EDO on a Mac mini M4

[Jonas Treesong]

I've been away from the game roughly since the release of Odyssey, occasionally firing it up on my aging and ancient Windows machine. This month I purchased a Mac mini with Apple's new M4 chip (32G internal memory). Just out of curiosity I researched the available options of returning to the game using my new Mac mini. The easiest and most attractive approach seemed to be with a product called Crossover by Codeweavers, basically a shrink wrap of Wine. I downloaded their trial and gave it a try. I had little hope but one never knows. After minor tinkering (the trick is to skip the ED launcher with the /autorun option) and much to my surprise I was soon looking at my docked Anaconda. Initially it all looked quite poorly but that was due to the default resolution. Switching to 2560 x 1440 resolution made all the difference.

My first observations: FPS depends on location but generally between mid 40's and 60. This is on HIGH quality. Switching to ULTRA will set you back in frame rate, obviously. Again depending on your location between high 30's and mid 50's. I bummed around in space for a bit, struggling with my now extremely rusty flying skills but found the whole experience excellent. No lag , no stuttering. The Mac mini gets a bit warmer but nothing extraordinary. And no dual boot which is always a pain, no Windows installation, no tinkering with VM's...

 

[Wily Rites]

I've been away from the game roughly since the release of Horizons, occasionally firing it up on my aging and ancient Windows machine. This month I purchased a Mac mini with Apple's new M4 chip (32G internal memory). Just out of curiosity I researched the available options of returning to the game using my new Mac mini. The easiest and most attractive approach seemed to be with a product called Crossover by Codeweavers, basically a shrink wrap of Wine. I downloaded their trial and gave it a try. I had little hope but one never knows. After minor tinkering (the trick is to skip the ED launcher with the /autorun option) and much to my surprise I was soon looking at my docked Anaconda. Initially it all looked quite poorly but that was due to the default resolution. Switching to 2560 x 1440 resolution made all the difference.

My first observations: FPS depends on location but generally between mid 40's and 60. This is on HIGH quality. Switching to ULTRA will set you back in frame rate, obviously. Again depending on your location between high 30's and mid 50's. I bummed around in space for a bit, struggling with my now extremely rusty flying skills but found the whole experience excellent. No lag , no stuttering. The Mac mini gets a bit warmer but nothing extraordinary. And no dual boot which is always a pain, no Windows installation, no tinkering with VM's...

It works well though wineskins which is available via brew, a wrapper around wine, it makes the Vulcan or DirectX translation to Metal layer much easier to set up.

I've got a dual boot at the moment to use different versions of MacOS as there was up until recently a bug which made the game crash the system regularly with a kernel panic, I've been in contact with Mac support about that, and in the most resent system patch the issue was solved.

The game does run better on macOS 14 here, but it runs on macOS 15 too now, without crashing the system.

 

[imski]

Does anyone have an idiot proof tutorial to set this up?

Ideally not a YT vid, much prefer a step by step page?

 

[Wily Rites]

Does anyone have an idiot proof tutorial to set this up?

Ideally not a YT vid, much prefer a step by step page?

What system do you have? First thing is to establish whether or not you have enough ram.

 

[imski]

I have an M3 Max MBP with 48GB Ram, so it should run

 

[Wily Rites]

You might experience some throttling due to heat with a MBP, if it were a studio it would work, for a mini I don't know what the cooling is like, I suspect slightly better than the MacBook Pro. But it is worth giving it a try, I'd be interested to learn as to whether or not you get a good game from it.

Do you use brew already? If not, there is quite a lot to understand about what it is that you are installing, before just jumping in.

In my opinion it is a scandal that there is not a Mac build, as running anything though wine is highly inefficient, when you are translating everything into arm instructions on the fly, you might as well write the game in javascript.

 

[Jonas Treesong]

Does anyone have an idiot proof tutorial to set this up?

Ideally not a YT vid, much prefer a step by step page?

Crossover has a database of supported apps. EDO gets 3 out of 5 stars there. The only problem I encountered was circumventing the launcher as mentioned in my post which I found as a tip in a Reddit post. Crossover is $64 which is a pretty good deal. No hassle. Install Crossover, install EDO. Boom, done. And they have a two week free trial so you can first see if it works for you. I have not tried Wineskins.

 

[Jonas Treesong]

In my opinion it is a scandal that there is not a Mac build, as running anything though wine is highly inefficient, when you are translating everything into arm instructions on the fly, you might as well write the game in javascript.

There used to be a macOS version but with the coming of Horizons that was thrown in the bin.

 

[Wily Rites]

There used to be a macOS version but with the coming of Horizons that was thrown in the bin.

Indeed, the game met the requirements for the Mac version in the initial crowd funding; Seems like a crazy decision not to support Mac, but in all honesty I think this boils down quite simply to whether or not the dev team has a Mac fan onboard or not.

 

[tolm]

There used to be a macOS version but with the coming of Horizons that was thrown in the bin.

IIRC, it was dropped when Mac changed from OpenVR (?) to their proprietary Metal graphics APi.

 

[Wily Rites]

IIRC, it was dropped when Mac changed from OpenVR (?) to their proprietary Metal graphics APi.

I'm not sure that the change from OpenGL is so relevant, least I don't think that it would, as the game uses DirectX too so there must be an interface or translation layer somewhere already. I suppose if it was running on Mac with openGL initially that would have given rise to a possible decision in that direction. But a rather short sighted one, look at what you can do on arm hardware now!

 

[tolm]

I'm not sure that the change from OpenGL is so relevant, least I don't think that it would, as the game uses DirectX too so there must be an interface or translation layer somewhere already. I suppose if it was running on Mac with openGL initially that would have given rise to a possible decision in that direction. But a rather short sighted one, look at what you can do on arm hardware now!

It’s been a while but as I recall the effort to recode from OpenGL to Metal wasn’t considered “worth it” due to the low Mac player count.

It would be great to see a Mac version return - I’d be very tempted to pick up a Mac Studio and ditch Windows, again!

 

[Jonas Treesong]

You might experience some throttling due to heat with a MBP, if it were a studio it would work, for a mini I don't know what the cooling is like, I suspect slightly better than the MacBook Pro. But it is worth giving it a try, I'd be interested to learn as to whether or not you get a good game from it.

After 3 hours of play, the Mac mini gets warm to the touch but not hot. I have a Steam deck running EDO and that gets proper hot with the fan blowing like crazy. The fan of the Mac Mini is either extremely silent or it has not come on yet...

 

[Wily Rites]

After 3 hours of play, the Mac mini gets warm to the touch but not hot. I have a Steam deck running EDO and that gets proper hot with the fan blowing like crazy. The fan of the Mac Mini is either extremely silent or it has not come on yet...

It sound as though the fourth generation chips are really something, the heating was an issue even in the M3, if I'm not mistaken; Great to hear!
I've got studio with a massive copper heat sink and fan in it, so the heating is dealt with and the chips are not throttled, is why my M1's can run this ok I think.
It's the throttling that really kills the performance in the machines that are not specked for higher performance, even with the same chips in them.

 

[imski]

Crossover has a database of supported apps. EDO gets 3 out of 5 stars there. The only problem I encountered was circumventing the launcher as mentioned in my post which I found as a tip in a Reddit post. Crossover is $64 which is a pretty good deal. No hassle. Install Crossover, install EDO. Boom, done. And they have a two week free trial so you can first see if it works for you. I have not tried Wineskins.

When I do a search in Crossover it has a single star rating and says it won't install. What's the secret sauce?

 

[Jonas Treesong]

This is info page of the Elite Dangerous bottle from the Crossover database. As you can see, 3 stars. I had a smooth install and as in my original post, the only hiccup was the installer which was easily solved. There is actually no secret sauce. It does what it says on the tin...

Disclaimer: I have not yet encountered any limited functionality but I have up until now only played 4 hours or so...

 

[Wily Rites]

This is info page of the Elite Dangerous bottle from the Crossover database. As you can see, 3 stars. I had a smooth install and as in my original post, the only hiccup was the installer which was easily solved. There is actually no secret sauce. It does what it says on the tin...

Disclaimer: I have not yet encountered any limited functionality but I have up until now only played 4 hours or so...

View attachment 407923

Paying more than the cost of the game doubled for a translation layer is kind of crazy though. Sure it does facilitate the operation, but it gets me to thinking that the next time I install it, I'll make a note of the few simple steps and make a page that explains how to install it and what basically is required of the system but it does simplify things for sure.

Very glad to hear that it is working well your end.

The metal translation is all the requirements that are not in the basic wine bottle, and you need to install rosetta2 on your Mac first too, that is a dependancy demanded by crossover for its installation.

rosetta2 with wine and a wine bottle with the metal layer installed into it should be all that is required. A basic Kegworks wrapper with the metal layer checked runs the ED installer find, and just works out of the box as well.

 

[Jonas Treesong]

Paying more than the cost of the game doubled for a translation layer is kind of crazy though.

True, to a degree.

• I did not fancy figuring out an install by myself.
• The thing with BREW based stuff like wineskin is that somewhere along the line something fails and then you end up wading through tons of tutorials and whatnots.
• I really wanted to play the game again. Preferably on my Mac mini, not my ancient Windows box.
• You get access to tons of other bottles as well.
• I have a huge weak spot for EDO that surpasses financial sanity

 

[Wily Rites]

True, to a degree.

• I did not fancy figuring out an install by myself.
• The thing with BREW based stuff like wineskin is that somewhere along the line something fails and then you end up wading through tons of tutorials and whatnots.
• I really wanted to play the game again. Preferably on my Mac mini, not my ancient Windows box.
• You get access to tons of other bottles as well.
• I have a huge weak spot for EDO that surpasses financial sanity

If I were you I would wait a little before updating your Mac system when new releases come out, to make sure that they work with it; This is likely why the crossover reviews do not have more stars.

My version of the game has only recently, since the last macOS patch, started working consistently again.

 

[imski]

This is info page of the Elite Dangerous bottle from the Crossover database. As you can see, 3 stars. I had a smooth install and as in my original post, the only hiccup was the installer which was easily solved. There is actually no secret sauce. It does what it says on the tin...

Disclaimer: I have not yet encountered any limited functionality but I have up until now only played 4 hours or so...

View attachment 407923

Yeah, I'm stuck with invisible launcher issue. I've tried adding /autorun to the command line in the "Run with options" drop down but that doesn't help.