Your feedback
Hi all!
I have a MacBook Pro M1 (16gb RAM, late 2020) and when I first installed BAR it ran 1080p fullscreen at ~20fps, but I noticed when I resized the window I got like 50-60fps (around 720p, windowed). So then I forked the project and tried some configurations tweaks with deepseek-pro-v4 and now I'm running 720p fullscreen at 100fps in battles 1v1.
So maybe it would be possible to create kinda of a "performance mode" using these configurations tweaks, basically disabling retina mode, which was a configuration I didn't find in Graphics settings. Here's what was changed:
The big win: 1x rendering (SPRING_MAC_NO_RETINA)
- Patched BAR Launcher.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher to export SPRING_MAC_NO_RETINA=1 when the marker file …/Beyond-All-Reason-mac/.no-retina exists (created).
- Effect: game renders at window resolution (1280x720 = 0.9 MP) instead of Retina 2x (2560x1440 = 3.7 MP); CoreAnimation upscales for free.
- Why it matters: pbuffer readback is the dominant per-frame cost on Apple Silicon; ~4x less data per frame. This is the main source of your 120fps.
- Bundle re-signed ad-hoc (local use). Pristine originals: /Applications/BAR Launcher.app.orig, ~/Library/Application Support/BAR-Launcher-backup.app.
Window pinned (also protects your settings)
- XResolutionWindowed = 1280, YResolutionWindowed = 720 (was 1174x677)
- Fullscreen = 0, WindowBorderless = 0 — added; also stops the launcher from re-seeding its 1600x900 defaults
GPU load reductions (springsettings.cfg)
- MaxParticles: 20000 → 12000
- NormalMapping: 1 → 0
- LODScale: 1.0 → 0.85 (models drop detail sooner)
- FeatureDrawDistance / FeatureFadeDistance: 600000 → 250000 (faster tree/feature culling)
- MSAALevel: -1 → 0 (explicit no-AA)
Port defaults pinned explicitly
- MacPresentDirect = 1 (unified-memory present path)
- MacWorkerQos = 1 (workers prefer P-cores)
- MinDrawFPS = 10, MinSimDrawBalance = 0.25 (draw-vs-sim balance — already present, now enforced by the kit)
Port version (if relevant)
No response
Your feedback
Hi all!
I have a MacBook Pro M1 (16gb RAM, late 2020) and when I first installed BAR it ran 1080p fullscreen at ~20fps, but I noticed when I resized the window I got like 50-60fps (around 720p, windowed). So then I forked the project and tried some configurations tweaks with deepseek-pro-v4 and now I'm running 720p fullscreen at 100fps in battles 1v1.
So maybe it would be possible to create kinda of a "performance mode" using these configurations tweaks, basically disabling retina mode, which was a configuration I didn't find in Graphics settings. Here's what was changed:
Port version (if relevant)
No response