Current State Mac (June/2020)

[Packetdancer]

I imagine SE will not be making any major changes aside from waiting for WINE to ensure it's safely compatible with Rosetta 2 to translate x86 code while also running all of the DX -> OGL/Vulkan things too. I would not be surprised if we see instances of "FFXIV cannot be run on the newest Macbook" messages come the official release.

You are probably correct. Still, I think if there was ever a time to consider a truly native app without any sort of translation wrapper a'la Crossover/WINE, it would be now.

The engine already has to support GSMX (or maybe GSM, but I would bet on it being GSMX) for the PS4 client, and presumably once upon a time supported GCM (or PSGL?) for the PS3 client, as well as at one point supporting both DX9 and DX11 simultaneously, so there must be an abstraction layer in there for the graphics. In which case, adding support for Vulkan to that abstraction layer would mean that a) you could compile the client atop MoltenVK and have a Metal-driven native client for macOS, and b) you could theoretically target Linux systems with Vulkan support as well. Heck, you could even in theory target iOS (through the iOS version of MoltenVK) and Android (via Android's Vulkan support), and make a version that would run natively on the Apple TV or sufficiently-powerful Android TV boxes (i.e., the Nvidia Shield TV).

The trick is that the macOS version would probably need to draw more from the PS4 version than the Windows one in other areas; PS4's "Orbis" operating system is derived from FreeBSD, and macOS's userspace derives from FreeBSD as well. But Orbis has diverged in a number of places and has custom functionality that wouldn't exist on macOS or Linux/BSD systems. Add to that the fact that while older versions had to have been processor-agnostic (i.e., back when PS3 was supported), there's no guarantee they aren't using assembly blocks in the code to speed up processing of certain tasks; the PS4 is an x86-64 architecture a'la Windows PCs (and current Mac hardware), and if they have blocks like that in there, that'd be an obstacle to porting to ARM-based systems.

So it wouldn't be a simple task, but it's still feasible given an investment of time (and money, since time = money when it comes to paying programmers' salaries). And since Apple's making this move, it seems like it might not be a bad idea. Especially as Apple may not be the only one to take the plunge and shift to an ARM-based chipset in the long-term; the Intel x86 architecture is sort of hitting a wall when it comes to performance gains, while ARM chips are still improving efficiency at a fairly rapid pace...

Though sadly, I imagine if there's any major new platform support to be added to the Luminous Engine, it'll be added to Luminous Engine 2.0 (i.e., what powers FFXV—and maybe the upcoming Project Athia, based on rumor) rather than the weird offshoot version of Luminous Engine 1.0 that powers FFXIV.

So I suspect you are right, and they won't make any moves until they see whether WINE (or more specifically, Crossover) works well under Rosetta 2. :/