I'm new here, so hello from me! As a very casual user of TSW I'm aware that I'm probably going to be in the minority, but I was wondering if there were any other Mac users here who could share their settings? The game in general trundles along really nicely, even at higher settings, but sometimes the frame rate and glitch/pauses make the game unplayable. WCML (Preston) is great, but sometimes processing bottlenecks that crash/stop scenarios, for example anything which has me going past Upperby TMD at speed (e.g the ending of the early morning 1S24 service). Iv'e managed to part resolve this by dropping some of the settings, but curious to know if there's anything else I can do to my settings which could generally/drastically help without huge compromise in quality? Thanks in advance Mac mini: M4 (10/10 Core CPU/GPU), 16GB unified memory Display: 5K Studio Display Source: Whisky, with Steam and TSW being run in a bottle. Retina mode switched off. TSW Version: TSW5 Screen res: 2880x1620 Mode: Full Screen Advanced settings:
I'm running it on an M1 Max Mac Studio with 32gb RAM via Crossover. Very rarely have any crashes on it. I used to have crashes at Upperby too, but they seemed to stop a few months back after a patch which specifically mentioned some fixes in that area for crashes. Crossover settings are D3DMetal and eSync In game settings I use the in game High setting but change foliage at Ultra, FPS at 60, Windowed Fullscreen and also use Jetwash's Medium preset mod.
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I don't find any difference with ESync v MSync, but that possibly might be down to the power of the new M4. Interesting that you set your foliage up to ultra, I put that down to high and it seemingly makes a difference. But then again my default is Ultra, then I adjust the advanced settings down. I'd be really interested to see a screenshot of your 'activity monitor' when the game is in full flow (and nothing else is open bar Steam). I assume you're running it with Steam? Steam seems to have 6x wine64-preloader activities running(!), whilst TSW5 only has 1. My bottle configuration for ref:
If only TS and TSW had official Mac ports. Windy Miller I'm looking to get a Mac that will probably have the same specs as yours; what is your average FPS when there aren't any stutters or other issues?
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what my norm is, as I've only been playing on this machine for a few weeks so I’m still tinkering with the settings. So far this evening the in-game (F3) FPS counter tells me anywhere between 25-28fps on WCML - Preston, when travelling at full speed 100mph. It drops to early 20’s in congested areas. That’s with my graphics set pretty high, and at full screen. I’ll carry on tinkering with my bottle settings and in-game settings to see what works best, and report back.
Not good performance, but I suspect part of the issue will be the two emulation layers the game has to be run through. Gaming on Mac isn't amazing, but No Man's Sky's official Mac port seems to be quite good based on the videos I've seen. I think that a large part of the 'Mac gaming sucks' argument is that since nobody expects games to run on Macs anymore, nobody tries to make Mac ports. The Mx chips are theoretically more capable than x86 chips - Modern iPhones are capable of running PS4 games quite well, so I can only imagine what Mac games would be like if they were taken seriously. In the future we'll probably move completely over to ARM, but Windows on ARM is still bad. Since the industry follows Windows no matter what, we're stuck with it. SteamOS is a beacon of hope, but not until we get an official release of the version the Steam Deck is using.
Considering they're releasing Cyberpunk 2077 as an official Mac port soon, it'll be interesting to see where gaming on a Mac goes. If Apple actually put some proper resources in then they could probably take a bite of the gaming market. The Mac Mini and Mac Studios are pretty good value for money for the power you get. They could easily do a gaming M chip if they wanted.
Just had a play around... and by switching on Retina mode in the bottle, turning graphics in the game down to medium, upping most of the individual important graphics settings from Low/medium up to high (apart from textures), sticking at 2880x1620, but switching from Fullscreen to windowed, reducing screen percentage to 71%.... gives me 40-45fps on WCML Preston. More to test and play with, I'll keep this thread updated for those who are interested. What I find really interesting is how much Memory Steam takes up. The top "wine64-preloader" is TSW5, the other 7x "wine64-preloader" (and the "Windowserver") are Steam.
The M chips are great for normal tasks but a dedicated graphics chip could do wonders for gaming on Mac. That makes me wonder; maybe an Intel-based Mac Pro with a graphics card could perform well.
I've just been testing as well, with my lesser M1 chip. Switching up to Retina mode, I've changed the in game preset from Medium to High and left screen percent on 87%. So changes from before are I've switched the bottle to retina mode, increased the in game preset from Medium but 100% screen to High and 87% screen - it's increased my FPS on average from 30 to 37fps. This is testing on both WCMLS (OTS timetable mod) and also Birmingham Cross City (the new timetable mod). I'm also still running Jetwash Medium preset and basically every route has its enhancement pack if one is available plus various other of the recommended mods. The odd drop in FPS in busy areas (Euston was 25fps, Willesden was 28fps).
