ESO on a new MacBook Air

LannStone

The power supply went out on my PC, so I've been playing on my MacBook Air 2020 M1 chip model until I fix it and thought I'd give a report. Quick summary - looks great, runs very smooth with a wireless mouse but a little buggy - great for gathering resources, doing surveys and writs but I'd not trust it with trials or PVP - unless I can change some settings to make it more stable.
The weirdest thing is when I'm near some objects in the Vivec crafting area and the screen suddenly fills with blobs of color, which clear up when I move. I don't see that anamoly anywhere else. Also I've been crashing to desktop about once an hour, usually when teleporting - much more than on my PC.
Here are the video settings in ESO, which are the defaults, in case anybody has had some luck changing some of them.
Screen resolution 1440 x 900
Graphics Quality High
Texture Quality High
Anti-Aliasing FXAA (could that be a problem?)
SubSampling Quality High
Shadow Quality High
Screenspace Reflective Quality Medium
Planar Reflective Quality Off
Maximum Particle Systems 1024 (slider about a fourth from the left)
Particle Suppression Distance 50
View Distance 37 (slider about a third from the left - seems pretty good, but this is set much higher on my PC)
Ambient Occlusion None
Grass High
Depth of Field Simple
Bloom On
Distortion On
Sunlight Rays On
Show Additional Ally Effects Off

zaria

I guess the problem in Vivec is all the players in various outfits overwhelm the system graphic memory?
Do you get the problem in off hours to?

LannStone

You're probably right about the limited graphics memory compared to PC. No strange graphic glitches at all in Vivec just now at 2:15 am EST.

SeaGtGruff

I've been playing ESO on a slightly older MacBook Air (pre-M1) when I'm away from my Windows PC, and it runs fine except for frequent crashes while trying to switch characters or switch servers. My main activity while playing on my MacBook Air is doing daily crafting writs in Vivec City, and I haven't noticed any strange blobs of color, just the usual AOEs from players who enjoy spamming their abilities and/or dueling.

LannStone

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I've been playing ESO on a slightly older MacBook Air (pre-M1) when I'm away from my Windows PC, and it runs fine except for frequent crashes while trying to switch characters or switch servers. My main activity while playing on my MacBook Air is doing daily crafting writs in Vivec City, and I haven't noticed any strange blobs of color, just the usual AOEs from players who enjoy spamming their abilities and/or dueling.

Similar graphics settings as I posted? I did most of the event on the MacBook Air (7 writs x 18 characters daily) and most of the time had no problems (other than my old eyes dealing with the inventory on the smaller screen). A couple of times I encountered these swirls of colors that almost filled the screen, especially near the clothing station, but managed to play through them.
Anybody have experience running ESO on a fast solid-state external hard drive with a MacBook (to free up space)?

ZOS_Adrikoth

Greetings @LannStone

The steps in this article might be able to help if you are experiencing crashing/performance issues on a Mac.

LannStone

ZOS_Adrikoth wrote: »

Greetings @LannStone

The steps in this article might be able to help if you are experiencing crashing/performance issues on a Mac.

Thanks for pointing out that article; I'll try some of those tips

doesurmindglow

Yeah all the Mac users have been crashing to desktop on changing instances since the FoA patch. We all have the same issue and same crash logs. It's persisted through the patches since then, and seems to occur whether or not you have add-ons enabled.

It is, decisively, an issue with how the changes to the modeling system are ported over to the Mac client.

We're hoping it gets fixed in a later update but it is very difficult to ascertain if ZOS is aware of and actively working on the problem. Another user suggested banishing pets and assistants, which does seem to reduce the frequency. Another user also suggested leaving full screen (like going to a window) before executing an instance change. I've only started trying that recently, so I don't know yet if it helps any.

LannStone

ZOS_Adrikoth wrote: »

Greetings @LannStone

The steps in this article might be able to help if you are experiencing crashing/performance issues on a Mac.

Update - I switched from full screen to windowed and changed a few settings from high to medium and the game is running totally smoothly on the MacBook Air M1 chip now, and I don't really see any difference in quality except for the slightly smaller play screen. I still play mostly on the PC with the big screen but this allows me to play on the MacBook when I'm traveling.

aldriq

Thanks for the report! Was that Air 8GB or 16GB of RAM?

LannStone

aldriq wrote: »

Thanks for the report! Was that Air 8GB or 16GB of RAM?

This is with 8GB RAM