FFXIV refunds on Mac OS through poor performance - interesting nuggets...

[princec]

Skim here: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/0f6df59d2175ff4ddc26de3981641512f05a9e14

the nature of FFXIV’s graphics as an MMORPG are such that, even if we were to develop in native OpenGL, it would be exceedingly difficult to provide a level of performance that matched that of a system using DirectX. (Though it may be possible in games with less complicated graphics, there would be a much bigger tuning gap to bridge for FFXIV.)

With the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple’s next OS, the fundamental gap in current performance issues may soon be eliminated.

Hmm what?

Cas

[basil]

what ? … proof of : it’s easy to screw up when using openGL ?

[princec]

AFAIK modern DX and GL are fairly fundamentally similar performance-wise so I’m guessing in this case that due to OpenGL capabilities being quite widely ranged that they’d had to settle for a lowest common denominator that hurt performance relative to a contemporary DirectX.

What I found more interesting was this bit:

[quote]With the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple’s next OS
[/quote]
DirectX11 for Mac eh? And Apple is replacing OpenGL with… Mantle? Or just freezing GL where it is and concentrating on Mantle from then on?

Cas

[Phased]

From what I believe Mantle is dead, so if they replace it with mantle, their replacing a active developed API with a dead API.

Maybe there going to replace it with Vulkan?

[princec]

Sorry, not Mantle… Metal.

Cas

[Phased]

yeah, a quick search of that looks like Metal is coming to OS X 10.11.

I remember hearing about Metal, but I completely forgot about it until I just googled it.

EDIT:

I think its not very smart for them to move to Metal, I think if they want to replace OpenGL they should of moved to something more standard by adding Vulkan support (one site seems to say Vulkan may not be added to OS X, If they had an API that will be mainstream on mac (instead of there own API), they may get a lot more users, as games would more likely have a mac version available.

[princec]

Well, I’ll be entirely happy to ditch OSX as a supported platform if they make it any more difficult than it already is. Well, not entirely happy, as OSX makes up about 5% of revenues and no-one likes a 5% pay cut.

Cas

[swpalmer]

They aren’t replacing OpenGL. They are adding Metal. The same API that they created for iOS.

[theagentd]

TL;DR how do i ogl

EDIT: To clarify, they clearly don’t know what they’re doing. If they limited themselves to OpenGL 4 they’d even be able to get better performance than DX11 can ever get them through AZDO extensions.

[basil]

that’s what i was thinking too

[Roquen]

They’re probably thinking it isn’t worth the effort.