Hi everyone,
I’m hitting a performance wall with the Mac client that shouldn’t exist in 2026. I play on an M1 Max with 32 GPU cores, yet the game is still running as an Intel app through Rosetta 2 translation.
Because the engine isn’t native, the CPU is constantly bogged down translating code. This is most obvious when flying low or in intense dogfights; my frame rate drops to 45 FPS because the GPU is literally waiting for the translated CPU instructions to catch up.
With Apple phasing out Intel support in macOS Tahoe, this “translated” version is on borrowed time. Metal 4 offers huge potential for better command processing and MetalFX upscaling, but that’s useless if the game isn’t running natively on ARM.
I’ve invested a lot into this game and want to keep playing at a high level. Can we get any word on when a native ARM64 build is coming? We are past the point where a wrapper is enough; we need the game to actually use the hardware we’re running.
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Supportive. M series chips starting from M3 supports ray tracing, metalfx upscaling, which greatly enhance gaming experience. But currently, mac users are stuck with tsr/taa. As far as I know, metal 4 is capable of frame gen as well, through metal. I believe implementing metalfx and relevant technologies is straightforward as Apples code is quite complete, unlike that of windows. There is absolutely no reason for Gaijin to procrastinate on this.
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More important, Apple is going to drop support for Rosetta2 and Intel CPUs (as far es I know). This means, after updating to MacOS 27 Warthunder will not run anymore. My system showed me a related warning today, while starting WT.
I am worried whether the Mac is important enough for GJ to invest in a native WT version or not.
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I hope a gaijin dev sees this and gives as an answer, War thunder has a rare chance to be among the first games to spearhead native ARM support on MacOS, it is evident that m series chips are going great and have capable gpus, the gaming world is only delaying the inevitable which is more native arm support for games. I sincerely hope war thunder releases native arm versions before rosetta 2 drops support given how there is already an arm version of mobile war thunder around.
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Do you think emailing War Thunder support directly would actually help? I feel like it could at least raise some awareness about how close we really are to losing compatibility. A forum post is one thing but if enough people actually contact support it’s harder to ignore.
Realistically I don’t think the devs are going to prioritize an ARM build anytime soon, but like you said the mobile version already exists so it’s not like it’s impossible. The clock is ticking though — macOS 27 launches in September and after that Rosetta 2 is gone. A lot of Mac players don’t even know this is coming (and maybe War Thunder devs don’t too) and when it hits they’re going to be pretty upset.
Would be worth trying anything at this point honestly.
Well what do we have to lose, lets contact them, i will, i recommend anyone who sees this does too so that they know there are quite a few people in this.
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I am currently trying GeForce Now as an alternative way to play the game. Unfortunately, there is no real way to import my control settings. This is a known issue and could be easily solved by syncing the settings to the game servers along the progress. But as long as this is not implemented, I have to manually configure my controls each time I start the game and that’s ridiculous.
Hence, GeForce Now is not an option.