Cloud gaming maybe? For example, https://shadow.tech/usen/

Interesting! I had forgotten this was possible. Thanks for the suggestion

I think you should be okay, the 16 inch is quite beefy. You'll have to install Windows in Boot Camp though.

Did the same recently, installed Windows 10 on an external USB-C disk.

Documented it here, if it helps anyway: https://gist.github.com/ArjanAssink/09e46937a8e355044c87ce59...

The 5300M is a low-end GPU though and it will struggle on anything close to the native screen resolution. Even the top-end configuration will have issues running this game at native resolution to achieve sharp UI and visuals.

Yeah, due to the way I was buying the laptop (it was a replacement for my 2017 which failed three times, which they let me upgrade) the 5500m would have been quite an expensive upgrade, can’t remember specifics but it was something to do with equivalent spec for my old machine - I was just relieved they were replacing it so didn’t argue - but I did also figure that the difference between the two wasn’t likely to be enough to make a really significant difference (between unplayable and playable for example) if I did ever fancy trying the odd game.

I for sure didn't imply it would run smoothly on 1920p, that's a high bar for a MacBook.

Using lower res is not the end of the world imho, I do it on iMac all the time.

I had pretty poor experience running at lower resolutions on my MacBook - macOS exposes a very strange set of resolutions which are either too small (causing very obvious pixelation and poorly readable text) or too big (causing unplayable performance even in strategy games).

Yeah, I play most games in Windows via Boot Camp. MS Flight Simulator which the op asked about is not available for macOS anyway.

It might not look that stunning, but it should run. I've been gaming on a couple-generations-old MacBook a lot recently and it works surprisingly well if you're willing to drop the settings down a bit.

The main problem with flight sim on a portable is the input method though. It's challenging to fly manually without a joystick or yoke, and proper immersion really requires a throttle too. You can get something enjoyable enough going with the mouse though.

I've had success playing competitive shooters on an AWS GPU instance with Steam Remote Play. You could give it a try.

Interesting, what are the price economics on that ?

Not too good, but affordable for occasional play or if you want to try out a game to see if it's worth investing in a gaming rig.

I use spot instances which average at around $0.6/hour (I set the maximum bid to $1, if the price rises beyond that the instance is terminated). Bandwidth ends up being more or less the same cost as the actual instance per hour if you cap it to 100Mbps which is enough for 1920x1080. If you remove the bandwidth cap (in the Steam settings, for example if you want to play in 4K or higher) the bill can go up dramatically - last month I spent over $70 and more than half of that was actually bandwidth rather than compute. I'm now exploring Oracle's cloud as they seem more competitive on the bandwidth front.

The main concern would be your network connection and latency. Unlike latency between the game client and server (where the client can and does compensate for it), we're talking about input latency here. You can get used to a certain amount of latency and predict it as long as it remains consistent, though I'd say for multiplayer shooters a few milliseconds is the maximum before it becomes unplayable. For single-player games I'd say you can get away with 20ms or so.

This isn't a direct answer to your question, but xCloud might be the solution for you.