Running Arma 3 on new M1 Macbook Pro

[martin_lee 33]

The research I am doing now is atmospheric modelling. While the main results are ran on computing cluster, I often have to do some short runs for debugging on my own computer (No one wants to wait for days, only to find the output is trashed from a bug). So the 32-core macbook pro is very tempting.

 

The only problem? We can't dual boot to Windows! I don't really have any work-related program on Windows, but I do want to play games. I need my weekly Arma fix. And some Falcon BMS, and Steel Beasts... The only solution is virtual machine, with the not-too-well-supported ARM Windows 11... Or spend some extra money to buy a Windows computer purely for gaming.

 

So when my father finally have to upgrade his Mac, it's my chance. It's the one with M1 pro chip, 32 cores. I installed ARM version of Windows 11 (x64 emulatioin only available here) on Parallel.

 

Turns out, Arma 3 can actually run. And amazingly, you can have reasonable graphics as well. Compared to my computer now (2016 Intel Macbook Pro), the graphics settings in the new Mac are equal to or higher. The only caveat is that when the visual field changes significantly, there would be a slight lag when it load something. Not sure what is causing the lag, whether it is loading from memory or loading from disk. But once this is over, you can look back at there without any issues.

 

So overall, I am quite happy with the performance. It is on a virtual machine, with Window emulating x64 software, but still matched the performance of my 5-year-old computer. I wasn't exactly expecting this result to be honest.

 

p.s.: Not all games can run, however. Some throw errors, some simply couldn't start, some say unsupported OS version (my guess is the game's checking what OS you are using and it doesn't match what's in its list in this case).