Mac client needs to be reborn..? :(

[Undrum]

This is why I just use wine and get better performance....

I've struggled to get FFXIV running under Wine on a Mac (although I understand that it tuns OK under Linux). How did you manage it?

[Delily]

... I did say OS X users weren't worth the effort. Those are my feelings. ...

Of course we're worth the effort, otherwise Square would not have made the investment. It's a business. Blizzard proved that OS X is a profitable platform to market towards, and Square has some Metal experience given their offerings on the App Store.

[Chiramu]

Blizzard took the time and energy to code a native Mac client. square didn't.

WoW can run on a piece of shite computer so a Mac client is no big deal for WoW.

[Nemna]

I got my refund this morning! See you all in boot camp!

[Brianmj]

WoW can run on a piece of shite computer so a Mac client is no big deal for WoW.

WoW has a D3D renderer and an OpenGL renderer. Those things take time to write. It's a big deal for Blizzard.

[Avenger]

Thanks so much for the response and commitment to improving the Mac client!! We appreciate your efforts to make a Mac version even though it is not currently up to Square Enix's usual standards of quality and performance.

The Mac version of FFXIV uses the same executable files as the Windows version, and it was created using middleware that allows for functions of Windows to be converted into functions that can be executed on a Mac. This middleware is constantly running for the Mac version, which is an overhead not found in the Windows version. However, this is not a Windows emulator; it is middleware that transposes various types of functions so that they can be properly ran on a Mac. One example where this system is used is for converting the functions of DirectX into OpenGL.

This almost certainly the root cause of the very low performance. As many Mac users have noted with dismay, even Parallels (a full virtual machine monitor) runs the Windows FFXIV client with better performance than the Transgaming/Cider/WINE-based wrapper.

One thing I would like to add with is that Apple has announced their next Mac OS, El Capitan, will have features that may largely improve the performance for running various games. We’ll be talking to Apple about this and continue to make performance improvements so that the gaming experience on Macs are even better.

It would be absolutely wonderful for the game engine to natively support El Capitan's improved graphics technology! such as Metal. Metal has already greatly improved graphics performance and quality for games that use it on iOS, and it should provide similar benefits for games that use it natively on Mac OS X.

[Avenger]

There are aspects of the thread process scheduling for program parallelization that can be tuned by the Windows version that cannot be tuned by the Mac version. Due to this, situations arise where performance will not be elicited for portions of the game’s parallelization processing and the processing time for frames will be unstable.

Having some experience with parallel programming on the Mac as well as other platforms, I'm a bit puzzled by this, since the Mac has nice instruction and data parallel programming support via Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Moreover, thread priority can certainly be adjusted, and real-time scheduling is also supported.

[Delily]

Having some experience with parallel programming on the Mac as well as other platforms, I'm a bit puzzled by this, since the Mac has nice parallel programming support via Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Moreover, thread priority can certainly be adjusted, and real-time scheduling is also supported.

The question is how well Cider translates those calls.

[Avenger]

The question is how well Cider translates those calls.

Yep, Cider is the problem, no doubt.

[Naylia]

Hideyuki,

Thank you for taking the time to address our concerns. For now I have requested and received a refund for the OS X client, but I look forward to seeing the progress you make and will certainly re-purchase if the performance improves to at least be close to Windows. A 20% hit would be one thing, but I see a 60-70% reduction in FPS at matching settings. I am intrigued in your idea to leverage both Metal and the DX11 client. They both sound promising and I look forward to seeing the results.