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Steam Prompts OS X Graphics Update
Stoobalou writes "Mac gamers got a massive boost when online gaming hub Steam started supporting the platform a few months ago. The arrival of the online service, which allowed Mac-toting gamers to play some of the same games as their PC brethren, in some cases cross-platform, created a great deal of debate between the two camps, with the PC crowd pillorying Mac fans for the relatively poor performance of their expensive hardware. Now it seems that Apple has gotten the message, as they have provided a graphics update for OS X Snow Leopard which will make progress toward closing the gap between the two platforms."
This would be a non issue if apple would let the vendors (AMD, nVidia) write their own mac drivers.
I believe the current situation dictates that Apple writes their own drivers.
How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower?
apple is trying to push games but the hardware is not there.
a $800 mini system with no board video is not a gameing system.
A $2500 system with a ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5 is way to much cost can get systems with dual high end cards at that price and with 4-6gb of ram as well.
a $1200 system with a ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB is weak and a 21" screen does not help.
$1,500.00 with ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB
at lest that better then $1700 for a 27" screen with the same video card.
$2000 for a system with ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB and 27" screen? the 5750 not a top end card and having to drive a 27" screen is not good for gameing.
You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.
More like 10%.
This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base? xorg, driver issues, distro inconsistencies all make porting games to linux an absolute nightmare. A lot of fundamental changes need to be made to desktop linux before it will really be taken seriously by anyone but Id. John Carmack even came out and said that Rage wouldn't be commercially supported on Linux, and that they'd provide an executable and let people fend for themselves as far as actually getting it to run.
Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off? Your argument and theirs is pure bunk. The only thing the big names do better is textures and single player campaigns neither of which have a damn thing to do with xorg, driver issues or distro inconsistencies.
Good idea, and they could even do it for just ONE distro (Ubuntu, obviously). They would get most of the viable Linux user base, and those that don't run Ubuntu could use the FOSS community to learn how to get Steam to work. The one thing about the Linux userbase thats different than Windows and OSX crowds is that they don't usually expect everything to work out of the box. A little hacking is actually quite fun, and theres always a tutorial somewhere online for whatever you want to do. This would not be difficult for Steam to pull off and they would be the first of their kind to cover The Big 3 (Win, OSX, Linux).
One more quick thought: Canonical would probably jump on the dev team for this port in a heartbeat. I'm sure they would see the benefit of Steam games on their OS.
Apple fixed occlusion query in OpenGL, which matters when you're looking into a light source. Useful when sun near horizon in game. Nice, but no big deal.
Depends on which univ you are talking. The one I am at, people who fall out of the MBA programs would not be likely to surive even the first year of the engineering program, if they could even get into the dept in the first place.
*sigh* I am constantly frustrated by the 'if someone likes a mac, they must have been manipulated into it' meme. Most of the students (undergrad, masters, and PhD) student I know with macs use them because they are low maintenance and good for getting work done. They are good solutions for their situations and tasks... esp among the PhD students who really just do need a computer that works, lets them do their research, and does not burn time with fiddling or maintenance. Mac can be very good for that group.
Na. I've seen intrend away from that type od student.
OSX is a good choice for engineering. There is a lot of power there.
Why do I doubt you know all those student well enough to make the determination? or right, your post is chalk full of Ad Hom fallacy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This latest update for graphics has fixed that bug.
I notice that Apple never seems to have acknowledged the bug, despite people screaming in the support forums, and that the System Update doesn't mention that it's obtw fixing a total showstopper that has plagued many users for the last 6 weeks on all platforms - nothing to do with the games cited.
SimpleDirectMedia Layer. (http://www.libsdl.org/)
With SDL, you can do 2D, 3D (via OpenGL), Sound, Input, and basic video overlay. It supports well over a dozen platforms, including consoles.
GPU-accelerated video decoding isn't supported/exported, but that's not part of DirectX.
SDL even has a Networking layer too, but it's not part of the core. (Actually DirectPlay is deprecated, and its replacement isn't part of DirectX either)
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
Do you have evidence or example behavior/feature that shows that OSX doesn't have a very fast 3D layer? Otherwise the most damning thing about OSX graphics engine is that it isn't DirectX. That isn't better or worse but simply different.