Yeah I know, wrong wrong wrong. But I was asked elsewhere on here about my experience of running it on my Mac, so here we go. I run at a resolution of 2560 x 1440 on a ARM-based Mac Mini M1 with 8gb RAM, with MacOS Big Sur, and Crossover 20. I've included screenshots of my settings in TS2022, my settings in Crossover, and how it looks as I drive. I tend to favour resolution and draw distance over anything else, and I almost always drive in the rain, so apologies for the muted tones All routes run differently, but it feels from my admittedly limited experience that SWML is a good enough "average" example as any, and as its the line I know best, I was able to track the FPS in realtime more easily. Older routes running much faster, while WCML South runs slower, dipping down to 15fps while leaving Euston, then recovering to more usable fps once out of London. As far as "tile stutter" is concerned, I don't experience it - current Macs have comically fast SSDs and the M1's single core performance is extremely strong. All figures are conservative. I'm not interested in a peeing contest on specs and performance, just hoping this is of some help to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy TS at all because they have a Mac. South Wales Main Line (unbranded) graphics test Driving a AP Class 150/2 Departing Cardiff Central: 27fps Alongside Canton Depot: 30fps Just outside Cardiff: 40fps Countryside in general: 45fps Small stations: 37-41fps Approach into Bridgend: 30fps Departing Bridgend: 35fps Margam Down, alongside steelworks: 34fps Approach into Port Talbot Parkway: 30-40fps - very variable Departing Port Talbot Parkway: 38fps Through Baglan: 28fps, recovering quickly to 35fps Approach into Neath: 30fps Departing Neath: 36fps Going past Neath Port Talbot College: 28fps, recovering to 30fps by Skewen and 36fps by the 65mph Morpeth board shortly after the station. Crossing Afon Tawe by the Liberty Stadium: 30fps Passing Landore TMD: 25fps Approach into Swansea: 31fps If you're thinking of trying it... there are some things to take into consideration: 1) This only works for TS Classic. TSW (and other games based on Unreal Engine) will not work, and likely never will. 2) It works right now, but it may well break in the future. At some point, an update to any of the links in this precarious technology chain of macOS, Rosetta 2, Crossover, Steam or TS202x could stop it working. Maybe forever. Update with caution and be prepared for loss. And not just when the earth's ecosystems irrevocably break down in about 5 years and everyone dies. Worse than that. No virtual trains!! 3) A very small number of routes exhibit terrible graphics glitching problems and it almost certainly won't be the ones you expect. GEML and Fife Circle, for example, are unplayable. Your mileage may vary. Always buy directly from Steam so you can return it promptly if there are problems! A side note, some Windows PC users have also experienced identical glitches on their PCs, and they appear to be related to GPU driver issues in their case, so it is likely down to translation of the Windows GPU API calls to Apple's Metal API. 4) Be wary of third party installers for DLC. Some won't work. Armstrong Powerhouse does though, and that's the most important one, right? 5) It's unlikely you'll get external software, fancy controllers or specialist utilities to work nicely. Think of it as a console game with extras. 6) The standard 8 core GPU inside the standard M1 is roughly equivalent to the laptop version of a GTX 1650, so do not expect miracles. However, if you have a 32 core GPU in your shiny new M1 Max-based Mac, then your experience may be something special - let us know! And if you win the lottery, buy me one. Thanks! 7) If it works for you, be smug. Your M1 based Mac uses a fraction of the power of a gaming PC. When under full load, my entire desktop computer (yes, including the GPU) only draws about 27w. No fans blaring out, less guilt from CO2 emissions... TS2022 and Crossover settings
I'm considering buying a Mac now since I've had enough of Windows (seriously, Windows 8 was the last usable version of Windows), but I didn't realise you could run TS on the M1 Macs. I knew on the Intel ones you could use Windows through BootCamp, but I expected Windows to be incompatible with the M1 Macs - am I right in saying there is no ARM-compatible version of Windows? Are you running TS through Windows, or is Crossover an emulator of some sort?
Crossover is a compatibility layer that converts Windows API calls to Mac API calls. It’s not an emulator as such, but it’s similar to Steam’s Proton software that allows Windows games to run on Linux - in fact they both use the same underlying technology, WINE. It has the advantage of not requiring a license or installation of Windows at all. Behind the scenes, MacOS then deals with converting the Intel code to Mac code using its Rosetta 2 technology. It is possible to run the ARM version of Windows 11 on a Mac M1 but only by using virtualisation software such as Parallels. I’ve done this as a test and it does work, but the experience is considerably worse than using Crossover. This is because it’s running MacOS, Windows 11 and Parallels all at the same time, leaving considerably less RAM and processor cycles for TS itself. At this time there is no way to set up a Mac M1 to use Bootcamp, as you could with the Intel-based Macs, sadly. You’ll always get a better experience with a Windows PC running TS, but I posted here for those like me who, for whatever reason, use MacOS. However, it’s precarious existence! Hope this helps.
Thanks for this. I am shortly upgrading my late 2012 iMac to a new one so I will take a look at Crossover as I wasn't aware of it.
My experience is different from Aryffordd's. I have just bought a new M2 Mac MiniPro, and the RailSim works much better on Parallels 18 than on a trial of Crossover. I even have the sim on the highest setting on P18. The 'game' is so much better than it was on my late 2015 i5 iMac. Very pleased.
I was always wondering what what happen with Mac since they stopped using intel chipsets. In the days of when I used my Mac to run windows I went through bootcamp which allowed windows to be run natively by splitting your existing hard drive into a separate partition. The only issue was what you hard was what you had - no luxury of being able to swap parts out of your Mac as all the parts were soldered together (similar in the way a laptop works)
I just bought one as well. What a FANTASTIC computer. I run logic session that would absolutely stop my old machine in it’s tracks, that on the M2pro mini barely register. Interesting that you ran TS in parrallels and got good performance out of it.
I Not necessarily, with newer mobos and using the correct USB-c (3.2 var) and cable, you can see transfer rates of up to 20Gbps Thunderbolt connections using USB-c and the correct cable have transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps. I have a 3-year-old mobo with a Firecuda drive attached via a USB-C connection and cable and see transfer speeds circa 20Gbps and it runs TSC perfectly.
I think my Backup drive is using USB 1.0 seriously slow speeds don't know why (it should be USB 3.0 but I'm not convinced)
1.0 died a very long time ago. If it was built in the last twenty years roughly it should be USB2.0 at least. USB 3.0 is usually identifiable with a blue connector and/or an SSUSB logo by it. Although to take advantage of it you'll need a USB 3.0 cable and both devices to support it.
Yeah I know... It was a joke... It's basically that slow you'd swear it was a pigeon carrying the information between the two devices...
Thanks for sharing this Aryffordd, it's very helpful! I'm planning to upgrade from Intel i5 MacBook Air to an M2 Mac Mini at some point, so it's good to know this will work using Crossover.
For TS a USB 3 and above drive is more than suficcient. But what you are not figuring in, is that the M2pro cpu is insanely powerful. Like crazy. And the powerconsumption is like a tenth of what intel cpus use. You’d have to pay double for a win box that have the same benchmarks as an M2pro mac mini. A revolution is happening in computing right now. However keep in mind that there (still) is a reason gaming pcs are a thing. The M2pro mini is more geared towards people who are creative with video and music etc.. For that this cpu is so far ahead in price versus power, that it’s almost unreal. But for gaming, where discreete videocards have been tailored towards precisely that, you still “need” a win machine. Specially with a game like TS. I’ve bought two new computers within the last three months. A high specced pc for train simulator, and the mini m2pro. And while the intel cpu is watercooled, the pc is still pretty audible when i play TS. There are still fans in the cabinet and graphics card. My new mac is dead silent, running even very heavy Logic Pro sessions, that made my old intel mac melt. And it’s cool. I literally don’t feel the mac computer getting any warmer under heavy loads. And apparently, even running windows in a virtual machine on a mac m2pro , still gives a game like TS a performance you could live with. That is almost mindblowing to me. I think the reason is this. TS is single core (mostly) on a pc. You have to pay really big bucks for good singlecore performance. The m2pro have singlecore performance that is off the chart. Something like 15000 in geekbench. anyway….just rambling on here.
