Rhino 6 Mac - BETA - rendered mode - 3D spacemouse events

Serengeti (Rhino 8 BETA) Mac
1

Hi - I am testing Rhino Mac V6 BETA

My MacMini is late 2014, 2.8 Ghz, 16 GB ram. Intel Iris 1536 MB GPU
I have two 27" Thunderbolt displays, and a 3D connexion Spacemouse.

I tend to multitask a lot, with Rhino open - Safari, Mail, Calender etc. I sit here all day, sometimes, so… go figure :slight_smile:

Using the Spacemouse in V5.5.3 is running really smooth, and i am very happy with its Renderer viewport mode. I have not much use for super-realistic rendering, I mostly just take some representative screenshots of my model to present to my clients in an email.

Spacemouse handling in V6 BETA is very cumbersome, though, when viewing in Rendered viewport.
(Also scrolling through Materials panels is very laggy, with up to 5-15 seconds freeze between each mouseclick / scrolling.)

In Raytraced viewport things get basically impossible, with everything freezing up, and extreme lagging, and my Mac fanning up to max. We have discussed this thoroughly in a previous thread:

… so the main focus for me now is just the impending transition from V5.5 to V6: How to keep my usual workflow with the 3D spacemouse, and ALSO keeping my current MacMini.

That means in general terms, simply omitting the use of raytracing viewport, which is fine and fair with me. These wonderful features, demand obviously a more expensive Mac, and has been wished for by many proffessionals for a long time.

But still, I guess we are a huge userbase with older, or consumer figurated Macs, that has grown to LOVE Rhino for Mac soooo much !

So… how come the V6 Rendered viewport yields a significantly poorer performance, compared to V5.5 - particularly when using 3D spacemouse events?
Did you change something in the V6 Rendered Mode, that also challenges the “consumer” Mac machines mediocre GPU configuration ?

My situation is actually, that I also have a powerfull PC, that runs V6 Windows, and performs exellent in all Wievmodes. I use this PC for some advanced Photogrammetry / MindeskVR / RhinoV6 work, and I am hoping to be able to effortless switch back and forth betw my macMini late 2014 and this PC, without too much trouble, simply having a more “basic” preference-setting on my Mac.

It seems though, that one has to go through a lot of advanced settings and tweaking, without knowing exacly what it is all for, I dont know the terms and features, and have no sense or experience with Rendering parameters etc. Its a bit overwhelming to suddenly have to deal with all this on such a nerdy, comprehensive level, just to make my Mac “feel right again” - when one has never even considered Rendering something before…

We were even discussing an alternative “low-budget-Mac” default preference button, so guys like me could just get my usual “optimal” MacMini performance from V5.5 migrated into V6 in a snap - accepting the relative limitations in rendering options, which I find logic and fair, If one is “financially insisting” on using these consumer Macs with inferior Intel Iris Graphics cards and similar. :slight_smile:

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Hi Hans,

Check if turning off the Skylight in the Rendering panel at the right eases the 3D mouse delay in Rendered mode. This will match the v5 Rendered mode lighting set up and should make it faster on your GPU and monitor set up. If you want the skylight shadows we can talk more about settings to lessen their resolution.

If this help, you can also make the change in the Rendering panel and save a template file so you don’t have to turn it off in each file.

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Hey Brian

This works perfectly ! Thanks ! whew - what a relief :slight_smile:

So, here we have our “poor-mans-button” - Yes , lets talk template ! :slight_smile:

OR - Implementing something similar like RhinoCycles.UseFastDraw ?
Temporarily turning off the Skylight , immediately when 3Dmouse events is recorded ?

It happens to be the same relief, panning 3D spacemous in Raytrace-mode ! Wow, maybe you and @nathanletwory should have a brief talk about this ?

4

Right, that is the OpenGL drawing throwing a bit of sand in the food there. We’re putting our heads together here in Finland to see where we can have the best improvements, yet still have acceptable OpenGL preview drawing before Raytraced shows its own.

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Hi Hans,

Open a new document and turn off the skylight in the rendering panel. Then use the File menu to Save As Template and either write over an existing template 3dm or make a new one. You can then use this template when starting new documents.

I dug out an old 3D connexion device and found an issue which may also help if we can tune this up… https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-53335 The skylight shadows are supposed to temporarily downgrade on mouse movement and you should be able to see this rotating the view without the 3D mouse. This isn’t happening on the v6 Mac Beta and I believe this is part of the display lag you’re seeing but GPU and monitor(s) resolution as also factors.

In Preferences (cmd+,) > Advanced you can also type “Sky” in the search field to edit the skylight shadow samples for both when the view is not being rotated and is. Larger numbers mean coarser/grainier shadows. If you don’t need the skylight shadows right now for your view captures, I’d leave those settings alone though. Only the skylight shadow resolution scale will currently impact the 3D mouse since it is not dynamically switching to half res on rotate as it ought to.

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THANKS !! KUDOS !!
phew, this is such a relief to hear !! :smiley:

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Spacemouse should behave better in the latest Service Release Candidate for Rhino 6 for Mac.

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Hi Dan
I just upgraded to V6.18 - Could I please call your attention to this post? :