Trainz on ARM64

And capdimont - no offense - but you kinda need to complain about something in Macs. Even the little things could be a big deal. I'm worried that as soon as Apple cuts production of Intel Macs, they just say, "Ok, no macOS 11.2 for Intel Macs." (Well, that would be dumb, but it is a decent worry.)

I'm sorry I'm being rude. I am a very nice person. But I want my thread (yes I am the original poster) be a peaceful thread.

Got it? Good.

I do complain, I just don't see the point of it being everywhere. As my Dad would say, you can wish in one hand and take a dump in the other hand and see which fills up first. While Apple could cut off Intel Macs after everything has gone to Macs, I think that will generate too much ill will and likely class action lawsuits. I think a good seven years before they will get cut off from new OSs and that is based upon 2014 Macs getting Big Sur. To get TurfFx, they will have to figure out how it works, code around it while avoiding lawsuits for code and name. I would love to have it on par with PCs. I would love to have documentation on file formats so Mac utilities could be made without having to reverse engineer things. Displacement maps, while fun to play with, just is not as accurate. Xcode being free is great, however it is a larger file than the OS to download, and remains large, each time it is updated. I can fill pages of complaints about many tech items. I think Trainz on ARM Macs will work fine.
 
To clarify the TurfFx situation, I've looked up the software requirements, it requires DirectX 11 which Apple don't have, so short of Apple and Microsoft collaborating in some way, can't see that problem getting resolved any time soon.

Microsoft and their propriety formats eh? ;)
 
Microsoft and their propriety formats eh? ;)
It's always been the game killer so far, in so many apps although I must admit I don't see any big difference in performance between my Mac and my pc when using Trainz although I have two very different computers for both.

NV3's decision to use turf FX in 2019 really made the Mac version of trainz second class in that respect , I don't know how they will ever manage to level the playing field in that regard, unless apple or some other developer came up with some similar sort of product , which doesn't seem very likely given how niche a market Mac trainz actually is .
 
It's always been the game killer so far, in so many apps although I must admit I don't see any big difference in performance between my Mac and my pc when using Trainz although I have two very different computers for both.

NV3's decision to use turf FX in 2019 really made the Mac version of trainz second class in that respect , I don't know how they will ever manage to level the playing field in that regard, unless apple or some other developer came up with some similar sort of product , which doesn't seem very likely given how niche a market Mac trainz actually is .

Hmm it gets worse as Nvidia don't or rather can't support Metal which apparently for the ARM development will only work on Apples ARM systems with Apples Metal GPUs so looks like they will cut Nvidia and probably AMD completely out of the loop. Won't do a lot for the Hackintosh gang either. https://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/143962-apple-macos-arm64-will-support-apple-metal-gpus/
 
Microsoft and their propriety formats eh? ;)

Yes but openGL was held back by legacy demands from the Unix world. The standards process takes about five years normally to produce a new standard and the GPUs were evolving quite quickly at the time. The more you have to put in the standard the more you have to support. AMD did a very nice job of implementing directx in silicon and giving us much better performance at a lower price point and that is what Microsoft was after better price performance in the windows world.

Today Word actually follows an ISO standard, well it's close, since they were involved in creating the standard, and you can tell it to follow the standard exactly.

Cheerio John
 
You can talk to me about how our Amiga computers were 20 years ahead of the wankers at MS and Apple.;)

William
Acorns risc computers were excellent for their time, much much faster than the other companies had to offer, unfortunately their service was awful and the software was limited compared to the opposition.
 
So... after that, it would look like:

1. Trainz will survive on ARM architecture (which is good, because I plan on upgrading my MacBook and getting an iMac Pro with ARM chips near Holiday 2022 - fun)
2. Apple doesn't seem to care about Macs as much as before (which is dumb)
3. Amiga computers seem to be good (even though I've never heard of those before - no offense)
4. Trainz Mobile 3

I bring up Trainz Mobile 3 because of the fact that you can run apps from both iOS and iPadOS on macOS with Big Sur onwards (I still can't update because I have no storage - or at least, very little - and it's mostly taken up by T:ANE). So, it may be that Trainz Mobile 3 will be the answer to my original question. I know it's not finished, and if an N3V employee can prove me wrong, then thank you - but will the Trainz Mobile series eventually become the answer to running Trainz on ARM - for Macs at least? Now that I think about it - maybe not as... Windows man... Windows... Many more people use that in comparison to Macs (like, a billion more lot more), so if ARM becomes popular there (which it may, as Apple has recently become a trendsetter, which is good and bad in many aspects), what will happen there? Welcome back to "more questions on this thread than there should and keeping this thread hydrated".
 
SO, ARM Macs have finally come out... does anybody on the forums own one? If so, what's your experience with:

TANE
TS19 (if applicable)
Trainz Mobile 2
Trainz for Mac (if applicable)

If you don't have any, or just one, that's fine too - simply put, how does Trainz run through Rosetta? And should N3V just make Trainz Mobile 3 the new Trainz for Mac, as iPad and iPhone apps can finally run on the machines (with no touchscreen - good job)?
 
WARNING: Current versions of Trainz run very poorly on the M1 chip.

However, our planned Q1 2021 update will include Metal and support for the M1 ARM-based chip and that will run better than the current game on current gen Mac hardware. How much better will depend on how much we can optimise things.
 
WARNING: Current versions of Trainz run very poorly on the M1 chip.

However, our planned Q1 2021 update will include Metal and support for the M1 ARM-based chip and that will run better than the current game on current gen Mac hardware. How much better will depend on how much we can optimise things.

Thanks Tony, good to hear the Metal version will be available, er .... Soon ;)
 
Huh. Honestly, even though the M1 chips (from what I've heard) are good... Rosetta can't be THAT good. But thanks for telling us Tony.

My guess is that no external GPU is on the logic board itself, and eGPUs aren't even supported. (Apple didn't even make their own proprietary eGPU, or partner up with Blackmagic to do it... they probably should've because of the revenue - and they like money, but I'm not a $2 trillion USD electronics company, am I?)
 
Huh. Honestly, even though the M1 chips (from what I've heard) are good... Rosetta can't be THAT good. But thanks for telling us Tony.

My guess is that no external GPU is on the logic board itself, and eGPUs aren't even supported. (Apple didn't even make their own proprietary eGPU, or partner up with Blackmagic to do it... they probably should've because of the revenue - and they like money, but I'm not a $2 trillion USD electronics company, am I?)


I've posted several articles on the mac mini m1 and the m1 gpu on the forum, , from memory , its about on a par with a gtx 1050 , not that great but adequate according to one guy who has bought one , as long as you run it on low settings. its about time NV3 improved trainz 's performance with metal, its been years ( very soon after TANE was first released ) since Tony promised a mac version that worked well using the technology
 
Huh. Honestly, even though the M1 chips (from what I've heard) are good... Rosetta can't be THAT good. But thanks for telling us Tony.

My guess is that no external GPU is on the logic board itself, and eGPUs aren't even supported. (Apple didn't even make their own proprietary eGPU, or partner up with Blackmagic to do it... they probably should've because of the revenue - and they like money, but I'm not a $2 trillion USD electronics company, am I?)

I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that there is nothing in the new Apple silicon that is supporting OpenGL, therefore anything that relies on OpenGL isn't going to be that clever.

It's my experience that the OpenGL macOS version of Trainz was always inferior in performance to the Windows equivalent using DirectX on the same hardware.

Hopefully, N3V will be producing universal binaries that won't need to use Rosetta at all.
 
I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that there is nothing in the new Apple silicon that is supporting OpenGL, therefore anything that relies on OpenGL isn't going to be that clever.

It's my experience that the OpenGL macOS version of Trainz was always inferior in performance to the Windows equivalent using DirectX on the same hardware.

Hopefully, N3V will be producing universal binaries that won't need to use Rosetta at all.
well I use both the mac version and the PC version and I notice very little difference, except the PC version goes belly up a lot more .GTX 1660ti with 6gb on the PC and 8gb rx580 on the mac. the pc is probably more efficient , but i can use high setting on the mac on a 10 year old mac pro and it holds its own against the 2020 acer nitro, no doubt a top end desktop pc would do a lot better , but I can make complex routes on the mac with no problems. Its mostly the cruddy gpus that stop the app being of much use on more modern macs. The built in graphics were useless on the laptops and the mac mini, but the m1 gpu is a lot better from the reviews I've read .
 
well I use both the mac version and the PC version and I notice very little difference, except the PC version goes belly up a lot more .GTX 1660ti with 6gb on the PC and 8gb rx580 on the mac. the pc is probably more efficient , but i can use high setting on the mac on a 10 year old mac pro and it holds its own against the 2020 acer nitro, no doubt a top end desktop pc would do a lot better , but I can make complex routes on the mac with no problems. Its mostly the cruddy gpus that stop the app being of much use on more modern macs. The built in graphics were useless on the laptops and the mac mini, but the m1 gpu is a lot better from the reviews I've read .

I’m talking about a direct comparison on the same Mac using BootCamp. And it wasn’t only Trainz that Open GL versions underperformed against DirectX and Metal versions.
 
I see. So now that we have them, Trainz doesn't run well, but if TS21 comes over to macOS, I highly doubt it won't have an ARM version. And a GTX 1050 is a decent GPU from, what, 2014, 2016? They aren't great, but they're alright. Decent GPU performance is what you'd expect - in my opinion, they cared a lot more about the CPU (and it did surpass many of our guesses - I thought it would be mediocre).

Only time will tell.
 
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