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by icebergonfire 448 days ago
> I know that Game Porting Toolkit exists

There's a wrapper over this called Whisky (https://getwhisky.app) that makes it really straightforward to install and run Steam or other Windows binaries.

I use it on an M1 Air and an M1 Pro. Less demanding titles run very well, heavier games like Cyberpunk 2077 don't really reach a stable 30fps even with Steam Deck-like settings so keep your expectations in check.
1 comments
aweiland 448 days ago
The problem with Whisky is they are a major Wine version behind as to not step on Crossover: https://github.com/orgs/Whisky-App/discussions/257#discussio...

Some games like Half Life have sound issues on the older Wine versions.

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solardev 447 days ago
Even Crossover doesn't work all that well. It has a small list of supported games, many hundreds of untested games, and even on the games it supports, there are frequently glitches, significant slowdowns while loading new textures & levels, occasional crashes, etc.

I'm a paid customer, occasional beta tester, and frequent compatibility database submitter. I don't think I'll continue using it after my subscription expires, though. It reminds me of the DOS days of having to tinker with config.sys to get your game to run... which is the last thing I want to do these days, in middle age, just to play a game for an hour or two. I often end up spending more time fighting Crossover than actually playing the game =/

Some games work better in Parallels than Crossover, too. (Parallels uses Windows for Arm, which uses Microsoft's own x86 emulator instead of Wine.) Some the other way around. Neither is anywhere near Proton-level seamlessness, much less native Windows gaming. Neither would come anywhere close to passing the "girlfriend/wife/mom test" in terms of ease of use.

I still game on my Mac everyday, but almost entirely in Geforce Now (streamed from the cloud) instead of fiddling with all the virtualization and emulation. Hugely better graphics and no local fan noise or heat to deal with, or any incompatibility issues. Just one click and the game launches and runs at max setting and runs flawlessly for hours, which is definitely not something that I can say about Crossover.

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