Mac OS X El Capitan

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

So i watched Apple's stream of WWDC today and of course they announced their next version of Mac OS X, El Capitan. One of the things that was touched upon was that they spent time getting performance up versus Yosemite. They are doing away with OpenGL and replacing it with Metal, which debuted on iOS 8. I am not an expert on the more technical aspects so I will not go into it, but bottom line is Metal allows game developers to get much better performance and allows much more detail on the screen on the same Mac versus currently what is capable with OpenGL.

What do you guys think? Come the Fall will El Capitan boost ESO performance off the bat? You think ESO will have compatibility issues? Will ZOS continue Mac development to take advantage of Metal and how long before we see any benefit from it?

Edit:

http://www.imore.com/metal-os-x-so-huge-i-no-longer-need-mac-pro

Will Metal allow Mac to finally have the new character facial animations PCs have had for some time now?

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

Ok, let's do this one by one.

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Come the Fall will El Capitan boost ESO performance off the bat?

Very unlikely. You have to differentiate between high-level operating system APIs like Core Animation or Core Graphics, which in turn call lower-level APIs like OpenGL or, in the future, Metal (which in turn operate on a driver level).

If an application, like a game, is written to exclusively use the higer-level APIs, it will profit from the underlying change from OpenGL to Metal, because it won't know much about this change. Very likely it will see a performance boost out of the box, or after a recompile.

On the other hand, if an application, like a renderer, directly calls on a lower-level API like OpenGL (for performance reasons, better control, and/or easier cross-platform code management), it won't automagically use the newer, faster one like Metal. It's code would have to be rewritten to make use of the newer API, or, for reasons of backward-compatibility, make use of both of them depending on availability. Since ESO is cross-platform by design, the question is whether the effort to program for an exclusive API available on only one platform can be justified (Direct3D has a much lager install base, plus Xbone uses it as well AFAIK).

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

You think ESO will have compatibility issues?

It's very likely that ESO will continue using OpenGL for the time being. It's also very likely that OS X 10.11 will introduce new OpenGL driver versions, which might include new quirks. This would have to be addressed in minor patches. If you don't want this kind of trouble, don't be an early adaptor (we've seen what happened after the introduction of Yosemite).

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Will ZOS continue Mac development to take advantage of Metal and how long before we see any benefit from it?

That's a question only the team can answer. As I said above, the effort would have to be justified, and rewriting a renderer to make use of a new API is not done quickly. Remember that Metal will be exclusive to 10.11, and that it won't be backported to older versions of OS X. So the initial install base will be very small. Of course it will grow over time, but older machines with older versions of OS X would still need to be supported.

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Will Metal allow Mac to finally have the new character facial animations PCs have had for some time now?

Using the 3rd party FaceFX library does not depend on Metal. It's a multi-platform library which makes use of OpenGL (among other APIs). The reason we haven't seen it yet is that the OpenGL version the ESO renderer uses needs to be raised from the current 2.1 version to the newer 4.1, to accommodate for various needs (e.g. higher amount of animated parts, etc.).

FaceFX itself would have to be made compatible to Metal by its manufacturer, in order for it being able to be used with Metal in the first place.

(Edited for some clearer wording)

Hlaadriel · June 2015

Awsome answer @KhajitFurTrader !

emotionrays · June 2015

I just want to add that at the moment The Elder Scrolls Online is not compatible with the MacOS X El Capitan. So if you'd decide to get the build and to try the game, it will fail with the critical error, not even running the launcher. That would be fixed of course maybe even in the next update for the developer preview of the new MacOS X, but right now it doesn't work.

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

@emotionrays, that's interesting to know. I'll have to check whether I'm still a member of the paid developer program, and if so, I'm down for a little creative testing.

and thank you, @Hlaadriel

emotionrays · June 2015

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

@emotionrays, that's interesting to know. I'll have to check whether I'm still a member of the paid developer program, and if so, I'm down for a little creative testing.

Well, the game itself works well (I opened the content of package and ran the eso executable from there). But the launcher, however, quits with "Host_AuthFail" error. As you mentioned, I haven't noticed any visual improvements or FPS increase (which is quite normal, though I had some hopes that Apple did some tweaks to their video driver).

I tried it on a mac mini 2012 model with Intel HD 4000 video card.

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

So if I distill everything that is said in above posts, ESO most likely will never take advantage of the benefits of Metal in its life cycle?

Assuming ESO really achieves critical and commercial acclaim (I think ESO is still in its first era of growing pains) will there ever be a true ESO 2.0 (I remember lots of mention of an eventual 64 bit version last year)? Would/could an ESO 2.0 contain updated code to use Metal?

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

So if I distill everything that is said in above posts, ESO most likely will never take advantage of the benefits of Metal in its life cycle?

Well, I seriously doubt that anyone can make a precise prediction this early in time. Metal hasn't even been released yet officially, but surely it's here to stay. It's all about adaption rates, difficulty or ease of code migration, cost/benefit ratio, and of course, demand. Of the last thing mentioned, there is ample supply already, it seems.

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Assuming ESO really achieves critical and commercial acclaim (I think ESO is still in its first era of growing pains) will there ever be a true ESO 2.0 (I remember lots of mention of an eventual 64 bit version last year)? Would/could an ESO 2.0 contain updated code to use Metal?

Absolutely. But like anything, it's mostly a matter of time and resources. Almost all MMOs, at least the ones I know, have got upgrades to their graphical engines over the course of their respective lifetimes, adapting newer technologies (not "bleeding edge", but newer than the ones they originally started out with). After all, they need to stay where the bulk of their audience is.

But there are rarely the resources available to do everything at the same time, so things have to be done one after another. We already know from Chris, that in order to utilize the FaceFX facial animations, the client first has to be brought up to use OpenGL 4.1. Then, there's the matter of the 64-bit client, which in any event will happen on all supported platforms simultaneously (PS4 apparently already is). And after that? It will depend on no small part on the third party tools and libraries that are used in the production tool chain. For an all-Metal supporting client to exist, they would have to be available for Metal as well, or else it could mean losing some of the features we've gained in the meantime.

emotionrays · June 2015

Just wanna add my 5 cents (I don't belong or relate to ESO developers in any ways, so it's just my personal opinion).

Technologies must be used to achieve goals. If the goal is just to use technology, then it's a waste of time and resources. The goal should be to create something which can be achieved using a specific technology. And I am sure that if ESO developers will see the features that will improve the game and use the advantage of Metal, they will certainly add Metal support to the game.

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

@KhajitFurTrader thanks for the responses, you know Mac well. Putting Metal discussion aside, how certain is a 64 bit version of ESO? I remember a lot of buzz surrounding a 64 bit version last year when the game was suffering through the memory leaks and all that. Now stability is greatly improved (thanks Chris and team). So is a 64 bit ESO still on the table if the 32 bit version has been polished up?

I would assume a 64 bit version would greatly improve performance and experience for many (regardless of a 32 bit bug free version).

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

I would assume a 64 bit version would greatly improve performance and experience for many (regardless of a 32 bit bug free version).

Well, I see it as @emotionrays correctly said, technology is best used to achieve a certain goal, and not as an end to itself. I've explained here why there is no immediate advantage to be had automatically from compiling a program in 64-bit instead of 32-bit. It's not as if flipping a compilation target switch suddenly makes things twice as performant as before (although we might wish for it to be, of course

).

No official announcement has been made yet, but I guess we will see an announcement whenever they're ready to share the information.

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO · June 2015

Well, there has been a lot of articulate conversation about what we might/could/should/would/can expect and all, I was going to reply to specifics and decided that was too much like work. Instead, I thought I would just try it and see how El Capitan runs ESO rather than worrying about hypotheticals.

My machine is sort of a newer iMac, I say sort of since it is a home-brew PC (i5 with 8 GB ram, 1TB/256GB fusion drive, nVidia 760) and running as a Hackintosh. I installed EL Capitan yesterday and that discovered everything so far works fine - so far. ESO, as was mentioned by an earlier post has an issue with the launcher which aborts with a host_authfail error.

However, opening the application and running the game directly works fine.

My finding was that in running on the NA server in Vulkhel guard my FPS this morning in running between 45 and 60 FPS. I have a nVidia 760 and "normally" running in Yosemite I will get between 35 and 50 FPS. Running around outside of town my FPS was running around 85 to 95 FPS.

It would seem that for my one data point there was a 20% or so improvement in performance - however, we need more data points at different times during the day to see if that difference holds up.

Frank

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO wrote: »

Well, there has been a lot of articulate conversation about what we might/could/should/would/can expect and all, I was going to reply to specifics and decided that was too much like work. Instead, I thought I would just try it and see how El Capitan runs ESO rather than worrying about hypotheticals.

My machine is sort of a newer iMac, I say sort of since it is a home-brew PC (i5 with 8 GB ram, 1TB/256GB fusion drive, nVidia 760) and running as a Hackintosh. I installed EL Capitan yesterday and that discovered everything so far works fine - so far. ESO, as was mentioned by an earlier post has an issue with the launcher which aborts with a host_authfail error.

However, opening the application and running the game directly works fine.

My finding was that in running on the NA server in Vulkhel guard my FPS this morning in running between 45 and 60 FPS. I have a nVidia 760 and "normally" running in Yosemite I will get between 35 and 50 FPS. Running around outside of town my FPS was running around 85 to 95 FPS.

It would seem that for my one data point there was a 20% or so improvement in performance - however, we need more data points at different times during the day to see if that difference holds up.

Frank

Nice test, thanks for letting us know. Sounds like El Capitan should be a positive for ESO right from the starting gate (fingers crossed).

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

Okay. The error message Host_AuthFail was telling me something. So I downloaded and installed OS X 10.11 (15A178w) on another iMac (not my current main machine) -- 27" iMac, mid 2010, 2,8 GHz Intel Core i5, 12 GB DDR3 RAM, 1 TB HDD (no SSD or Fusion Drive), ATI Radeon Graphics HD 5750, 1 GB VRAM.

I had ESO installed prior to the installation, and under 10.10.3 it was giving me a quite constant 20 FPS at a resolution of 2560x1440 with default graphics, VSYNC and AA set to off, Shadow quality set to Low. No, I haven't run the game itself in 10.11 yet, so maybe more on that later.

So the Launcher gave me the Host_AuthFail message, as expected. Disabling GateKeeper and the Firewall didn't help, either. Then I remembered an older post by @ZOS_MollyH, linking to a (then) alternate version of the launcher. I grabbed it, started it, and lo and behold, the error message was a different one: "Host: certificate authentication failed, please reinstall to correct the problem".

Googling the error message brought me to a old launch-day thread in the German Players helping Players forum. A user reported that the likely cause of the error (in Windows) was a missing Thawte root certificate. So I went to https://www.thawte.com/roots/ and downloaded the very first file "Root 1 Thawte Primary Root CA". It's a PEM format file, and Safari put it into my Documents folder. Thawte recommends installing the certificate to the root key stores.

Starting up Keychain Access (/Applications/Utilites), it told me flat out that adding root certs to the OS X System Root keychain is very much frowned upon (and a potential security risk). Dragging and dropping the .pem file from Documents into the login keychain (for the current user) or System keychain (for all users on the system) is ok, though. After adding it to the keychain, I right-clicked on "thawte Primary Root CA", selected "Get Info", and set the trust setting When using this certificate to "Always Trust". Lo and behold, the Launcher.app started without the error message, displayed its window, and...

...stalled at the dreaded "Loading..." message. I looked into Contents/Mac OS/host.developer.log (right-click Launcher.app and select Show Package Contents). What I saw wasn't encouraging:

06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/gold/backgrounds/bg-cover01.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/single/icons.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Accept queue size of (2)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/gold/plate-extended.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/gold/plate-games-news.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Extracting skin file (locale.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Extracting skin file (workflow.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (en-us)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (de-de)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 http://127.0.0.1:50141/applications.js (1961): ---- Setting loaded ----
06/13/2015 19:54:23 http://127.0.0.1:50141/applications.js (2471): -=- Version: 1134543
06/13/2015 19:54:23 http://127.0.0.1:50141/applications.js (2489): ------- Branch: live -------
06/13/2015 19:54:23 http://127.0.0.1:50141/applications.js (2490): ------- Type: public -------
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Extracting skin file (locale.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Extracting skin file (locale.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/gold/plate-settings.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading interop library (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libdownloader.dylib)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading interop library (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libpatcher.dylib)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading interop library (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libMinSpecDetectionInterop.dylib)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (en-us)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (de-de)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Response code set [/images/gold/progress-bar.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Extracting skin file (analytics.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Library validation (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libpatcher.dylib) failed
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Library validation (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libdownloader.dylib) failed
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Library validation (/Applications/Zenimax Online/Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/libMinSpecDetectionInterop.dylib) failed
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (en-us)
06/13/2015 19:54:23 Loading localization (de-de)
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/images/gold/progress-bar-fill.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:24 http://127.0.0.1:50141/applications.js (1890): -=- Region: EU
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Extracting skin file (locale.json)
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Loading localization (en-us)
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Loading localization (de-de)
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/images/gold/progress-bar-glow.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Accept queue size of (3)
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/fonts/RoboCondensed_bold.woff:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/images/gold/dropdown-open.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/images/gold/dropdown-bottom.png:200:0]
06/13/2015 19:54:24 Response code set [/fonts/RoboCondensed_regular.woff:200:0]
06/13/2015 20:01:13 Unsupported cursor (move) using default instead.  To implement this cursor add move.png to the Resources directory
06/13/2015 20:29:47 Unsupported cursor (move) using default instead.  To implement this cursor add move.png to the Resources directory

So, it couldn't validate some crucial dynamic libraries. Dunno if that's the end of it, but I certainly will do some further research to see whether this can be remedied. Chances are, we'd either have to wait for a new build of 10.11, or a recompilation of the Launcher.app.

ZOS_MollyH · June 2015

Greetings!

Thank you for your extensive write-up of how that went for you, @KhajitFurTrader !

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

Garnering some good info here. Let's keep this up. Let's give the ZOS Mac team as much El Capitan beta data as possible.

chris.dillman · June 2015

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

@KhajitFurTrader thanks for the responses, you know Mac well. Putting Metal discussion aside, how certain is a 64 bit version of ESO? I remember a lot of buzz surrounding a 64 bit version last year when the game was suffering through the memory leaks and all that. Now stability is greatly improved (thanks Chris and team). So is a 64 bit ESO still on the table if the 32 bit version has been polished up?

I would assume a 64 bit version would greatly improve performance and experience for many (regardless of a 32 bit bug free version).

Hi, Publius_Scipio

64bit apps are supposed to run about 10% faster then 32bit apps on OSX.
( We are told, but have not tested this yet ourselves )

We are not currently planning on doing a Metal version of ESO.
Theres a few issues with Metal right now.
1. It is beta, there will be bugs etc.
2. It does not run on PCs. PC graphic team currently helps debug GL issues on their PCs.
3. We would have to raise the OSX system requirement higher then 10.9.
4. We have a 80% functional GL 4.1 renderer now. It is much easier to update to newer OpenGL then move to an entirely new system, plus rewrite all the shaders again.
5. Moving to GL 4.1 will open up a bunch of speed improvement options for ESO plus better looking graphics. Example we can draw the grounds in 1 pass vs 2, we can use a geometry shader to create ground on the GPU vs uploading meshes, we will have more find grained control over lighting and shine on objects. We can pass more data to the GPU shaders in 1 command vs 100.

Sometime after Metal ship on OSX and the bugs are generally worked out we will look at what it would take to move to it in the long term. Currently Apple is not killing off OpenGL 4.1 anytime soon, even if they decide to stop upgrading it.
Also Vulkan https://www.khronos.org/vulkan spec is supposed to ship this year.
Apples on the design board for that.
Vulkan is based on Mantle which is AMDs API that is probably 95% the same as Metal.
Our guess is that Vulkan might sit on top of Mantle and Metal drivers.
That would be the best cross platform way to handle things down the road.
That is exactly what it is made for.
Code once run on all platforms at high speed.

Publius_Scipio · June 2015

chris.dillman wrote: »

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

@KhajitFurTrader thanks for the responses, you know Mac well. Putting Metal discussion aside, how certain is a 64 bit version of ESO? I remember a lot of buzz surrounding a 64 bit version last year when the game was suffering through the memory leaks and all that. Now stability is greatly improved (thanks Chris and team). So is a 64 bit ESO still on the table if the 32 bit version has been polished up?

I would assume a 64 bit version would greatly improve performance and experience for many (regardless of a 32 bit bug free version).

Hi, Publius_Scipio

64bit apps are supposed to run about 10% faster then 32bit apps on OSX.
( We are told, but have not tested this yet ourselves )

We are not currently planning on doing a Metal version of ESO.
Theres a few issues with Metal right now.
1. It is beta, there will be bugs etc.
2. It does not run on PCs. PC graphic team currently helps debug GL issues on their PCs.
3. We would have to raise the OSX system requirement higher then 10.9.
4. We have a 80% functional GL 4.1 renderer now. It is much easier to update to newer OpenGL then move to an entirely new system, plus rewrite all the shaders again.
5. Moving to GL 4.1 will open up a bunch of speed improvement options for ESO plus better looking graphics. Example we can draw the grounds in 1 pass vs 2, we can use a geometry shader to create ground on the GPU vs uploading meshes, we will have more find grained control over lighting and shine on objects. We can pass more data to the GPU shaders in 1 command vs 100.

Sometime after Metal ship on OSX and the bugs are generally worked out we will look at what it would take to move to it in the long term. Currently Apple is not killing off OpenGL 4.1 anytime soon, even if they decide to stop upgrading it.
Also Vulkan https://www.khronos.org/vulkan spec is supposed to ship this year.
Apples on the design board for that.
Vulkan is based on Mantle which is AMDs API that is probably 95% the same as Metal.
Our guess is that Vulkan might sit on top of Mantle and Metal drivers.
That would be the best cross platform way to handle things down the road.
That is exactly what it is made for.
Code once run on all platforms at high speed.

Wow, thanks for the thorough response Chris. Wish you the best on working towards GL 4.1. Can't wait to try ESO when that's up and running.

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO · June 2015

Thank you Chris, any comment on if/when you might patch the launcher so those of use running 10.11 can run again? Now that you updated today, I can no longer update my OSX version of ESO and will have to use my Windows client to play.

Thanks,

Frank

EDITED: Thanks Chris for your comment in the other thread about this - I appreciate the answer.

KhajitFurTrader · June 2015

On a more general note, the blog netkas.org has taken a look at the drivers shipped with the current beta of 10.11, and found that not every GPU will be supported to run Metal:

This info comes from metal driver availability, not from real test

Metal supported card families:

Nvidia – GeForce gtx 4xx and newer
Intel – HD4000 and newer (ivy bridge and newer)
AMD – HD7000 and newer

So this means that not every Mac that's able to run OS X 10.11 (i.e. all that are able to run 10.10 now) will also be able to support apps that utilize Metal. Put the other way round, OpenGL will stay the most widely supported graphics API for the foreseeable future.

And thank you for that awesome reply, Chris. That's really good news to hear.

Pawkette · June 2015

chris.dillman wrote: »

Code once run on all platforms at high speed.

Hey, that sounds like the idea behind a pretty Unreal Engine I work on

-Sammy

ImperSpent · July 2015

The current work around for playing TESOnline if you have Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) is to skip the Launcher. (Not sure if this is against EULA)

Found here:
/Applications/Zenimax Online/The Elder Scrolls Online/game_mac/pubplayerclient/eso.app

The only problem with this work around is when the game updates, like it just did recently, you cannot play the game.

For those who try to change their version number in /System/Library/CoreServices/systemversion.plist to try to trick the Launcher into thinking your are on 10.10.4, you cannot do this as there is no "real" root user in El Capitan... yet. Root users allow you to override all permissions to change critical files such as /systemversion.plist. It is dangerous to do this and can even render your Mac unbootable, so please don't try this at all [if they do adjust root user permissions].

The best way to play is just partition El Capitan onto a separate partition, as you should with any un-released beta software, and keep TESOnline on your Yosemite partition.

Cheers guys!

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO · July 2015

You can update your 10.11 OSX version of ESO if you have a Yosemite version sitting around - update ESO on Yosemite, then copy the ESO application to the EL Capitan install. Works fine for me.

Primordial_Steak · July 2015

ImperSpent wrote: »

For those who try to change their version number in /System/Library/CoreServices/systemversion.plist to try to trick the Launcher into thinking your are on 10.10.4, you cannot do this as there is no "real" root user in El Capitan... yet. Root users allow you to override all permissions to change critical files such as /systemversion.plist. It is dangerous to do this and can even render your Mac unbootable, so please don't try this at all [if they do adjust root user permissions].

This is possible with the current version of El Capitan, but unfortunately doesn't work to get ESO going and you must do the work around as suggested above by downloading the update on another Mac and copying to your steamapps directory.

If anyone is curious to try what ImperSent has suggested you can get root access by booting into recovery mode.

Note that this is not recommended as none of your usual applications will work as they verify the version number. You will need a third party terminal client such as iTerm to be able to revert your system back to working or else you'll need to reinstall the entire OS!

1. Shut down computer
2. Hold CMD + R and power on Mac
3. Once in recovery mode click the Security tab and disable the system integrity protection
4. Restart the computer and you can now edit the plist file above.
5. Once this is done restart the computer
6. Attempt to launch ESO and it will fail.
7. Now open iTerm and revert your changes and restart, back to normal now.

Cheers

tfraley · July 2015

I updated to El Capitan last week as well,
I do have a Yosemite install on another machine.. will be annoying but deal able.

Any word on when a ESO patch is coming to fix the updates?

Other have mentioned and would have to agree, it would be nice to have metal support and keep the game cutting edge. Isn't this what any MMO game wants to keep their game cutting edge and keep users coming back. If not how will other MMO's that support metal faster compare and how many people will eso loss to them

My last comment ESO has to decide how they want to continue, Ported games never hold there ground in long term all the good lasting ones develop for each platform.

Just my 2 cents..

KhajitFurTrader · July 2015

tfraley wrote: »

Isn't this what any MMO game wants to keep their game cutting edge and keep users coming back. If not how will other MMO's that support metal faster compare and how many people will eso loss to them

No, what any MMO wants is to support the widest possible range of machines that are out there. Metal will be supported only on a fraction of machines that support OS X El Capitan in the first place. No MMO needs cutting edge graphics per sé, e.g. even WoW doesn't offer "cutting edge" AA options on the Mac right now (6.2). Not a single customer would change games primarily over graphics features, but because of gameplay features or issues.

tfraley wrote: »

My last comment ESO has to decide how they want to continue, Ported games never hold there ground in long term all the good lasting ones develop for each platform.

ESO isn't a port, it never was. It's a genuine OS X binary, compiled from a common code base. It would be a logistical nightmare to develop for every platform separately, and no software developer in their right mind would do otherwise unless forced.

gurahamu · July 2015

RE Chris speaking about Vulkan coming up and Apple's membership, apparently, Apple's creation of Metal is their way of kicking Vulkan to the curb. Apple have thus far not made a mention of Vulkan support in OS X so I doubt that will actually be coming any time soon. Not before 10.12 anyway.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/207767-apple-brings-its-metal-api-to-os-x-10-11-kicks-vulkan-to-the-curb

tfraley · July 2015

@KhajitFurTrader

I agree to disagree here, If you're developing for a platform you use all the tools in your arsenal to develop to the best of your ability. You brought up WOW, blizzard has a development team for every platform since its first release. It's one thing to write common code and another to have teams who codes in the best possible way for that platform. Common code is just not efficient for any platform. Kind of like, let's make our game good on every platform and great on none. (2cents from a not a non game Dev)

I will admit I don't know the in's and outs of ESO structure, but I know from posts in here, there updater is not written in house and they cannot make changes themselves. In those same threads they refer to it as a port. They could be wrong, I have no clue what the code looks like.

I would love to learn more FACTS on ESO development if anyone has them and are able to share.

KhajitFurTrader · July 2015

tfraley wrote: »

My last comment ESO has to decide how they want to continue, Ported games never hold there ground in long term all the good lasting ones develop for each platform.

tfraley wrote: »

I will admit I don't know the in's and outs of ESO structure, but I know from posts in here, there updater is not written in house and they cannot make changes themselves. In those same threads they refer to it as a port. They could be wrong, I have no clue what the code looks like.

So, you're talking about the launcher, not the game, after all? It wasn't clear from your first post I quoted above. The launcher is indeed an app developed with third party APIs provided by Solid State Networks, a CDN hoster and service provider for content delivery, especially for games. If those APIs break under 10.11, it's their responsibility to fix them, not ZOS's. The launcher app itself is, again, a genuine OS X binary, not a "port".

Maybe you're just confusing something about what the term "port" means nowadays. Virtually no-one is using bytecode interpreters anymore, as was seen in the past. As APIs and tool chains are genuinely available on multiple platforms today, it is much easier and cleaner to program and maintain a common base of source code, and then use conditional compilation to build targets for many different platforms and OSs. The OpenGL renderer of ESO, for example, is build for both OS X and Windows, so that both platforms are able to to use it. The reason that there is a Direct3D renderer for Windows as well is the higher demand for it on the much larger installed base. Metal will be supported only on a fraction of Macs that support OS X 10.11 in the first place, as has been mentioned here.

tfraley wrote: »

I would love to learn more FACTS on ESO development if anyone has them and are able to share.

Easy, just search for the posts of @chris.dillman in this forum. Chris has been very forthcoming about the nitty and gritty details of development in the past, which I greatly appreciate.

tfraley · July 2015

@KhajitFurTrader

Thank you.

chris.dillman · July 2015

gurahamu wrote: »

RE Chris speaking about Vulkan coming up and Apple's membership, apparently, Apple's creation of Metal is their way of kicking Vulkan to the curb. Apple have thus far not made a mention of Vulkan support in OS X so I doubt that will actually be coming any time soon. Not before 10.12 anyway.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/207767-apple-brings-its-metal-api-to-os-x-10-11-kicks-vulkan-to-the-curb

Hi gurahamu,

Please read https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/vulkan-overview.pdf

It looks like it might not require any actual driver or Apple OS level support at all.

Metal on OSX might be the first step in getting Vulkan to work.

A developer would take a language like GLSL, HLSL, C++ etc compile it to byte code
then on the target platform the byte code will be converted to Metal Byte code by a library or a driver.

Metal shaders ship as compiled byte code as is.

Another option is the vulkan tool chain could just spit out Metal shaders.

Pretty much all the AAA game companies that do cross platform games already use in-house
version of tech like this to translate shaders.