Hi Guys, I think I found the fix for the bad Performance while Panning in Viewport!
Try using a Mouse instead of trackpad, that worked for me 
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To add some additional technical info to my above comment ^ Paul said
Rhino for Mac uses ETO forms and widgets, whereas the OctaneRender for Rhino plugin requires WinForms/WPF, which allows for the more complex UI behaviors needed for Octane.
That doesn’t sound like something that would be macOS compatible.
We can’t support WPF on Mac. We can try to support Octane development if they want to use Eto which is the library more and more of Rhino is built on (including GH2).
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Are there technical limitations to ETO forms (Paul’s comment “allows for more complex UI”) or is it just a different development process that he is maybe not familiar with?
It’s probably a matter of both. Eto is a library that we write so there aren’t a whole lot of resources or books on the subject compared to WPF which Microsoft produces. When new features are needed in Eto, we figure out what needs to be done and add them the library.
Eto technically is just a layer on top of WPF on Windows. When running on Mac, Eto is a layer on top of Mac’s user interface library (cocoa).
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have you taken into consideration using Vulkan (with its implementation for MacOS)? This way Windows users would benefit as well - you’d get 2 birds with one stone 
. Heck, I’d say even 3 as you’d be futureproofing when it comes to graphics API at the same time.
I did consider this and decided not to go that route as Vulkan is not the preferred graphics API on either Windows or Mac. If we are going to write a new display engine for Windows, it would be Direct3d
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Same issue for me. I just purchase a brand new MacBook Pro (M1 Max / 64gb) and installed the latest version of Rhino 7 (recommended for M1 Macs). The model that runs smoothly on my other PC and 2015 MBP is terribly slow on this new Mac. Its pretty much unusable when paying and rotating around the model in shaded mode.
Any hints about improving model performance? Or when a service release might start to solve this issue?
thanks!!
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I downloaded the rhino 8 WIP to see if the same model was usable but it had the same issues. Couldn’t even pan around in wireframe mode. But it also looks like the latest WIP hasn’t switched to Metal yet which might solve this problem.
Regardless, waiting for Rhino 8 isn’t a viable option. I hope this is something that will be fixed with an update to Rhino 7. Until then the functionality of rhino on M1 / M1 Pro/Max Macs is severely limited. Maybe it’s also an issue with Monterey — do users on M1 macs running Big Sur have the same issues?
Halp 
A post was split to a new topic: Export issue on macOS Monterey
does testmetal not work?
Technically yes but it doesn’t display anything properly - it adds some extra geometries to certain objects. It seems like it’s still under development based on this thread. That said, I was able to pan around without the crazy lags. But when will this actually be available / released as part of Rhino 8? I assume not for a while.
Can you share your model which adds extra geometries when running on Metal? I’m not aware of this bug and would like to fix it.
Sure - can I send it to you via email? I can’t share it here.
Yes, my email address is steve@mcneel.com
I just tried the “TestMetal” command in Rhino8 WIP and it worked!!
The speed of viewing the model looks great and totally enables me to work on my models. This was a HUGE help and I’m really looking forward to more development on this. Its also great to read around the forum and see that Metal is in the works and Mac support appears to be a continued effort on the Rhino platform… huge relief as our office runs on Mac’s equipped with Rhino.
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oh, pity - I just though that would save you the hassle of developing for 2 different APIs and having 2 codebases.
Have my hopes for Direct3d then - I think we would benefit from more modern API (compared to OpenGL).
yes I just tried it on a large model which pretty much impossible to work on before but with “testmetal” activated its super smooth… not all the rendering modes work but its not bad
see here:
https://vimeo.com/647456848
For reference, @vonn 's display issues with TestMetal were related to blocks and improperly handling of the block transforms. This will be fixed in the next Rhino 8 WIP (usually shipped every Tuesday).