Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Query about the MacOS version...

So I was wondering if anyone knows why the game requires the latest and greatest version of macOS, but will run perfectly fine on crusty old Windows 7? I've got an old-school Mac Pro (Xeon X5680, Radeon HD 7950 3GB) that refuses to run the game in macOS 10.14 (BG3 moans about not having 10.15), yet runs it perfectly fine if I reboot into Boot Camp/Windows 10. So obviously this is not a hardware problem, but a seemingly artificial gating of the game to the "latest and greatest" version of macOS. And nothing more recent than macOS 10.14 will install on the Mac Pro.

Yes, I'm glad I can run the game at all. But this seems like a really questionable decision by someone to limit game availability.

The problem is that they are using Metal 2.3 (I think, not really sure about the Metal version) - since they are building the game natively for macOS. That particular version however is only macOS 10..15.6+

MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: macOS 10.15.6
Processor: 2.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon460 or Intel(R) Iris(™) Plus Graphics
Storage: 150 GB available space
For example: MacBook Pro 15 inch 2016 or newer, MacBook Pro 13 inch 2018 or newer
Note: minimum means you'll be able to play but you'll have to make quality concessions. If your framerate is low, go to video options and try a lower graphics preset.

have a look at the faq, here: http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=677277

"
I'm a tech guru, interested in what's under the hood. What kind of MacOS port is this?
The MacOS build of Baldur's Gate 3 does not use MoltenVK: it uses Metal 2.3. The Metal renderer is completely standalone. There is no Win32 code running, It's fully compiled by XCode 11.5.
"



Sorry

Thanks for the information. It's curious because the Mac launcher actually says that it will only enable HDR on MacOS 10.14.2 or higher, implying that the game will run on Mojave. Guess it's a red herring.

I find myself in this situation fairly often because for some reason, Mac game publishers seem to think it necessary to restrict the OS to latest and greatest version available at game release. It seems completely unnecessary, because many of these games are years-old ports of console and PC games that don't need the latest tech.

There are ways to get Catalina running on my old Mac, but they involve moving outside of what Apple will support, and even into 'Hackintosh' territory in some cases. I'd rather avoid that, but if Larian and Apple insist on the shiniest OS version. Catch-22 I guess. But Apple can forget about me buying a new Mac Pro. Those things are insanely expensive.

Sorry Jhelzei - let me explain what's the deal is. First of all I am lead dev. of macOS port. So straight from horse mouth

Both DOS2 and BG3 are pushing forward the Metal API on macOS because they actively use all the new features. We work together with Apple MetalEcosystem team to ensure game has the greatest performance and we strive to make game shine.

Unfortunately Metal is still in active development and compare Metal 2.3 vs DirectX 11 (!) - it's still very young API. That's why we use macOS 10.15.6 and not even 10.15.2 or .3 - it's because of the stuff that was done specifically to make BG3 work best.

HDR switch is from DOS2 launcher that's why it has 10.14.2 which indeed looks funny.

Thank you for the love to Mac platform and I hope you will be able to play on Mac some day.

Thanks for the question Jhelzei, and thanks for your answer Stauff1138

I have a similar problem. I have a Mac Pro (Late 2013) that gets the follow error:

If I boot into Windows ( via Bootcamp ) on the same machine, the game runs fine.

Is there any plans on removing the AVX2 requirements on the Mac side of things?

Well, your processor actually does NOT support AVX2 which almost virtually guarantees that mine doesn't. So I guess I'm up a creek without a paddle.

I had a similar error message from DOS2 and could not play the game, until very recently. It seems like the devs might address this after release by having a game executable that can fall back on old instructions, though at a performance penalty. I suppose right now they're concentrating on performance rather than compatibility.

I would not count on it on though. You do have some options, but none of them are great. Probably the 'easiest' would be to get Boot Camp running Windows 10 on your Mac. If BG3 will run on my CPU under Windows, it's a sure thing that it will run on yours - with Windows, though.

You could also invest in a new Mac, or just get a gaming PC, though those options are cost-prohibitive. But I wouldn't wait around for the devs to sort this out - it's likely going to be a while, if ever.

@Stauf1138: Thank you so much for bringing BG3 to Mac users -- in early access! I just unboxed my new MacBookPro. The first app to install? Steam -- so that I can play BG3. Who would have thought it possible?

In fact I was contemplating installing Windows on a Mac, just to play BG3 EA. Now I don't have to!

(My heart goes out to Mac users whose machines can't run the game. Hopefully this will be possible someday. Perhaps some of the system requirements will go down after some optimisation?)

In any case, to you and the whole Mac dev team, thank you, thank you, thank you!