The world is still wondering what Apple proposes with the addition of the Touch Bar to its series of MacBook Pro laptops. Some see it as a preview of what the future of MacBooks with touch screens will be, while others question its presence and usefulness. However, what brings us here is the possibility of running Doom on the Touch Bar. Basically it looks like a secondary display, and its resolution of 2,170 by 60 pixels presents a whole new challenge.
Printers, calculators, ATMs… in essence, anything with an integrated screen and enough resources. A Tumblr portal calls the process of running Doom on strange platforms the most violent replacement for Hello World, and we completely agree. Now, it's the turn of the latest MacBook Pro… or to be precise, the latest MacBook Pro that includes the controversial Touch Bar. While Cupertino processes the feedback related to the Touch Bar from those who have used MacBook Pros for years (Spoiler: It's not pretty), a Facebook engineer named Adam Bell, who specializes in iOS, transformed the accessory into a secondary display with the goal of running Doom.
It is ridiculous, horrible, and wonderful. The space marine annihilating demons in all the glory that a 2,170 by 60 pixel panel can deliver. Unfortunately we don't have the technical details that gave rise to this hack, but more than one portal indicated that the Touch Bar shares several elements with the Apple Watch, so we imagine the trick comes from that route. The framerate is much lower than we thought at first, as is the refresh rate, although it moves with enough speed to maintain synchronization with the audio, the last hope for those who might try to play and finish Doom on the Touch Bar.
Being realistic, I don't think anyone will play Doom this way, however, something very interesting that Bell did was render the HUD instead of the full screen. The final result is very good, and maybe in the future we'll see a version of Doom with its content on the main panel and the HUD on the Touch Bar.
