Apple MacBook notch flaw makes many games render blurry, but there's a workaround

A significant number of games on MacBooks with a display notch are rendering blurry due to a resolution issue thanks to a two-year-old bug that Apple already knows about. The problem occurs because games have the wrong output resolution for the available screen area if they are using the full-screen AppKit APIs.

Apple is aware of the issue because the bug report, FB13375033, was submitted to the iPhone maker back in September 2023, and it remains open. The issue doesn’t affect all games, notably Cyberpunk: 2077 and World of Warcraft, but other games default to the wrong resolution, including No Man’s Sky, Riven, and Stray. The issue was refocused on by Colin Cornaby who builds software on Mac. He said that while game developers can try to address the issue themselves, it’s ultimately up to Apple to provide a proper fix.

The first thing to explain about MacBooks with a notch is that they’re divided into three sections. You have the full bounds of the display which includes the entire display area, including the menu and areas around the notch. Next is the safe area of the display which is the area of the display directly below the notch. Finally, the full screen area extends from under the menu bar, while the safe area extends from below the notch.

There is a function called CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes which returns a single list of resolutions for developers to access so that their game can be set to the correct resolution, unfortunately, it mixes those of the full display and those for the usable full screen area with some games defaulting to the incorrect full display resolution resulting in squashed and blurry images because it includes the notch area where games cannot draw.

Thankfully, users can run the games in 16:10 ratio to address the issue temporarily. As mentioned, No Man’s Sky, Riven, and Stray all default to the wrong resolution, another game that does this is Shadow of the Tomb Raider. One game that has a unique fix to the problem is Control Ultimate Edition, which avoids the problem by providing its own hardcoded list of resolutions, but lacks a native one. Cyberpunk 2077 is able to default to the correct 16:10 resolution, and World of Warcraft, which uses a legacy full-screen API, that allows it to draw into the notched area, works correctly too. It’s not clear how the Cyberpunk 2077 developers get the resolution correctly.

Cornaby believes that Apple should be the one to fix the issue, rather than developers patching their games to address the problem. He recommends that Apple updates its Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to provide guidance on the notch, and update its Game Porting Toolkit samples to include best practices. He also says that the CGDisplayMode API should be updated to allow developers to filter the resolution list for full-screen apps. He also says that Apple could build a new, gaming-centric API to handle the issue.

Given that the issue has been known for two years, hopefully Apple can update its software so that users get a better gaming experience out of the box.

Source: Random Thoughts