Apple Metal

Rhino Rhino for Mac
21

It’s been just as much work hacking our way around OpenGL display driver issues on Mac. If we can improve stability and make sure the pixels get colored correctly on all Macs, that would be a huge step forward.

4 Likes
22

I’m sure you can do this :+1:

1 Like
23

Since OpenGL was preferred for being cross platform and Mac is abandoning it, does that mean DirectX could be on the roadmap for future development on Windows? I mean, with all the cards out there with bad OpenGL support, could it be worth it? I have no idea if Intel chips and AMD supports DirectX better than OpenGL though, but I know they run games and other cads pretty well, so maybe worth considering.

1 Like
24

It’s worth considering, but we’re not planning to do this during the metal display work. Many existing commercial plug-ins directly use OpenGL and they would not work with a Direct3D based engine without significant effort on the plug-in developers part. To me that means we would still need to support OpenGL on Windows.

Direct3D would probably help with the lower end cards and may even provide for improved performance on some GPUs, but it is a big project.

25

Thanks, that makes sense.

I hope you don’t spend too time on making Metal “look” like OpenGL then, and maybe it could be beneficial to start messing with DirectX as you work on Metal to see if they have something they could share down the road. I can only imagine how big a project handling multiple API’s could be while trying to keep things stable on multiple configurations… :exploding_head: Good luck! And shout out when you need stuff tested and abused.

26

as things are changing by quite a bite more than before, this streamlined uncertainty is maybe beneficial for both platforms. where we are going we might not need any … :wink:

27

I am not a programmer, I do not understand code and informatics.

But since Rhino 6 and 7 have been disappointing in display speed, we should switch to a long term solution. Apple is not very democratic, if they want developers to go with metal, we should go with that.

If Rhino 8 for mac is fast and works speedy on most macs this opens the door for developers to develop plugins for professional use (such as VisualArq and so on).

If I would be responsible for the development of Rhino mac 8 I would write speed and simplicity on top of the bucket list.

2 Likes
28

Hi everyone,

We’re looking into optimizing wire drawing right now and we welcome any and all models which you are having wire drawing performance problems with. Just put your model into Wireframe mode and rotate/pan/zoom the view. If it’s slow, please link it here or send it privately though this link: Rhino - Upload to Support.

We will use the models as benchmarks to see how we’re doing with the optimization.

Thanks!
-David

1 Like
29

Hi David
Does this includes Mesh Wires?

thanks
Akash

30

Hi,
does it also apply to curves / hatches and complex 2D geometry?

31

Yes

Yes

——
If you have a model that is slow in wireframe, David would like to test it.

32

Superb
how can we share confidential files?

33

David provided a link for sending confidential files.

34

Damn, I should first scroll up before I ask stupid question :slight_smile:

1 Like
35

I noticed that selection dialog menu popup is noticeably slow in rhino for Mac as well. I’m wondering if switching to metal will eventually solve this issue? (To clarify selection menu popup occurs when selecting overlapping objects, curves, hatches, etc.)

36

I presume by "noticeably slow: you mean the time it takes between left-click mouse-down on two overlapping objects to display the selection menu? Is that correct?

There’s no guarantee Metal will improve this. It’s possible.

1 Like
37

Yes. you got it!

38

I appreciate this may be obvious, but just checking that this is in reference to the new Metal display engine? Are you after models that are slow in V7 or slow in the current Metal WIP engine? If the latter, is it available publicly to test?

Edit: I’ve found the v8 WIP. I had been looking in the Serengeti → Mac forum where there seems to be no mention of it; had to look in the main one.

Edit 2: I’ve just opened a large file with v8 WIP and normal display was showing weird artefacts. Tried turning on metal and it crashed. Do you want the file?

39

Absolutely. You shouldn’t need to even ask the question. If you have a file that you can share that you think could be improved for display purposes, please share.

40

are there any minimum system requirements for metal? would lets say some old geforce NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB work?