Apple’s Monday WWDC keynote included a quick-fire presentation about gaming content on Macs—but the biggie was VR, along with a path for underpowered Mac systems to potentially get up to speed to running it.
Senior Vice President Craig Federighi confirmed that “Valve is bringing SteamVR to Mac.” Soon after, Industrial Light and Magic demonstrated the first-ever native HTC Vive demo on a Mac system. An Epic Games staffer dropped TIE Fighters, Imperial Cruisers, and Darth Vader into a Star Wars-themed world, using nothing more than an on-screen GUI controlled with HTC Vive wands.
While newer home Mac systems will come with the kind of horsepower needed to render HTC Vive-ready content at a comfortable 90 frames-per-second refresh (a number that ILM said they had reached with their demo), Federighi also announced a new GPU enclosure for less-powerful Mac systems. It will connect via Thunderbolt 3 and come equipped with an AMD Radeon RX 580 video card.
