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

[Sakei]

Yoshi P addresses Mac client issues:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...641512f05a9e14

Thank you for posting that. I was having trouble finding it even though others had mentioned this response. I am glad to see that they have pulled the Mac version until this gets resolved. Adding more fuel to the fire won't help while they are trying to fix it. I think he provided a good explanation of what happened, and a sincere apology. It doesn't help my performance, but it is much appreciated. I'm going to keep my Mac license while they work on it. I plan to beta test El Capitan which should be available shortly. So, if you get a beta client running on Metal up, I'll be happy to test it for you. :P

[Sakei]

This boggles the mind:



On what planet is adding an extra layer of middleware going to INCREASE performance?

I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

[Avenger]

We have judged that there is still a lack of information on the Mac version and its system requirements. We are planning to make an announcement which will include detailed information on the product, system requirements, and screen resolution. Until this is done, and I am personally satisfied that our users are adequately informed, we will be suspending the sale of the Mac version.

An important part of this would be releasing a Mac version of the FFXIV benchmark, to enable players to determine how well the game will run on their hardware configuration.

Kudos to Yoshi-P for suspending the sale of the Mac version and offering refunds.

[Avenger]

I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

It would have been much clearer to say:

"Because we thought even a native OpenGL Mac version would have poor performance regardless, we didn't think it was worth the effort, so instead we decided to save time and money by releasing a version that uses the Cider/Transgaming middleware to translate DirectX into OpenGL, resulting in the very poor performance that many of you have observed."

[Sakei]

It may have been clearer but I'm sure you can see that it would come across as very abrasive, Avenger. They had faith that Transgaming could deliver at least acceptable performance at a much lower cost to them. The game has been run in a wrapper before with acceptable performance. You can still find the old wrappers online, but they don't work with the current clients.

[Moggei]

I'm a little confused. Is he saying the only thing they're going to do before restarting sales of the Mac client is get the tech specs and recommendations in order? The top of the line MBPs cannot run it too well. The top of the line iMacs as well. So what, tack on a system requirement of something no Macs have or something?

[KisaiTenshi]

I think he's stating that OpenGL is a fairly bloated API compared to Direct X. He never stated anything about performance being improved by the Middleware. What he was saying is that an OpenGL Mac client would have cost them a lot of money and still not have performance on par with Windows. It was simply more cost effective to go with the middleware, and the company in question actually specializes in ports for Mac.

In plain English, the game client the Mac uses is the Windows client, but the underlying WINE/Cider/Cedega implementation tries to translate DX9/DX10/DX11 calls to equivalent OpenGL calls, to which there is no 1:1 mapping for. Developers don't target the Mac because they don't feel there are enough people using the Mac platform for games to justify building a DirectX and a OpenGL version of their games. Where as a lot of other (typically open source, and emulators facilitating piracy) software don't use advanced features of DirectX/Direct3D or OpenGL and are much easier to map functionality.


Like imagine DirectX is German and OpenGL is Arabic. Neither person speaks each others language but they both have a translators that speak English. So the DirectX "German" is translated into an intermediate representation in "English" , and then the intermediate representation "in English" is translated to Arabic. So that translation also loses intonations and emphasis that was in the original language that is up to both translators to understand the significance of. It's a bi-directional communication.

[Reih]

I won't get a refund, while I've been criticizing the OSX client harshly I do want this to happen with a proper setup and a good implementation. I'm curious about how SE will handle this. I just hope that the emphasis placed on Metal is well researched. I'd hate to see this happening a second time by raising expectations and colliding with what customers expect.

[Evangela]

If you save 3 bucks every comment you read in this thread you should be able to buy a PC already.

[Reih]

If you save 3 bucks every comment you read in this thread you should be able to buy a PC already.

Yeah, but I do a ton more by working on OSX.