[Development] War Thunder on Mac supported by Metal

[Sworn_Assassin 37]

On 5/30/2017 at 11:27 PM, NoNick_Nick said:

Just to note that a bug report (0055222) has been accepted for analysis based on game crashing. It used to crash in 1.67 but the behaviour has changed in 1.69.

 

Seems to be much worse, now getting a crash every 2-3 games so almost unplayable and forcing a temporary abandonment of the game; at least hopefully a temporary hiatus.

 

change back to your default OS X graphics driver and run in open GL and your game should run pretty much like it did before the update, i did this yesterday after crashing 3 times in squadron battles and playing a game that looked like Space Thunder

 

 

[MaybeMaybeNot 1,759]

13 minutes ago, Sworn_Assassin said:

 

change back to your default OS X graphics driver

 

 

 

Try to use and updated rather non metal instead of default 

 

[NoNick_Nick 205]

I'm on the very latest NVidia drifter as set out in that sticky post. So I'll try going back to the default drivers.

 

And jay for interest, before 1.69 the crash usually (something like 90% at least f the time) would crash when an aircraft came into the frame. Now it just crashes any time, like right at the start of a game as you try to leave the spawn, after being killed in the notification screen, while just sitting in an ambush spot waiting, Dems far more random.And is associated with a lot of video stutters.

 

To save me looking it up, what's the quickest way to go back to the OpenGL driver ? Thanks.

[NoNick_Nick 205]

Just an update: behaviour does indeed seem considerably better on the default Apple drivers rather than the latest Nvidia ones. The video stutter is gone, fps remains reasonable, and no crashes - but that's a "yet" statement. I used to get one every 10-15 games and have only played about 7-8 or so since swapping back so can't say if it looks definitively more stable.

 

So I'd say if you are having crashing problems first check the driver and swap away from the Nvidia one, even the vey latest for a start.

 

Mods, can we suggest that the sticky'd post on the Drivers covers this as well ?

[AircraftPeep 6]

On 5/25/2017 at 11:35 PM, Prantz said:

how do u change back to OpenGL?

In the launcher, go to the graphics settings. In the bottom, under all the water reflections and stuff, you should see some  other sliders where you can set your API. By default, it should be in the "Auto" position. Click on that and you can set it to Metal or OpenGL.

[AircraftPeep 6]

Is it just me, or am I experiencing problems with Metal? Not the micro stuttering, but I have strange things going on my FPS, cause when I use OpenGL, I turn on V Sync in my graphics settings and my FPS caps to 60. I need this because without V Sync, my machine runs louder and harder and hotter just because it pushes out 250fps instead of my 60fps that my screen can display. So I got super hyped when Metal support was released, and I can actually play tank battles at 60 instead of 40 fps. But when I use Metal, V Sync turned on or off, there are no capped frames, and my machine now spits out a whopping 300+ FPS! This is great and all, but then my laptop gets real warm and fans start to get quite annoying. So, does anyone have any solutions?

[ohne_zwiebeln 0]

My "theoretical" (the one displayed on bottom left) fps went up slightly, but the "real" fps seems even lower. The game "stutters" periodically and the screen refreshes are not smooth. Even though the game tells me I have 40fps, I cannot get into a dogfight because I start seeing a slideshow.

Interesting thing is that switching to metal seems to have influenced my PL somehow. Before the update 90% of the time I was seeing 0% PL, and now it is 1% or above half of the time (unplayable!).

 

MacBook Pro, retina, mid 2014

8GB RAM, i5

[BlueVelveteen 177]

Now that Metal 2 has been announced at the WWDC keynote this past June 5th, can we expect War Thunder to take advantage of it Soon™?

 

https://developer.apple.com/metal/

Edited June 11, 2017 by BlueVelveteen

[ClearSk1es 16]

Is it worth playing WT on Mac after the Metal addition? Doesn't sound too good from this thread.. I'll be without a PC for a while and this 2015 rMBP with the M370X is all I have for now.

[Prantz 11]

anyone know how to make Metal work? My screen just gets blurry and my fps is 10-15. How do I get Metal to work and improve FPS like it said metal would...

[HuntingRaven 0]

Hi, 
I have a Macbook Pro Retina 15" late 13. 2Ghz i7, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB, 8GB Memory

 

The first minutes and game I was a bit sceptic. It felt like the game had to 'get used to Metal'. Maybe it also had to do with the fact that my low-graphic settings were changed to Normal, somehow. Anyways, after changing my settings back to low and after playing for a few hours and some games (custom battles realistic), I certainly feel that the game runs smoother. I have higher framerate than (ever) before. At first it did fell like the game was stuttering, but I don't have that feeling now anymore. As I said, maybe it just had to get used to metal, haha.

 

Thanks for the Metal implementation. Certainly brings me back to War Thunder again since the FPS is better again

 

 

Edit: It's a few hours later now.

 

I am playing War Thunder and checking this thread again. I can confirm an increase in FPS of about 100%. For sure it never ran this smooth, without stuttering. 

Thanks again for Metal implementation..! Looking forward to further updates, although this is already awesome!

Edited June 14, 2017 by HuntingRaven

[ClearSk1es 16]

On 2017-06-12 at 1:40 PM, DubThunder said:

Is it worth playing WT on Mac after the Metal addition? Doesn't sound too good from this thread.. I'll be without a PC for a while and this 2015 rMBP with the M370X is all I have for now.

UPDATE: Downloaded it and it runs A LOT better than I thought! Got about ~120FPS on medium and 1440x900 while test flying. Bumped it up to 2880x1800 and it looks gorgeous, but the FPS took quite a hit(down to 25-30). Although, I've noticed quite a lot of stuttering, usually disappears after a while though. 

 

Can't wait to see the performance if Metal 2 is implemented(with supposedly x10 better performance and eGPU support). 

[AircraftPeep 6]

Even if Metal 2 would be implemented (really hoping it will), the current metal is already a bit buggy, so I could only imagine the bugs if they tried to use Metal 2 now. I would rather wait a couple months than get it now with the support being half-baked.

[ClearSk1es 16]

20 hours ago, AircraftPeep said:

Even if Metal 2 would be implemented (really hoping it will), the current metal is already a bit buggy, so I could only imagine the bugs if they tried to use Metal 2 now. I would rather wait a couple months than get it now with the support being half-baked.

It's a possibility, although I think Apple's going to make the transition rather easy just like with new versions of Swift. Seems like they're already making it easier to implement and debug it

 

Did you have issues with v-sync on Metal? I have it enabled aswell and it seems to cap at 60 just fine(except for the hangar and test flight). No clue why it has all those micro-stutters though.. 

[Guest]

Did they fix metal performance? I haven't played since they first added it. 

[whiterabbit46725 1]

Hi,

I'm playing on MacBook Pro 15' (mid 2015) and since 1.69 update the FPS dramatically dropped to ~25 FPS. In some cases especially on urban maps it goes down to 8-15 FPS. Previously, before this update, everything was quite smooth even with 2880x1800 and HIGH graphic settings.

 

What i tried so far:

-manually activated metal support (same effect with no performance changes)

-downgraded resolution to 2048x1280 and graphic settings to low with some basic effects like shadows ON

-tried to play on very low graphic settings (no shadows, no details & and all effects to OFF) which made the game smoother but it's still stuttering sometimes

 

Still waiting for an update to fix this issue! The game is no more playable at this conditions!

 

My specs:

OS 10.12.1

MacBook Pro 15' (mid 2015)

2,5 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB

[Firefamix 0]

Hello, I am a WT player since 3 or 4 years (this is one of 4 accounts) and the other 3 account I have are on PS4. The fps there are normally pretty good and there's nothing to complain about. So about 1 year after i begun playing WT on PS4 i wanted to test it on my mac (macOS Sierra, one of the newest Macs availible). So as i first started and created a new account, the fps in the game where horrible. 12 fps, then 24 fps around that area.I heard of the new metal supporting osx players. I also heard how to install that.. somthing with confing.blk and then select "metal". But idk how to do this. Can sb. please help me out and tell me how to "install" or use the new metal?

[relliK 3,228]

3 hours ago, Firefamix said:

I heard of the new metal supporting osx players. I also heard how to install that.. somthing with confing.blk and then select "metal". But idk how to do this. Can sb. please help me out and tell me how to "install" or use the new metal?

 

afaik you only had to change anything in the config.blk on the 1.67.xx.xx client to switch to the metal render (since that client didn't natively support metal).

however on the 1.69.XX.XX client metal should be supported (and used) by default on systems that support it... anyway, you can to manually select the

render (metal / opengl) on the advanced graphics settings (gear icon to the right of the graphics presets in the launcher - render setting is at the lower

left side and it's usually set to 'auto' by default afaik)

[Viking_monster@psn 223]

It looked like they had it "working" a bit ago--initially there wasn't much improvement, but lately, it's been red blocks for trees, and now I just played one game (air) where the game seemed to be hyped on caffeine for how jerky the labels on the planes were.  Frame rate was really high, but it was terrible how it was broken.

[InsidiousMe 0]

Hello - just downloaded today (new player).  Amazing game, i'm going to love it.  

 

Mac Pro 2010, 6-core, 3.33ghz, 24gb RAM 

Nvidia gtx680 w/Nvidia Web Drivers (378.05.05.15f01)

27" display @ 2560x1440

MacOS X Sierra 10.12.5

 

Many crashes with the default renderer (METAL).  It will lock up the client solid after about 10 - 15 seconds of air arcade battle.  I have to tab back to the desktop and force quit the app.

But - the graphics are awesome and the frame rates are high (solid 55 - 75fps sometimes higher) with graphics quality set to HIGH.

 

Switching to OpenGL renderer - no crashes but only around 25 -35fps and MEDIUM graphics.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[bahacanthang 3]

Game doesn't launch, some people said that it might be about Metal. Any info?

[PoeShmider 0]

Since the boats came out, I get 4-20FPS when I used to get 20-40. Same hardware. I'm bouncing around graphics settings hoping something helps

[Functor 230]

What is the status of Metal development under Mac?

 

The Vulkan client on linux is becoming quite decent. Perhaps a solution is to use MoltenVK https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/ and unify the development?

Edited May 28, 2019 by Functor

[Tortfz 2]

---

Edited March 11, 2020 by Tortfz
no longer relevant

[FerpectMan 13]

Is this post still relevant? WT seem to work ok on my Mac without any config file edition...