GPU Tessellation finally works in Parallels 20

Just an information for Rhino users on M1+ Macs using Parallels:

You can now enable GPU Tessellation, and based on my initial tests, it works flawlessly - no more disappearing objects.
The performance difference is huge!

(Tested with Parallels 20, Rhino 8, M1 Max)

which Windows version are you running there? what is the general experience? anything you can say about a late intel and a Apple Silicon difference running Paralells?

windows 11 - in general its workable, but nowhere near the native mac version… still much better now.
Also depends on what you are doing - having less then 1.000 heavy objects is going to benefit a lot more from tesselation than having 10.000 simple boxes / surfaces (where the difference is negligible)

reminder- despite this if you are using parallels you are in unsupported territory-

image

and i would be happy to use the mac version once mcneel decides to have a usable command line + command history, or even better, a unified UI across platforms, so i can actually teach windows users while running the mac version…

…like, you know, blender, photoshop, unity, houdini, davinci resolve and pretty much any other DCC Software that is relevant…

the v8 ui is very much unified with the windows version with very few exceptions.

you can bring up the command history with the f2 key (same as windows)

what other issues are you seeing?

Let’s get them documented so we can fix them-

Thanks for getting back on this.
It is always the same that I (and others) have pointed out here over and over:

  • the command line placement and style are a desaster - i am sure you are aware, and this were time and framework constraints, nonetheless…
  • Command History still does not full scroll down 100% of the time. I made reports here, it improved, but still not fully fixed.
  • The command line font and size is fixed to whatever smallest default font there was in the macOS UI. And it looks like one of these 10 year old defaults - e.g. used in the system information app and similar old stuff… Not helpful for teaching.
  • UI color customization - only light and dark, and even this is hardcoded to the system… Why? its 2024…
  • Middle Mouse Button ‘recent commands’ popup is not there on mac - again i assume framework limitations, but please - find a way.

All in all - it is from an resources standpoint an understandable move to rely on the UI frameworks that come with the systems. And the new ETO Framework does what it can, but ultimately it is something none of the mentioned DCC Apps use, and that for good reasons - it seems limiting and having feature parity is close to impossible.

I can only hope that one day McNeel finds the time, resources and will to ditch the 90ies look and adapts a modern interface framework, while keeping the command bar as a first class citizen - because that is the core of the software.
Everything else is expendable… And the macOS version already fails at this first step - the command bar is an afterthought on macOS.

Well, not…

There is no command line in Mac Rhino. This makes a whole series of cascading differences for example when choosing command line options.

The way Mac Rhino Save, SaveAs, etc. work is completely incomprehensible to me. I spent a half hour with a student today trying to figure out why his initial file disappeared after a save and SaveAs.

While it is closer than before, it’s still a real mess to try to teach Rhino in a mixed Mac/PC environment.

to be clear there is a command line in the mac, and always has had one but it’s true it’s different than the pc. The options are button based (or you can type the first letter of the button name) But the functionality is the same despite the form factor being different.

there is a command history panel that can be docked.

I’m 100% with you on the mac saving thing, it ,makes me mental but that is tied directly to the mac os, and we are held hostage by how apple has designed that system.

If you have specific things you want changed, please make a new thread for each and lets get them all documented.

And the fact that it takes over 20+% of screen estate on the left side no matter what. No way to work fullscreen… And the popover version is not usable.

I give you a simple example:

  • draw a box
  • measure a side with distance. a popover shows in the bottom left.
  • if you rotate the view (with RMB) by even one pixel, the popover is gone again.

Its small things like that where I must assume, whoever programs the mac version is not actually using it. It would be something that is catched on day one…

And the versioning is one of the most insane things i have seen here… luckily it can be disabled.
This was designed for small word documents, not 2 Gb CAD Files that are then hidden somewhere on the macOS system level
…And have high data divergence due to the nature of 3dm files to not separate transform matrices from the geometry data: move a building by 1mm, it is all new data…

@Helvetosaur - you can disable versioning with: - TestToggleMacAutosaveVersions -

The pop over UI will go away if you run reset. This was changed in an earlier service release.

So typical example today in class.

We have a couple dozen spheres and we want to create a slightly smaller sphere inside each one. You select the spheres, run OffsetSrf, see the arrows pointing outward. We need to have them pointing inward for all the spheres. In Windows Rhino all the options are visible on the command line across the top of the screen. The last (rightmost) of those options is FlipAll.

In the Mac version, where the command options are squeezed into the left sidebar, this option is not immediately visible. You have to scroll down to get to it. If you don’t know that this option is supposed to exist, you will not find it.

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I’m sorry to say, but I sometimes have the exact same feeling…

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i dont want it to go away - quite the opposite!

Imagine you spend 20 seconds running the distance command, finding the two relvant points in a huge 3d model, and once the command is finished, you get the pop-over.

So far so good - but god forbid you make one more micro-orbit move with RMB, then its gone again, and you can go look for it in that history popup in the lower left… (with a font size from 2005)

I didn’t phrase my reply correctly. If you reset, you will have a docked command history area that does not disappear

completely understood and should be fixable.

I’ll write it up-

RH-84437 mac menus covered by other containers is confusing

RH-84437 is fixed in Rhino 8 Service Release 15

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