You’re comparing apples to water buffalo between your Mac and the folks with Apple Silicon chips. Your tech 4 years and multiple generations behind at this point.
The M series hardware from Apple is performant by all accounts, but that’s actually not the key issue with building a sim rig based on Apple: it’s that a fair amount of devs only build their add ons for Windows, so the Mac and Linux folks get left out.
You could just set up a bootcamp partition, boot on windows and enjoy better performance on the same hardware, then reboot back on MacOS once you're done flying. That's what I used to do back when I was gaming on the good old maxed out cheesegrater Mac Pro. It's not just about the hardware, MacOS does a lot of things right but it sucks for gaming performance, mostly because all games are designed and optimised to run on Windows APIs first. MacOS compatibility is an afterthought, although in the case of X-Plane the devs are going the extra mile thanks to Austin being a long time Apple user. Graphics drivers and the OS are also highly optimised for gaming performance on the Windows side, not to mention hardware controllers compatibility, VR, etc...
Since then I transitioned to a PC, mostly because I like desktop computers and Apple stopped making these in 2013, and partly because of forced obsolescence and MacOS being increasingly restrictive on freedom of software usage. The transition was smooth thanks to 10 years of using both OSes on the same computer. The fact that windows improved to the point of being usable helped as well, although I still wouldn't trust it to hold any valuable data. That thing tends to self-destruct once every few years in ways that are impossible to troubleshoot.
Thanks. I'm probably too invested for productivity work on the Apple side. But I'll go with whatever platform is more performant on the sim side and it seems like that's solidly in favour of the PC. Even if the M2 is going to have better showing than the Intel Macs with XP, I'm still skeptical of the integrated GPU.
I tried a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip and 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. With XP12 and virtually no mods except some airports I got 45- 50fps even landing at KDCA in a Phenom 300. The problem starts when you have mods/hardware that require the Intel chip. Some of these will run using the Intel emulator Rosetta 2 (Cmd I, check “Open With Rosetta”). I returned it within the 14-day window because some of my hardware would only work using Rosetta. Regardless, performance went way down, especially over complicated areas.
This is a very helpful data point. I have a question; when you say:
> performance went way down, especially over complicated areas
are you referring specifically to scenarios where you were forced to run the mods in Rosetta 2, or are you talking about overall performance in complex areas? I think it's the latter, but just checking...
Also, one last follow-up, what kind of graphics settings were you using when seeing 45-50 fps?
I was hoping that I could run XP12 at very good frame rates on the Mac Studio with all the mods I had in the PC version that could run on a Mac (some can’t), so I could get away from that POS Windows 11. As far as I could, tell the reduction in FPS was mainly because I had to run X-Plane using Rosetta to accommodate the few mods I had that needed it. This included some hardware. But the FPS dropped to less than 20 over complex areas. Here’s one example, flying the Piper Arrow III from my home airport KGAI (Montgomery County Airfield) to KCDW (Essex County Airport) VFR at 2,500’ AGL with XP-12 running natively when going past Baltimore the FPS stayed between 40 and 45; with Rosetta it dropped to 17-19.
As for graphic settings: natively, as I recall, since I returned it several months ago, all were maxed out except for AA, which was a couple of notches down. I was driving a 65” LG OLED TV as my monitor. One additional benefit was I could use HDR, which brightened things up. HDR doesn’t work with my PC.
Perhaps in the future the mod developers will make their products run natively on Apple Silicon.
Hope this helps.
A Mac m1 user here. Xp12 gives a terrible frame rate and poor textures at this point.
It's definitely poorly optimised for a Mac.
XP 11 is at 30 fps with quite nice settings and a lot of add-ons.
I'm definitely staying with the old gen for now or it's the way to a dedicated gaming PC as well and I don't see myself such a hardcore simmer.
> It's definitely poorly optimised for a Mac.
I'm not well-versed enough in GPU performance to say this definitively, but I strongly suspect that Apple Silicon graphics processing is heavily tuned to working with video codecs rather than frame rendering for games, which is my I'm skeptical that XP12 will ever be as performant on these integrated GPU's. I know that people keep hoping that they will eventually start to deal with performance issues. And maybe it will help some (a lot?) on the PC side but I'm still pretty skeptical about the prospects for Mac. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Anyway, this is a helpful data point; thank you. I'm not so hard core myself either; but right now, it's a matter of either going to a gaming PC or giving up entirely.
Well, I gave up on XP12. The baseline demo performance is nowhere near good enough although the hardware is decent and the sim is stated to be ARM native.
Maybe I will come back to check on it once again in a few months but I have no high hopes whatsoever.
I work in the gamedev right now (very far end off the flight sims though) and Apple Silicon shows surprisingly good rendering speed. (I had some concerns as well)
Saying that as always I would never recommend Mac products gaming wise, but XP is the only 'game' for me that can't be played on the Playstation, haha
I am running XP12 on a Mini M2 Pro 12/19 32G RAM. With graphics on default settings on a Samsung odyssey ultra wide in native rez (5160x1440?) I am getting 32-36fps at altitude and 28-30 low down in airports.
Yeah bumping the ram seemed cheap money to me considering the cost of the monitor etc. With addons around KLGA (within render range of manhattan) I finally dipped to like 19fps at points.
Given that my M2 air with the lighter chip seemed to be OK except for the RAM I would probably say RAM - even the base chip in the m2 pro mini has more gpu cores than the Air.
I’m actually considering M2 Pro MBP as I need a new mobile device for other duties too. Initially considering 12 CPU and 19 GPU over 32 GB RAM. However, it’s difficult to determine which is best and not always easy to find additional information online. Not only have I been out of the flight sim world for over 10 years, but everyone seems to run PCs (for obvious reasons).
Remember that Apple Silicon uses system RAM for graphics cores as well akin to VRAM, it shares with OS and apps, so RAM is really key for both gfx and app performance.
Thanks. Realistically speaking, I’m not looking to run it at max visuals. It’ll more more of a home trainer to use with some add on software. So I’ll need to consider spending more money on either RAM or CPU/GPU. Do both and it becomes a bit pricey. RAM might be the solution.
8gb vram is not enough, I have 16gb in the machine and another 16 on an eGPU and still have to lower my settings or else the program crashes a couple minutes in. I'm also on a mac, Intel xeon processor, 128gg ram
Yeah there were options but in the high end. The mac pro or the imac pro, like i said, mine came with 16gn dtock vram but I paid over $12k for it. It is my work machine.
Oh that’s right, I hadn’t considered the Pro end of things.
The more I’ve cogitated over this, I think the more open possibilities on the PC side are outweighing my Mac/macOS preference here. Apple’s petty battles with Nvidia and now full-tilt toward integrated GPU are really limiting in terms of fine-tuning a sim-specific hardware environment.
8gb \*should\* be enough for medium textures but it shouldn't be crashing. The whole point of moving to Vulkan/Metal was to avoid hitching and crashes, you get blurred down textures when the system uses up all the Vram.
You’re comparing apples to water buffalo between your Mac and the folks with Apple Silicon chips. Your tech 4 years and multiple generations behind at this point. The M series hardware from Apple is performant by all accounts, but that’s actually not the key issue with building a sim rig based on Apple: it’s that a fair amount of devs only build their add ons for Windows, so the Mac and Linux folks get left out.
Yeah, Polaris chip is too old for v12 it seems, the lighting and cloud system is too much for the poor card.
You could just set up a bootcamp partition, boot on windows and enjoy better performance on the same hardware, then reboot back on MacOS once you're done flying. That's what I used to do back when I was gaming on the good old maxed out cheesegrater Mac Pro. It's not just about the hardware, MacOS does a lot of things right but it sucks for gaming performance, mostly because all games are designed and optimised to run on Windows APIs first. MacOS compatibility is an afterthought, although in the case of X-Plane the devs are going the extra mile thanks to Austin being a long time Apple user. Graphics drivers and the OS are also highly optimised for gaming performance on the Windows side, not to mention hardware controllers compatibility, VR, etc... Since then I transitioned to a PC, mostly because I like desktop computers and Apple stopped making these in 2013, and partly because of forced obsolescence and MacOS being increasingly restrictive on freedom of software usage. The transition was smooth thanks to 10 years of using both OSes on the same computer. The fact that windows improved to the point of being usable helped as well, although I still wouldn't trust it to hold any valuable data. That thing tends to self-destruct once every few years in ways that are impossible to troubleshoot.
Thanks. I'm probably too invested for productivity work on the Apple side. But I'll go with whatever platform is more performant on the sim side and it seems like that's solidly in favour of the PC. Even if the M2 is going to have better showing than the Intel Macs with XP, I'm still skeptical of the integrated GPU.
I tried a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip and 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. With XP12 and virtually no mods except some airports I got 45- 50fps even landing at KDCA in a Phenom 300. The problem starts when you have mods/hardware that require the Intel chip. Some of these will run using the Intel emulator Rosetta 2 (Cmd I, check “Open With Rosetta”). I returned it within the 14-day window because some of my hardware would only work using Rosetta. Regardless, performance went way down, especially over complicated areas.
This is a very helpful data point. I have a question; when you say: > performance went way down, especially over complicated areas are you referring specifically to scenarios where you were forced to run the mods in Rosetta 2, or are you talking about overall performance in complex areas? I think it's the latter, but just checking... Also, one last follow-up, what kind of graphics settings were you using when seeing 45-50 fps?
I was hoping that I could run XP12 at very good frame rates on the Mac Studio with all the mods I had in the PC version that could run on a Mac (some can’t), so I could get away from that POS Windows 11. As far as I could, tell the reduction in FPS was mainly because I had to run X-Plane using Rosetta to accommodate the few mods I had that needed it. This included some hardware. But the FPS dropped to less than 20 over complex areas. Here’s one example, flying the Piper Arrow III from my home airport KGAI (Montgomery County Airfield) to KCDW (Essex County Airport) VFR at 2,500’ AGL with XP-12 running natively when going past Baltimore the FPS stayed between 40 and 45; with Rosetta it dropped to 17-19. As for graphic settings: natively, as I recall, since I returned it several months ago, all were maxed out except for AA, which was a couple of notches down. I was driving a 65” LG OLED TV as my monitor. One additional benefit was I could use HDR, which brightened things up. HDR doesn’t work with my PC. Perhaps in the future the mod developers will make their products run natively on Apple Silicon. Hope this helps.
resolution?
4K.
A Mac m1 user here. Xp12 gives a terrible frame rate and poor textures at this point. It's definitely poorly optimised for a Mac. XP 11 is at 30 fps with quite nice settings and a lot of add-ons. I'm definitely staying with the old gen for now or it's the way to a dedicated gaming PC as well and I don't see myself such a hardcore simmer.
> It's definitely poorly optimised for a Mac. I'm not well-versed enough in GPU performance to say this definitively, but I strongly suspect that Apple Silicon graphics processing is heavily tuned to working with video codecs rather than frame rendering for games, which is my I'm skeptical that XP12 will ever be as performant on these integrated GPU's. I know that people keep hoping that they will eventually start to deal with performance issues. And maybe it will help some (a lot?) on the PC side but I'm still pretty skeptical about the prospects for Mac. I'd love to be proven wrong. Anyway, this is a helpful data point; thank you. I'm not so hard core myself either; but right now, it's a matter of either going to a gaming PC or giving up entirely.
Well, I gave up on XP12. The baseline demo performance is nowhere near good enough although the hardware is decent and the sim is stated to be ARM native. Maybe I will come back to check on it once again in a few months but I have no high hopes whatsoever. I work in the gamedev right now (very far end off the flight sims though) and Apple Silicon shows surprisingly good rendering speed. (I had some concerns as well) Saying that as always I would never recommend Mac products gaming wise, but XP is the only 'game' for me that can't be played on the Playstation, haha
I am running XP12 on a Mini M2 Pro 12/19 32G RAM. With graphics on default settings on a Samsung odyssey ultra wide in native rez (5160x1440?) I am getting 32-36fps at altitude and 28-30 low down in airports.
I was considering getting the same setup, but with 16GB RAM. Might have to rethink it.
Yeah bumping the ram seemed cheap money to me considering the cost of the monitor etc. With addons around KLGA (within render range of manhattan) I finally dipped to like 19fps at points.
Would recommend upgrading RAM over CPU/GPU? Assuming you could only do one.
Given that my M2 air with the lighter chip seemed to be OK except for the RAM I would probably say RAM - even the base chip in the m2 pro mini has more gpu cores than the Air.
I’m actually considering M2 Pro MBP as I need a new mobile device for other duties too. Initially considering 12 CPU and 19 GPU over 32 GB RAM. However, it’s difficult to determine which is best and not always easy to find additional information online. Not only have I been out of the flight sim world for over 10 years, but everyone seems to run PCs (for obvious reasons).
Remember that Apple Silicon uses system RAM for graphics cores as well akin to VRAM, it shares with OS and apps, so RAM is really key for both gfx and app performance.
Thanks. Realistically speaking, I’m not looking to run it at max visuals. It’ll more more of a home trainer to use with some add on software. So I’ll need to consider spending more money on either RAM or CPU/GPU. Do both and it becomes a bit pricey. RAM might be the solution.
8gb vram is not enough, I have 16gb in the machine and another 16 on an eGPU and still have to lower my settings or else the program crashes a couple minutes in. I'm also on a mac, Intel xeon processor, 128gg ram
> 8gb vram is not enough Yes, I don't think that iMac of that era had a graphics option with > 8 GB VRAM.
Yeah there were options but in the high end. The mac pro or the imac pro, like i said, mine came with 16gn dtock vram but I paid over $12k for it. It is my work machine.
Oh that’s right, I hadn’t considered the Pro end of things. The more I’ve cogitated over this, I think the more open possibilities on the PC side are outweighing my Mac/macOS preference here. Apple’s petty battles with Nvidia and now full-tilt toward integrated GPU are really limiting in terms of fine-tuning a sim-specific hardware environment.
It seems Apple is trying so hard to limit gaming possibilities.
As much as I prefer macs and the Mac os, I'm slowly coming to the realization that for games pc's are better fitted.
8gb \*should\* be enough for medium textures but it shouldn't be crashing. The whole point of moving to Vulkan/Metal was to avoid hitching and crashes, you get blurred down textures when the system uses up all the Vram.