AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux

I've been gaming on Linux since Warcraft 3 days.

Wine is wonderful and with Valve's help it only got better.

But why would gaming on a mac be better? Maybe one day, but for now:

FTA: "While many games are playable, newer AAA titles don’t hit 60fps yet."

I read the GP differently. I think they meant: if you are on a Mac computer, is gaming better under Linux vs macOS?

I think the answer might be yes, because it's possible to play so many more titles!

Game emulation isn't a Linux only thing.

But if anyone can name a non-Windows platform that does it better, I'll wait!

Is there a way to run Control or Cyberpunk on macOS?

Yes. Haven’t tried those games, but on apple silicon whisky app emulates with gameporting toolkit + wine/proton. For intel silicon I think it was also possible but not sure.

Oh, wow, I did not realize how many games worked with this:

https://docs.getwhisky.app/game-support/index.html

I had assumed the lack of Vulkan on macOS was a major issue. Apparently not!

Yeah,can’t tell you how it works exactly but it’s quite good

Cause MoltenVK [1] is used, I think.

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[1]: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

Not really.

PC games use DirectX as their graphics API, so you need something that can translate from DirectX to the native graphics API your OS is running.

On MacOS you'd be translating from DirectX to Metal and Apple provides the emulation software (D3DMetal) as part of the Game Porting Toolkit.

On a Steam Deck, Proton uses Vulkan on Linux as the native graphics API, so in that case you are translating from DirectX to Vulkan.

> DXVK (which translates Direct3D 8, 9, 10 and 11 calls to Vulkan on the fly), vkd3d-proton (which translates Direct3D 12 to Vulkan)

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Proton

That’s true, but many titles are 32bit and Apple removed 32 bit support, causing these titles not to run. It’s a real bummer, because there is no technical limitation.

Crossover and Whisky run 32 bit PC games just fine.

Do you use Wine or Proton?

> FTA: "While many games are playable, newer AAA titles don’t hit 60fps yet."

You’re lucky to get 60fps playing a fairly undemanding game on MacOS, even on hardware that is otherwise a dream.

For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 is barely playable on my M3 MacBook Pro at well below native resolution with all settings turned down. It’s a brilliant game but hardly cutting edge graphically.

I played through the entirety of Elden Ring and its DLC on my macbook pro through GPTK which is a pretty modern and demanding game. Don't think that would be possible on asahi.

That's why the new WoW64 mode in wine is exciting. Even if the system doesn't support 32 bit binaries, you can still run 32bit windows software

> PC games use DirectX as their graphics API

You are forgetting the increasing number of titles targeting Vulkan directly.

That is an extremely niche use case on Windows.

How would I use GPTK to play some arbitrary Windows game?

I play BG3 on my M1 at 4K just fine…

Very useful, I hadn’t heard of that. I think it must not be shipped by default in steams built in proton support, but I will look into it.