The promotional price for updating to Rhino 8 just ended. I know Rhino since Rhino 5. This release brings some interesting features, for me the most interesting one is probably the Rhino tab in Grasshopper. However, Rhino 8.5 is still very unstable and buggy. I can’t get over the impression that it was released too early. What are your opinions?
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Hi Ajota, Please run systemInfo in the Rhino command line and post your results.
If there is something you can repeat or a particular feature let us know the details.Thanks
Hi Japhy,
My statement is based not on my problems only, but I follow the discourse forum and the problems that other users have. I don’t want to report anything specific at the moment but If I wanted, I could reproduce probably dozens of issues that are already reported by others.
I wrote this post to share that I’m slightly dissatisfied that there are so many things not working yet and I don’t know what beta means anymore.
You are indeed helpful but I don’t know if so much of your help should be even needed in that area.
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i am feeling super furious despite good price for rhino. i dont care how much it costs when it does not work properly! i would pay double or triple price for rhino if only it worked as expected. i am ok with little obsolescence as long as it is lightweight fast reliable but future looks like rhino will never get on par with features while introducing so many bugs it will just sink under its own weight. i would really love to see any long term vision or roadmap from mc neel what users might expect.
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Maybe there is a need for more staff working on the non-critical/non-expert things. There are some major features and improvements, some bugs, and some quality-of-life “papercut” problems. I feel like many quality-of-life problems are burred down by the new serious bugs, and at times when the fire is extinguished, the obvious choice is to develop major features rather than solve PITA problems. So we live with all those inconveniences for far too long.
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exactly it is first zone in management matrix. it seems 2. quadrant is non existent (roadmap, vision).
I cannot put my finger on it, but it seems there is something very fundamental that is happening either with the UI, or OpenGL, or something like that. It seems that there are reasonable numbers of people reporting almost non-descript freezes, and no matter how much SystemInfo we post, I’m not sure it is getting fixed, or anyone even knows what the issue is.
That said, the improvement in Cycles from release to 8.5 is night and day so far.
In addition, I’m not always sure it is Rhino either. For example, bella was being a bit of a nightmare when used with Rhino 8 (and only Rhino 8) until Jeremy and the team released a new IPR for Rhino very recently, and it’s back to being excellent as usual. I note I was experiencing problems with a renderer on software where most renderers weren’t even close to a Rhino 8 trial/beta version.
But I get the same issues, where sometimes you will do something extreme, like click an object, or change a layer, or click a material, and Rhino is just off hammering the CPU for no apparent reason. It can get infuriating when you wonder why Rhino has helped itself to 200 Watts of power for 5 minutes to select a curve.
I jokingly said that the current version should be Rhino 8.(not responding).
I still think there is something, maybe even a linked something for nearly all of us which is running away as a process; but I can’t even begin to guess what.
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I have been working with Rhino since Rhino 4 and I agree this release feels very much like a WIP. Even the very early versions of the Rhino for Mac WIP’s were working better.
Maybe it’s a driver issue, but I have updated every driver I could and still everything feels so sluggish. It’s like drawing in a heavy viscous substance.
In my opinion and tested on my PC, Rhino 8 in its current state is not suitable for professional use.
Maybe it’s my hardware that is too old; I am working on a PC with a Ryzen 9 3900X, RTX 2700 8GB and 32GB RAM. In that case the minimum specs should be updated.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working in Rhino, because it’s so responsive, clean and gives a lot of control. But in it’s current state I can’t work with it. I hope McNeel can solve the problems, meanwhile I will have to revert.
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@AlanMattano put it perfectly yesterday - Rhino 8 is like a rocket! It’s fast! And…likes to explode.
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Hi @sgreenawalt, you must be lucky or have more luck with your hardware. I can bring R8 (Windows) to it’s knees using a single PBR material with a 2 tiny bump maps attached to it. Fun part is that this happens on a System which is lightning fast using R7.
I’ve seen your other thread with the decals, may i ask which display card do you use ?
thanks
c.
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I’ve got a 4090
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Actually, there are major problems with the speed of Layers Panel and even rotating the shaded view. For me Rhino 8 not only explodes more frequently, but it’s also slower / less responsive.
Good to know Rhino 8 works well on a RTX 4900. So in my case on a RTX 2700 it’s very slow.
@Japhy On what range of GPU’s has Rhino 8 been tested at McNeel? Where is the threshold when it still runs smoothly? Is it a matter of optimalisation that has still to be done or is it a requirement to run Rhino 8 on the latest generation of GPU’s?
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Same here, can’t wait to start using it.
Same feeling.
I’m still in the phase: “It is too buggy for me to test/use for enough time to discover bugs”… every time I use it I find some bugs that kills any motivation to stay on 8.
Maybe I’m unlucky and my normal workflow coincidentally go through many of current bugs, I don’t know…
… I would buy Rhino 7 again if I could have Rhino 8 features in 7. (shrinkwrap + Rhino tab in GH)… but it would mean having also any other office with Rhino 7 having the same setup… it’s not going to happen.
I’m going to be even more hated by devs for this: 
Most of the bugs were like:
You buy a car at the car dealer. Looks good. You buy it.
After the literal first curve the car tilt to one side! You dismount and find a wheel is missing!
You go back to the dealer and say:
“Hey one wheel is missing!”
and the dealer goes:
“Oh you wanted four of those? Thanks for the feedback, I’m opening a youtrack ticket for this.”
…wtf???
It often feels like devs are… developing Rhino, sure… but not using it!
For months before and after 8 release many bugs or UI defects should have not need a track/ticket at all: just use Rhino for some minute and see!
All said, since about a month the UI is finally “out of beta”.
I still miss some key feature but things are aligning.
Too early?
Without doubt.
But Rhino licence is not a subscription type. Pay it today, pay it next year… doesn’t change much.
The only problem now is: how many and which bug fixes or long asked features are pushed to 9?
I’m using 7. I bought 8. Will I use 8 sometime before we will start talking about 9?
Who I am kidding… It makes no difference! I will buy Rhino 9 as soon as it is out!
I love Rhino!
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yeah those tickets are ridiculous. vector print does not include hatches. like is it a bug at all? if someone was serious about developing something this would be developed and tested prior to release. bug is like in some special case something is off. your comparison to missing wheel is spot on. i think problem is attitude. they know their product is defective and try to compensate it with low price to make us not demand too much. if they were confident about their product rhinos price could go up. it feels like everything was not even intended to work properly just to boast we have this even though we dont. more marketing reason to remain competitive with features despite those are underdeveloped at best.
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I spend way too much energy on getting to know what are the exceptions for tools that I want to use. From the developer’s point of view, it might make sense that some things do not print or I can’t properly use a clipping plane with blocks, but for the user, it doesn’t make much sense. The worst is when you are on step 7 out of 10 in making something but you struck upon this kind of limitation (it will just not print out or will not be cut properly 
)
I’ve also found myself wasting a lot of time playing with Rhino just to reassure myself that something will work.
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exactly i am double checking every dimension when i create something and it is tiresome.
A similar thread, totally justifiable, ended up here:
Maybe most of these bugs were actually reported and logged. Sometimes I feel like I’m p***ing in the wind with my minor bug reports, likes, complaints, etc. They either get attention - cool, appreciated, glad to be of use, hope it helps the software improve - or I guess they go nowhere. But when you have the time or energy for it, it’s probably worth posting about it. Otherwise it seems unlikely to get attention, even if you think it should have been noticed internally long before you ever experienced it.
And then:
Somehow this is also true. Rhino is essential for me - couldn’t imagine my work without it. Hate to see it lose my trust. Still bought the ultra-cheap upgrade to R8, still can’t believe a price so low.
I’m so glad to see that other people are have the same problems. it not something I’m doing.
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With Rhino still on a nearly decade old version of OpenGL, the GPU shouldn’t really matter for viewport navigation. The major GPU dependent behaviour is in Cycles rendering, but these are static frames anyway.
I certainly think it should be smooth on an old card. I temporarily had it going on my laptop with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 970M, until I went back to desktop.
In addition, Rhino 8 was running reasonably well (after a few iterations, with no rendering) on even my Intel Arc GPU, which was a miracle.
I see no reason why anyone on a 10-Series generation nvidia shouldn’t be able to run Rhino reasonably well, within limits. Certainly not with lockups. Most of the time, Rhino will use more power in the VRAM, and the GPU will just sit doing barely anything in at least shaded and rendered views.
An RTX 2070 should have no particular problems unless you are overloading the 8 GB VRAM.