The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

I just tried it out in the El Capitan beta, and I was getting about 30 - 45 fps tonight on standard laptop settings at 1440p. There are some weird issues with windowed mode though. When I try to run it in windowed mode, the client will jump up to the top of the screen and cut off a large portion of the window. Hopefully they will get a metal update out soon since the public beta is out now. I'll have to compare my performance tomorrow at prime time.

I've spent the whole night on the Mac client tonight, and, at least for me (I'll put my specs at the end), I see a huge improvement post-patch. I mean, no, it's not even close to being on par with playing under Boot Camp, but it's actually playable now. Pre-update, I'd commonly see FPS dip to below 10. Like, 6-9FPS not only in Pillars, but even in Tailfeather (which has far fewer characters to render). You just can't do anything at 9FPS, since even basic things like turning your camera are so choppy that it's hard to get the angle you want.

NOW, I may get around 20FPS in a busy town, which isn't great (I'll get easily 30s-40s in busy areas in BC), but it's usable, especially for crafting (my current obsession). Out in field areas, I also average around 30s, sometimes touching 40 when there's not a lot going on.

(Ugh, character limits... continued below)

So on par with Boot Camp? No. But since I'm seeing often a 2x (or more) improvement in frame rate, it's a shockingly nice leap from a minor update, so I'm quite hopeful at our chances once they get to "the big two" - DX11 and El Capitan Metal support. It sounds like they still can optimize a bit more prior to that though, since it sounds like several people aren't seeing the improvements that I am.

Still, I wanted to share my findings, in hopes that others who jumped ship know that there's progress being made.

Oh, and I'm running:
iMac 27" (Late 2012)
3.2 GHz Core i5
24GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX (2GB)

BTW, I'm running in windowed mode at 2048x1152, since even in BootCamp, running at native 2560x1440 can be a performance hit. I'd suggest people run windowed as well - they don't specifically say it in the patch notes, but I think the fact that the Mac client now defaults AWAY from full screen means that there's something wrong with full screen that needs to be fixed.

I wish people with bad experiences would post more specs... and Square would get around to posting the requirements. Although to be fair, we are still in disaster recovery mode... i was able to play for 3 hours last night without any major issues. I am playing Windowed, and didn't have to restart the client once. FPS ranged from 29 to 40s. So yes i think its possible to get a decent experience with the client.

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Originally Posted by sarahnight

I wish people with bad experiences would post more specs... and Square would get around to posting the requirements. Although to be fair, we are still in disaster recovery mode... i was able to play for 3 hours last night without any major issues. I am playing Windowed, and didn't have to restart the client once. FPS ranged from 29 to 40s. So yes i think its possible to get a decent experience with the client.

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Good point, I'm, optimistically I admit, running:
Mac Book Pro Retina
OSX Mavericks
2.3 i7
16 gig RAM
GForce GT 650M

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Originally Posted by sarahnight

I wish people with bad experiences would post more specs... and Square would get around to posting the requirements. Although to be fair, we are still in disaster recovery mode... i was able to play for 3 hours last night without any major issues. I am playing Windowed, and didn't have to restart the client once. FPS ranged from 29 to 40s. So yes i think its possible to get a decent experience with the client.

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I have been playing using the PS3 since I can't get past 3-5 fps most days, and the day before the most recent patch I got 15-19 fps. I love FFXIV (played a little bit on my sis' account at times, especially in 1.0) and I do want to enjoy this game on my own laptop so I don't have to use her PS3 for things.

My specs are:
MacBook Pro (17 inch, 2.4 GHZ)
OSX Maverick (10.10.3)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB
160 GB SATA Disk with 4 GB memory

Question: I just patched and tried to switch to windowed mode, but it stays small, like 640x480 and I can't expand it at all on my Macbook Pro. Does anyone know how I can do that via hot keys? The green expansion button is disabled on the window :(

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Originally Posted by Delily

Neither the PS3 or the PS4 use opengl; PS4 provides 2 APIs, GMN and GMNX.

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Actually your wrong Ps3 uses PSGL which is playstation open gl based on open gl es and nvidia CG

PS4 uses PSSL for rendering which is about the equlivent of dx 11.1 and open gl 4.5
GMN GMNX are just the api and graphical shell used for the os which pretty much mirrors the psp ps3 ps vita menu system.

The native operating system of the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a fork of FreeBSD version 9.0.

I tried it again tonight, and there was a significant amount of stuttering. The framerate hovered around 30 but spiked to 60. I also have a problem where mouse look just spazzes out on me. I really couldn't feel comfortable using the client for gaming just yet, but it is getting close. Liv, I'm sorry but there doesn't seem to be a way to fix the window sizes. I did find a workaround for my windows being cutoff in the El Capitan beta though. I have a secondary monitor that is only 1080p. I set the res to 1600 x 900, move it to my second monitor and bump it up to 1440p that it can't handle. It forces the window lower and I can move it to my iMac's built-in monitor. I was running on laptop standard settings btw.

My Specs
iMac 5k (Late 2014)
Intel i7 CPU
AMD Radeon R9 M295x 4GB dedicated GPU
32 GB of RAM
OS Version 10.11 Beta

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Originally Posted by Liv_Traisharan

Question: I just patched and tried to switch to windowed mode, but it stays small, like 640x480 and I can't expand it at all on my Macbook Pro. Does anyone know how I can do that via hot keys? The green expansion button is disabled on the window :(

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I've yet to decipher how to fix the super small window. Cannot expand it, cannot drag the corner to enlarge the window. Nada. Maybe somebody knows the secret or, maybe SE can shed some light on what to do...lol

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Originally Posted by Moggei

I've yet to decipher how to fix the super small window. Cannot expand it, cannot drag the corner to enlarge the window. Nada. Maybe somebody knows the secret or, maybe SE can shed some light on what to do...lol

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if you right click on the mac client and click show package contents. There should be eather a config tool and or left over wrapper configeration that you can change to have it run in a virtual desktop window that should allow you to resize.

My biggest issue tho is them not going native client. While they say open gl would be inferior and 30 percent slower then dx 11 me and pretty much anyone thats a game dev would have to disagree with this statement. Open GL 4.1 and dx 11.1 support identically the same feature set. They just have different methods of implementation. The only one feature that open gl 4.1 does not support that Dx 11 is supposed to support but doesn't because the implementation of it was extremely bad. Was multi core multi threaded rendering.

Just another Note Some miss info from the devs.. the next version of osx will NOT support Direct X they can't its a microsoft product the adaption there talking about is transmog gaming will support Dx11 in there new wrapper. Which will also get stuck in wine..

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Originally Posted by JamieLee

My biggest issue tho is them not going native client. While they say open gl would be inferior and 30 percent slower then dx 11 me and pretty much anyone thats a game dev would have to disagree with this statement.

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I don't know why Yoshida gave this reason. They're hitting their so called "30% performance hit" regardless since OpenGL is still rendering the game. They wrote the FFXIV renderer three times already. He cites costs as a reason not to do a native client. That's the most upsetting part, for me. OS X users aren't worth it.

Its actually upwards of 50 percent tried it from a friends pc with the osx client. Anyone knows that anytime you have to translate from dx to ogl and back comes with steep performance hit unless your system outclasses the specs to such a way that overhead becomes irrlilivent. The point is they were talking about 30 percent hit off the bat wrapping the game is more like 50... And its still running Dx 9c sense the wrapper itself doesnt support dx 11.. Now if they adopt dx 11 into the transmog wrapper its going to be pretty much unplayable under osx...

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Originally Posted by Brianmj

I don't know why Yoshida gave this reason. They're hitting their so called "30% performance hit" regardless since OpenGL is still rendering the game. They wrote the FFXIV renderer three times already. He cites costs as a reason not to do a native client. That's the most upsetting part, for me. OS X users aren't worth it.

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There lucky that its limited to 1000 words id love to take that letter and rip it apart ...

Anyone tried on El Capitan yet?

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Originally Posted by Blayde

Anyone tried on El Capitan yet?

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Just got around to installing El Capitan Beta and will see but doubt there'd be some vast improvements. >.<

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Originally Posted by Moggei

Just got around to installing El Capitan Beta and will see... >.<

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Thanks Moggel. Hoping for the best.

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Originally Posted by Moggei

Just got around to installing El Capitan Beta and will see but doubt there'd be some vast improvements. >.<

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I was hoping that maybe metal would help in some manner before they update the client to take advantage of it.... if they decide to update it.

Metal isn't going to do anything unless Transgaming decides to add it to their wrapper (which they probably won't anytime soon) .. It'd have to be a native client to make use of Metal, and since Metal only runs on 10.11, they'd have to build 2 native clients, 1 for Metal, 1 for OpenGL ... Or set 10.11 as minimum OSX version of course.

No doubt a native Metal client would get good performance though.

Yeah, I played around for a few hours last night and as is, I saw no improvement since the client isn't optimized for El Capitan. If anything, it was much worse than normally. Tried a slew of config changes and nothing. So, if you're having issues now then probably best to simply wait until SE or TG makes use of Metal.

This will not be a quick fix... i am not surprised El Capitan was worse, its beta software, not even optimized for the platform let alone for FFXIV. I think Square will put pressure on Transgaming to make this less krappy, but again, Yoshi can always lean on the middleware 30% tax in performance so long as we're stuck in a wrapper. And Yoshi's own words indicate despite the embarrassment of the Mac launch, they will not do a native version because they've decided they are not so embarrassed that its worth the cost of doing it. So at least for the next year, the best we can hope for is 1) El Capitan releases and is good, and 2) Transgaming optimizes on Metal quickly... so maybe by Christmas it stinks less.

Now they are making $0 on the mac version since its no longer on sale. Along with the costs of users contacting them to complain and processing of refunds. Not to mention a bit of a hit to trust and reputation.

They obviously thought there was some money in a mac version or they wouldn't have even done the crap version that they did. Honestly I like Yoshi, but his last statement about this was complete bullshit. Sure hes technically correct about THEIR chosen solution not running as well as a windows client. But plenty of other games using a wrapper aren't this bad.

Pulling it from sales is admitting they put out a shit product. Whether they want to come out and say it sucks or not. Enough people complained about it to make them realize it, unfortunately they didn't manage to figure this out before release or chose to ignore it.

A restaurant serving week old bread because not enough people order bread doesn't justify selling bad bread. Do it right or just don't.

i do wonder when they will start selling it again. Didn't Yoshi just say they were going to "clearly specify the requirements" and then its on us of we try to run it on sub spec system? So what would be a good Mac spec for the current offering? A Mac Pro with 2 video cards and 32 gb of ram still seemed to have problems getting over 30 fps. So what is considered good enough?

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Originally Posted by sarahnight

i do wonder when they will start selling it again. Didn't Yoshi just say they were going to "clearly specify the requirements" and then its on us of we try to run it on sub spec system? So what would be a good Mac spec for the current offering? A Mac Pro with 2 video cards and 32 gb of ram still seemed to have problems getting over 30 fps. So what is considered good enough?

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They must be really out of touch if they think setting specs to even the minimum mac pro is acceptable. If it won't run on a good portion of at least the mid to high end macbooks then they are going to miss most of the mac players.

A friend of mine has been getting on fine with the Mac client (I'm yet to learn how he's managed this, sadly), and has come from playing via Boot Camp so would have ditched it right away if he'd had issues. So there is, theoretically at least, hope. I also noticed that the last few patches / hot fixes have included fixes for various Mac client specific issues in the patch notes, so work is clearly being done somewhere.

I wouldn't expect anything from El Capitan in terms of performance improvements at this point. Typically it'll only get patched up to work with that properly / get optimised for it, once EC has at least reached a Gold Master build. To do so before hand just isn't practical, especially when they have work on a known OS to deal with first.

Specifying specs for Macs should be really easy, it's not like there's a billion different hardware / driver / OS combos to worry about with them. Although that fact just makes SE's failures there all the more damning.

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Originally Posted by Millerna

Metal isn't going to do anything unless Transgaming decides to add it to their wrapper (which they probably won't anytime soon) .. It'd have to be a native client to make use of Metal, and since Metal only runs on 10.11, they'd have to build 2 native clients, 1 for Metal, 1 for OpenGL ... Or set 10.11 as minimum OSX version of course.

No doubt a native Metal client would get good performance though.

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Your right metal wont do anything do to the fact its doing all its function calls in direct x and then getting translated back to open gl. The worst decision they could have done was go with the transmog client. System calls are basic and non complex enough if they just had a open gl render in game wrapping the game itself wouldn't have been that big of a deal because the graphics engine would still be called natively in open gl just the underlying io and library system would have been translated which is nothing to a modern system.

Metal while is good at bringing up say even IGP's IGU's APU's whatever a company wants to call it this year. Is not a end all be all situation while direct x and open gl may have a lot of latency issues eg years of cruft and or poor optimizations. Metal Mantle so forth cause another issue one we used to have but don't really anymore sense most developers don't write code in assembly anymore nore do they call graphics subroutines straight to the framebuffer of the gpu. Don't get me wrong the more direct to metal or actual software to hardware you can get the faster the applications will run with a price. The price being is as follows

Not all manufactures use the same implementation on cpu and or GPU.
Not every GPU has the same instruction set and or same ability to call the same function in the same way to the rasterization engine lighting shading so on so forth.

So you need to split workloads either by vendor or do it in api level.

Hence why even Mantle Metal still rely on Direct X and open gl cause the other side is not everything also can be done in hardware without either absolute calculations or a universal method of implementation. Hence why mantle works just on amd metal works on ios and osx the major reason apple can get away with it because they only a select amount of sku's by the vendors and then they also write there own drivers. So its easier when you not only write the os the api you also write the driver to work with the os and the api creates alot of uniformity i know people give apple alot of shit but its one thing that they have on ms and linux is the fact there os is so interwined with the hardware its actually a really good eco system.

You're right of course, even with Apple's legendary adoption rate for new OS releases, it will be a long time before Metal really can be leveraged. Is this on a years timescale, like we'd have to have a couple of subsequent Mac OS X releases before it was ubiquitous in the population? Just points to Yoshi grasping at straws to placate the irate masses of Mac users, hoping for a better experience. One of the things Yoshi seemed to claim was that somehow Metal and DX11 would save the Mac client.

In the meantime, maybe people could post lists of settings that work for them in the current client? I didn't return mine and i do launch it from time to time, to see if i can find something that feels stable and playable.

Metal wont save the osx client. Granted if they really wanted they could in theory use metal for open gl to dx calls bypassing opengl. In theory. But sense the metal api uses different contexts to do the same functions while its possible to do a metal to dx to metal translation there really is like 0 room for error. Not everything may be supported. May not even work. Problem with that way is the shear amount of development time to write Metal to dx translation layer could more expensive then just writing the native client.

Even if it was fast and cheep There going to be sitting on the same level of performance as they calmed with the Open Gl version native... While metal is efficient its not going to magically make things faster Your going to just take that overhead and make the system more efficient at dealing with it.
TLDR They did a shit lazy port. OSx users suffer.... Couldn't even call it a port they could have just took the wine directions released a wrapper and not charged for it and still got the same level of performance lol.

Yeah, really in what ways can Square enhance performance in the current release? do they have any options? Or are they wholly dependent on Trans Gaming somehow doing a better job? As others have pointed out not all Wine wrappers are this bad.

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Originally Posted by sarahnight

Yeah, really in what ways can Square enhance performance in the current release? do they have any options? Or are they wholly dependent on Trans Gaming somehow doing a better job? As others have pointed out not all Wine wrappers are this bad.

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Its really up to Transmog to try and fix it.... Good luck.. Sense the wrapper only supports dx 9c and not dx 11 because its not supported in transmog and wine or any windows wrapper. They could use valves dx9c which takes straight Dx calls and does them in open gl there is less of a hit because its just done once.. Littery its a pointer table that tells the application this is called in dx this is what it is in gl.. Now granted not all functions of dx 9c are supported but it sould speed alot of it up.

I was hoping to see some more Updates to the Mac client yesterday in 3.05 release, but it doesn't look like we got any more fixes in the release notes.

Yeah I was hoping for another update on the client as well... in part just to see continued progress but also because i've had even more graphical "glitches" since the last update, especially when running full-screen. =/

It was odd, when I launched the client, the login window didn't show that it was updating but just sat there for a very long time... I was about to force quit it, when it changed to Play. Windowed play is about the same, you get used to it after awhile... lol.

I guess, as usual, there won't be any comment on the progress of the mac client. Way to keep everyone waiting in the dark who was excited for this.

You might as just well boot camp and then windows because its going to run alot better sad theyreally was actually looking forward to a mac client to not have windows around to bad they took the cheep way out.

I wish they would let us know when it will be on sale again... even in its current state its mostly playable.