 

I have also built a Hackintosh with similar specs (see my sig) to play with liquid cooling. The Mac beats it in every benchmark.

 

If your gaming rig is substantially better than my 3 year old Mac I'll be surprised.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Dave

[SharpeXB]

I run maxed out graphics settings on all my games.My 3 year old Mac Pro has two GTX Titan Blacks with 6GB of VRAM each, two 3.46GHz hex-core Westmere CPUs (one of those apparently impossible upgrades), 32GB of ECC, a couple of Samsung SSDs and a hardware RAID array for longer term storage.The Titans happily drive 3 27" 2560x1440 LG IPS monitors. Thats a bit over 11 million pixels. No matter which definition you chose that exceeds 5K.I have also built a Hackintosh with similar specs (see my sig) to play with liquid cooling. The Mac beats it in every benchmark.

The Mac Pro is no doubt a quite capable machine. It's also $3-$4K. Of course so is a PC with my specs. But you can put together a decent gaming rig PC for half that money. The mainstream priced Apples are iMacs which really aren't the ideal machine to use for gaming. The All-in-One configuration isn't easy to upgrade like a chassis. And their GPUs aren't enough to drive that 5K screen for games.

 

If your gaming rig is substantially better than my 3 year old Mac I'll be surprised.

I'll see your 2x Titan Black and raise you 2x Titan X :-D Edited April 18, 2016 by SharpeXB

[Dave]

Those GPUs alone were $3000 and you're quibbling over a $4k Mac Pro sticker price?

I said substantially and the Titan X didn't exist 3 years ago. I still haven't found a single game that will benefit from an upgrade. On BoS, running on max settings on 3 screens I don't even need SLI and the GPU is idling most of the time. Will SLI it never gets above room temperature and BoS can't even use all the texture memory yet. I went ott - you could easily build a cheaper Mac to easily handle any game available today in the same price range as a comparable PC. The difference is it will be better designed, built and supported and comes free with an operating system designed without crayons.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Dave

[SharpeXB]

Those GPUs alone were $3000 and you're quibbling over a $4k Mac Pro sticker price?

I said substantially and the Titan X didn't exist 3 years ago. I still haven't found a single game that will benefit from an upgrade.

Yeah I'm not exactly the one to talk about budget computers...

 

It is possible though to build a gaming rig PC on a budget for much less $ per power than a Mac

And compared to an AIO iMac, a traditional chassis desktop is much more easily upgraded.

The Mac Pro is an expensive machine but once again it's parts don't seem to be tuned for gaming, the AMD FirePro GPUs in it are more for workstations, CAD and CGI, not gaming. The 6 and 12 core CPUs aren't much benefit for games. The Xeon E5 that's in the Mac Pro is twice the price of a i7-4790K and only 80% as powerful in single core, where it counts in sims like this one.

Most all off the shelf PCs, Dell, HP etc. aren't really built specifically for gaming either though.

Edited April 18, 2016 by SharpeXB

[Dave]

As I said above my Mac outperforms the machine in my sig. They cost about the same and the Mac has been more stable. If you think tier one games are single threaded you might need to read a bit about software development and game engines. I also use the machine for video editing, graphic design, CAD and software development which all dramatically benefit from high parallelism. Why would I have one machine for that and one for gaming when the former is overkill for any game available today? The i7 and X5 aren't comparable because the latter supports NUMA MP. The Gulftown i7 is simply the UP version of Westmere. My 3.46GHz Westmere X5690s each have 50% larger caches, more than 3 times the QPI transfer rate, 50% higher memory bandwidth and were 3 years old when the 4790K was launched. They were about the same price as your 4790K brand new in box in 2014. Cheaper on eBay.

But Macs can't be upgraded right.

 

P.S. Only the 2013 dustbin Mac Pro is restricted to Radeon cards. Previous generations like mine shipped with ATI or Nvidia. Incidentally the Titan GPUs (like the FirePros) are optimised for workstations performing CAD, CGI and high-fidelity rendering over games. It just so happens that I prefer quality over framerate and the GPUs for Mac Pros do both.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Dave

[SharpeXB]

If you think tier one games are single threaded you might need to read a bit about software development and game engines.

Not single threaded, BoS is multi-core. But these sims still rely on each thread being fast as they still only use perhaps 3 of them. DCS uses two for example (one is just the audio). So as much as I understand it, this game in particular does not benefit from 4+ cores on a CPU and the single-core performance of this chip is what counts in BoS.

X-Plane 10 might use hyper threading. I don't know for sure. Apple doesn't even tell you exactly which CPU you're buying. The specs just list them as "Core i5" or "Xeon E5" but that could mean anything. There's a whole range of generations of "Core i5" so that description means nothing.

 

But Macs can't be upgraded right.

I was referring to iMacs did say "not as easily upgraded as a chassis". I'm sure if you're an expert you can take it apart or send it back to Apple for a new graphics card but DIYing that on an All-in-One is probably beyond the ability of most people. Anybody though can open up a big PC chassis and click in a new graphics card.

 

P.S. Only the 2013 dustbin Mac Pro is restricted to Radeon cards. Previous generations like mine shipped with ATI or Nvidia. Incidentally the Titan GPUs (like the FirePros) are optimised for workstations performing CAD, CGI and high-fidelity rendering over games. It just so happens that I prefer quality over framerate and the GPUs for Mac Pros do both.

You have to admit, the Mac Pro is a "workstation" computer, not a gaming rig. It's meant for professional high end video editing and 3D rendering. And the current one only has the ATI cards. If I try to build one of those online with specs near my PC I end up with a $5,800 machine. My machine if ordered new today would be about $3,800 (980Tis this time) And to Apple you have to add sales tax (another $478) and $99 for Windows 10 in order to run BoS. So that's like $6,370. Anything sold online, like these specialty gaming PCs (in the USA) have no sales tax.

 

There's still never going to be a Mac version of this game.

Edited April 19, 2016 by SharpeXB