🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 14 Nov 2015 17:10:16 +0100, Werner Punz <we...@gmx.at> wrote:

>Am 14.11.15 um 06:01 schrieb Rin Stowleigh:
>> On Sat, 14 Nov 2015 03:21:27 -0000, "Trimble Bracegirdle"
>> <no-spam@never.spam> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Rin.
>>> Yes I see that the hardware differences will make
>>> direct game performance comparisons near impossible.
>>> I guess that also holds true for Windows v/s Linux comparisons.
>>
>> In some cases you'll see benchmarks on the exact same hardware -- a
>> Mac running OSX versus same Mac running Windows.
>>
>> However, there's no DirectX on OSX so the best hope for optimization
>> in to optimize for OpenGL, and that almost never turns out as well as
>> DirectX.
>>
>Actually that had been true until August of this year the current 
>release from OSX has Mantle as low level API integrated which is similar 
>to DirectX12 and Vulcan.
>
>However the vertict is still open how good Mantle in reality really is 
>on OSX. 

That's part of what I was getting at though with earlier messages.
OpenGL, Mantle, and DirectX are all APIs that are capable of writing
well-performing games upon.

But, how well those games really perform on a given API implementation
really comes down to a number of factors, most notably how well the
game itself has been optimized for that API, how well the API has been
optimized for a given OS, how well the drivers for that OS are
optimized for an API, etc.

Windows/DirectX/nVidia/AMD just has so many years headstart along the
optimization route.  Mantle is already an abandoned project, John
Carmack highlighted some of the reasons DirectX is superior to OpenGL
some ten years ago.

At the end of the day though, what does it take to get the
optimizations necessary to make one gaming platform standout above the
rest?  Mostly just dedication/time/money (I'm saying "just" tongue in
cheek because the three of those are often synonymous with each other
and required in substantial amounts of all three). 

But, what drives the motivation for those three factors?  Sales
potential.  So we have Windows with something like 85% consumer
marketshare, OS X with maybe 14% and Linux with 1%.  For gaming, the
sales potential of that 85% is actually much less overall than the
market for console games.

So, for those who care about making money, it basically comes down to
Playstation, Xbox and Windows.  The extra few bucks to be gained from
OS X and Linux sales are probably not worth the hassle of dealing with
OS fragmentation on Linux and the underpowered GPU that most Mac
owners have.  The only reason to target those platforms at this point
is to make a political statement (or embark on a long-term strategic
move as Valve is doing to hedge their bets).

>But Apple in itself never really got gaming. Their first 
>approach at a console miserably failed and since then they never cared 
>about gaming anymore. IOS accidentally became a gaming platform and when 
>Apple realized that people needed a controller it was years to late. 
>Their controller approach came 5 years to late. Apple TV again shows 
>that attitude. Apple enforces the game devs to support their stupid 
>remote by every game released on that platform, which is utterly 
>pointless, given that there is a controller api and controllers are 
>buyable. So in reality Apple TV will again be limited to casual bottom 
>end games due to the remote control enforcement.
>The situation is on OSX also as miserable as Apple wants it to be. You 
>basically have to thank Valve that there are games on OSX. There still 
>is no standard controller or controller interface and most games have to 
>rely on a beta grade opensource driver to support the xbox controller as 
>defacto standard.
>
>My biggest hope regarding this situation again here is Valve they seem 
>to be dedicated to bring support for their own controller to OSX.

One big problem with Apple, it applies to OSX and iOS -- they just
completely disregard backward compatibility.  They invest nothing to
keep backlevel versions of anything operable.  They make money by
selling hardware so their business model depends on keeping the
consumer always buying the latest and greatest every couple of years.
This is a nightmare for certain types of software, including gaming,
hardware drivers etc.

Some people don't realize what a fantastic technological feat is that
Windows can still run software that is 10, 20, 30 years old.