WWDC 2022 – What if the Mac finally became a real video game platform?

In the computer world, this is one of the most universally known truths: video games happen on the PC, and especially not on the Mac! But could this natural order of things be challenged in times to come? In any case, this clearly seems to be what Apple is aiming for. As a pre-echo of the Summer Game Fest which will shake the planet gaming this week, the company gave gaming an unusual place at its WWDC conference, devoting an entire segment of the macOS Ventura presentation to it.

At the heart of the matter, the arrival in version 3 of Metal, the set of graphical programming interfaces (API) proprietary to Apple. This new release is uniquely designed, we’re assured, to take advantage of graphics performance unheard of in the macOS ecosystem of Apple SoCs, including of course the all-newly announced M2. And above all, it introduces into the said ecosystem two technical functionalities in tune with the times.

Intelligent scaling and storage-to-GPU direct line to meet the demands of the times

The first is the MetalFX Upscaling scaling algorithm. Its operating principle is very classic: allow the game to make its 3D rendering with modest definition, hence very significant performance gains, then use advanced interpolation techniques to restore satisfactory image quality.

Unfortunately, Apple does not give any specific details about how the algorithm works, but speaks in general terms of the combination of temporal anti-aliasing processing and a spatial scaling filter. Depending on the effectiveness of the interaction between these two components, it could result in a visual rendering similar to AMD’s FSR 2.0. This is obviously pure speculation and it is only on the part that we can judge the quality of the processing – not to mention its impact on the frame rate. On the other hand, the treatment as a whole totally ignores any pass of deep learning, and therefore should not be able to compare in any way to Nvidia’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS. Anyway, it could be a good way to make graphics-intensive games playable under very acceptable conditions, even on a relatively modest machine like a MacBook Air.

The other great novelty of Metal 3 is an unprecedented API called Fast Resource Loading, the purpose of which is to simplify and accelerate direct communications between the graphics processor and the storage, without going through the processor and by exploiting for this the architecture to unified RAM of the M1 and M2 chips. Does this pitch remind you of something? This is perfectly normal: the principle is exactly the one already used by the PS5 and the Xbox Series X/S (under the name Xbox Velocity Architecture for the latter), and it is also the essence of the Windows DirectStorage API . All of this should allow developers to very quickly provide large amounts of resources (3D models, textures, etc.) to be processed by the GPU, resulting in both reduced loading times and scenes that can relatively easily reach a high level of quality. complexity.

Resident Evil Village as an ambassador

We understand that all these efforts are primarily intended to convince developers that it will be relatively easy for them to create native conversions for the Mac and Apple chips of their games. And obviously, such an announcement could not be made without a few developers already converted and able to act as standard bearers. Codemasters (Electronic Arts) thus confirms that it intends to launch a Mac version of its racing game Grid Legends sometime in 2022, while studio Hello Games is at work on an adaptation of its space exploration game No Man’s Sky, not only for the Mac, but also for iPads with M1 chip (iPad Pro 2021 and iPad 2022). Finally, the highlight of the show, Capcom announces for the end of the year a native version for the Mac M1 and M2 of its very popular Resident Evil Village. Very fine ambassadors, which we are now waiting to see to what extent they will be imitated by other titles.