AM under Crossover Office?

[Roger]

Has anyone ever tried using AM under Crossover, either on Mac or Linux?   I'm contemplating trying running it on Linux under Crossover and just wondered if anyone else had already tried this. 

[a.quaihoi]

Hi Roger, not in Crossover, but Ive mucked around with it with WINE ( same same ) / Parallels / VM Ware etc. Long story short the issue with trying to run AM in translation layer software is that AM and most translation layers default to an old version of opengl 3 ( probably for licensing issues ) (  think from memory ) so yes it will run, but its highly unuseable, its discussed here : 

 

Some people have been working on solutions to implement, these opengl calls through Vulcan / Metal ( Mac ), but this needs to be developed either within AM or Within the Wine bottle / Virtual environment, Im sure Codeweavers could make it work properly but they either create compatible systems for games or proprietory software for companies and this would cost some serious money, I wanted to try Running AM on a M series Mac through Apples new game Game Porting Tool Kit, which seems to have done  exactly what is required, eg. Translate X86 /Apps program codes/ calls to M Series Arm architecture and Metal Graphic API. Other implementations work like  Opengl --> Vulcan ( PC )  --> Metal ( MAC ) - which is a three step translation - which has huge latency for graphics, people who are developing game emulators have got this down pretty good, its a shame that Apps like AM cannot share the same benefits, Any commercial Virtualisation Apps like Parallels / VM Ware only have old versions of open GL, once again unless these apps get updated to send and translate Opengl to Vulcan / Metal  

 

[a.quaihoi]

ok so had a bit of a read . . . some articles say new Mac OS " supports Open GL 4.0 nd ES " while some do not, crossover primarily translates supports Direct X so it games centric and wont work well with opengl applications,so , open gl HAS to be supported by the trasnslation layer system and to some extent host Os , so it can pass open GL calls and translate them to native grahics api, on Linux they have MoltenVk  which does support opengl translation to vulkan graphics api o you could run linux on mac and wine bottle AM and probably get decent performance - should try it and report back  . . . apparently it costs 4.5 - 9k for codeweavers to translate and build in "native-like" performing app without a total rewrite of software . . . considering this, I'd say it was actually a bargain, if all users who want / need a Mac version purchased a license $100 - thats 45 to 90 people  . . . Im actually super curious to see AM running on a top tier Apple Silicone machine  

 

 

[robcat2075]

Somewhat related... a forum member recently went to a laptop with Windows on ARM and couldn't run A:M anymore.

We found that A:M v15.0 still worked and appears completely functional with proper graphics and all.

v15.0 is 32 bit and, probably most significantly, has the option to use Direct 3D instead of OpenGL.

[a.quaihoi]

 . . . hmm not sure on Windows on Arm, but it would have something to do with graphics cards drivers, if the Arm pc has on chip graphics eg. on snapdragon, then there would need to have native opengl drivers for it, if it doesn't then opengl would not work. On Mac Arm, there is no more open gl drivers at all and just a translation layer that translates opengl calls on the fly and is capped to opengl 4.1 . .  which will still not work if trying to run AM . . . which also might be the case of PC Arm. Will be interesting to see Arm/Nvidia hardware implemntations in the future for graphics computing. 

Did a bit of reading this weekend and Mac / Pc / Arm implementation, seems to be 'happening' with translation layers, apparently this is the future of things to come.

On Mac & Pc Arm they are geting  apps to work by translating  App --> OpenGL --> Zink / Messa -->  Molten VK --> Vulkan  . . . with a 10-20% hit on performance as Zink/Messa is WIP and I think they said it translates graphics calls via CPU - hence the perfomance  hit.  This theoretically removes the requirements of opengl drivers on the host system . . .

If I have some free time ( Ha Ha Ha )  but if anyone wants to have some fun who's savvy at command prompt computing, should give downloading, Moltenvk and compiling zink to see if they can get AM running through Vulkan on Arm Windows or Mac Os