Mac: Explained: macOS Sonoma’s Game Porting Toolkit and what it means for Mac users – Times of India
How will Game Porting Toolkit work
According to a report by Verge, this feature can translate and run the latest DirectX 12 Windows games on macOS.The feature is similar to the one that Valve offers with Proton and the Steam Deck. The Game Porting Toolkit in macOS Sonoma is powered by a source code from CrossOver. It is a Wine-based solution that allows users to run Windows games on macOS.
Apple’s tool will instantly translate Windows games to run on macOS. This will allow developers to launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how it runs before fully porting a game.
“The new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing unmodified Windows game and you can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac,” explains Aiswariya Sreenivassan, an engineering project manager for GPUs and graphics at Apple.
This new macOS feature can translate Intel-based x86 instructions and Windows APIs to Apple Silicon. APIs related to the keyboard, mouse, controller input, audio playback, networking, file system and even Direct3D are all translated to the corresponding APIs in macOS.
This way macOS users can run Windows games without any porting or modification. Apple says that this feature is capable enough for evaluating games before they’re ported across to macOS.
Limitations of Game Porting Toolkit
macOS Sonoma’s Game Porting Toolkit feature may face issues with how it may run games in this environment. As per the report, this tool may not optimise most games and users may face performance issues and bugs until developers create separate ports.
The report notes that some Reddit users were able to run Cyberpunk 2077 on an M1 MacBook Pro, Diablo IV on an M1 Max MacBook Pro and Hogwarts Legacy on an M2 Max model. The report adds that the early results look promising. However, some performance limitations and potential bugs may appear from running games on Mac this way.
Apple’s macOS gaming push
Developers face several challenges while porting Windows games to Mac. It involves a complex process of recompiling source code, converting custom shaders, reimplementing the graphics subsystem and converting audio, input as well as HDR rendering.
To cut down on all that complexity, developers can use a cross-platform game engine if they’re targeting multiple platforms. However, they still have to debug a game and optimise the performance on macOS.
Apple now has a tool that allows developers to understand how much porting work will be required to fix bugs and optimise their games on macOS. This tool promises to cut down the time and work to port games from Windows to Mac significantly.
The company has also added a new game mode in macOS Sonoma. Game developer Hideo Kojima also appeared during Apple’s WWDC keynote to announce that Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be coming to macOS.
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