Whisky
MoltenVK
Whisky | MoltenVK | |
---|---|---|
32 | 103 | |
10,411 | 4,570 | |
6.7% | 1.8% | |
9.5 | 9.0 | |
8 days ago | 8 days ago | |
Swift | Objective-C++ | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 only | Apache License 2.0 |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Whisky
- Quickemu: Quickly run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines
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Ask HN: State of gaming and it's developement on Apple Silicon
I don't think Apple really does much, at least nothing they've announced publicly.
However, Codeweavers (the company) makes Crossover, which can utilize GPT in its recent versions: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/
There is also Whisky, a FOSS app that uses Wine and GPT: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/ (unlike Codeweavers, it doesn't have per-game profiles, so you just have to look at its wiki and issues and try to get games to run on your own)
In my experience, neither is very good, and both are way more difficult to use than a real PC.
Maybe things will get better if the Apple VR headset spurs a game rush, but I doubt it will. In the meantime, I do all my Mac gaming on Geforce Now and it's been truly wonderful: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ You get a 4080 in the cloud for $20/mo, and no local heat or noise since the rendering happens remotely.
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Diablo IV coming soon to GeForce Now
(Not affiliated with any of these companies, I just really like GeForce Now and use it every day, and have waited a loooooooong time for this to happen, hoping that Microsoft will do us a solid. They finally did!)
Thanks to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision (and them handing cloud streaming rights over to Ubisoft [1]), Diablo IV will soon be coming to Nvidia's cloud streaming service, GeForce Now [2].
GeForce Now offloads rendering to the cloud and makes your computer/tablet/phone act as a thin client that just receives the rendered frames and sends back control inputs. It's similar to how Google's failed Stadia program works, except Nvidia's offering uses your existing Steam/Epic/Xbox/etc. library, offers much more powerful hardware, and utilizes a lot of Nvidia-specific optimizations that Stadia never had.
Between DLSS, Reflex, and the upcoming cloud G-Sync, the game will likely run better on in the cloud than many desktop gaming PCs. The GeForce Now Ultimate tier comes with a RTX 4080 GPU, which is out of reach for many gamers due to its high price.
This will also finally allow Mac gamers to play Diablo IV without Crossover (which has poor performance) or Whisky and GPT (which often breaks and stays broken for weeks at a time [3]). GFN has much more powerful GPUs than even a M3 Max.
For Linux or Steam Deck gamers, D4 is already Proton Gold rated and Steam Deck verified [4], but GeForce Now should allow you to play it on much higher graphics, using less battery, and without using the fans.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23915780/ubisoft-activis...
[2] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/CES-2024-geforce-now-activisio...
[3] https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/682
[4] https://www.protondb.com/app/2344520
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Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
Have you tried Apple Porting Toolkit? It’s able to get most of my Steam library working well (Cyberpunk and Halo for example). There is an app called Whisky that removes the hoops.
https://getwhisky.app/
- Whisky 2.2.1 (Wine wrapper for macOS)
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Accidentally tried to update Battle.net and now nothing works
https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/682
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[Tutorial] Running Windows Games using GPTK and Steam
Today you just go to https://getwhisky.app/ and grab the app.
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I just got a shiny new Macbook Pro with the M3 Pro chip. Can I play high-spec PC games?
Whisky is amazing. It uses an older — free — version of CrossOver (proprietary and commercial software built on Wine). I'm able to play GTA V on very high graphics settings with amazingly fluid fps on my M1 Pro, with DXVK enabled in Whisky!
- Most hackintoshible laptop with a good GPU?
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Mac Studio gaming performance
Whisky makes playing Windows games much more feasible with Apple's Game Porting Toolkit.
MoltenVK
- MoltenVK is a layered implementation of Vulkan 1.2
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Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening, There Aren't Enough Players
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
Translating between rendering APIs is not really the problem. The GPU design is more different than the API is.
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Meta Releases Intermediate Graphics Library
Khronos maintains MoltenVk though, which is "official" as it gets: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
...technically, Vulkan on Windows is also only supported via 3rd-parties (the GPU vendors), Microsoft doesn't support Vulkan either ;)
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I love the ally, but fuck Windows
MoltenVK implements large parts of Vulkan on top of Metal for Apple systems. It isn't full Vulkan but it makes porting Vulkan games to OS X easier.
- Apple releases a Game Porting Tool, based on open-source platform Wine, which can translate DirectX 12 into Metal 3, a potentially massive step for Mac gaming
- Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is Wine
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CrossOver announces DirectX 12 support coming to macOS this summer
That's cool. Maybe I haven't thought enough about this. Let me check it out. FWIW it's this PR that you are referring to I think: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/pull/1815/
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Apple Begins Testing Speedy M3 Chips as It Pursues Mac Comeback
For Metal specifically, they could adopt and contribute to Vulkan and get access to a lot more software. Right now you need to use a compatibility layer, and surely Apple could just support both APIs natively with much lower overhead. But they don't, because it nudges developers to stick to the Apple ecosystem instead of being able to support multiple platforms.
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What do we miss to play DirectX 12 Games on Mac?
At the moment the most promising thing is MoltenVK (DX12 -> DXVK -> Vulkan -> MoltenVK -> Metal), but the development is not that quick mainly because there aren't tons of developer that works at the same time on the project. It's not actually a Metal related problem at the moment (they have a road map of things that they can be achieved with Metal 3 like Mesh shader and Geometry shader).
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Is there a good reason to not allow vulkan on macos as another option?
What you asked is already existed for at least 8 years. Yeah EIGHT years. It's called "MoltenVK". So far it's the only implementation of Vulkan for macOS. Basically it's a wrapper that runs on top of Metal API.
What are some alternatives?
HeroicGamesLauncher - A games launcher for GOG, Amazon and Epic Games for Linux, Windows and macOS.
DXVK-macOS - Vulkan-based implementation of D3D10 and D3D11 for macOS / Wine
WineskinServer - Wineskin
metal-cpp - Metal-cpp is a low-overhead C++ interface for Metal that helps developers add Metal functionality to graphics apps, games, and game engines that are written in C++.
winetricks - Winetricks is an easy way to work around problems in Wine
MoltenGL
wine
FF14-MAC_ModSupport - Alternative method of running FFXIV on Mac with Mod Support.
Harbor - A harbor for all your game *porting* activities (get it?)
dxvk - Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 for Linux / Wine
box64 - Box64 - Linux Userspace x86_64 Emulator with a twist, targeted at ARM64 Linux devices
dxvk-async