We are no where close to being finished with the WIP V8 development. We’re making steady progress but there is still many months of development work to do.
That’s why it’s called a Work-In-Progress
@John_Brock – “We’re making steady progress” No doubt!
Thanks to the massive efforts of the Mac Team. Cheers!
Improvements:
Just bought a Mac studio 2022, m1, 32G, Monterrey 12.3.1
The same file 668M in size I managed in my MacBook Pro 2019 keep breaking the new MacStudio every time, until I managed to configure the previews this way>
Use Open GL mode if you need PEN Display Mode
Use TestMetal for the others including SHADE (not ghost, not pen as it will crash or show mistakes)
Works in Render, Arctic, Wire very fast.
Use RENDER RHINO instead of Legacy (while inside Metal mode)
Tune up some features, disconnect GPU acceleration, or set your machine to use more Memory. It seems as the use of more memory improves the performance as WIP yet is not capable to recognize integrated GPU in ARM Architecture
I don’t know much of computers, I just made a lot of trial and error before going to the Mac store to refund the machine, fortunately inside the shop, finally I could make the trick during the demostration of the failures to the apple technicians. They didn’t know what to do as well…they tried to find an external GPU…whern Eureka! It started working very fast in Shaded and arctic…
this seems to be very interesting because all silicon CPUs and GPUs (M1 - M1pro, max and Ultra, M2) does not support external GPUs (eGPU) at all.
How did the technicians handle this?
Bit late to this party - But if you still need sample files let me know. I’ve just transitioned from a very high end intel imac (2020 10 core 3.6GHZ i9, 72Gb RAM, with Radeon Pro 5700XT 16Gb) to a brand new Mac Studio (M1 Ultra, 64Gb RAM, 48 Core GPU Version). I’m finding Rhino 7 on the M1 Ultra is considerably slower than on the older intel machine. I routinely work in rhino files >1Gb. I did try running up the latest Rhino 8 WIP (and I’m SO looking forward to the updated UI, once the bugs are ironed out…) but it wasn’t an improvement, and locked up and had to be force quit as soon as I enabled Metal.
But I have both machines on my desk right now and can do back to back testing on them if it is helpful.
(On the UI - please make the command box and tool palette separate! I use rhino completely from the command box with text commands, so the tool palette in mac rhino just uselessly takes up screen real estate.)
Ben
I think I’m going to have to abandon the M1 Ultra mac - after two days of working on a large file (1.3Gb, but this is typical and never been an issue before), it’s clear that Rhino is basically unusable. constant spinning beachballs anytime I move, framerates that are abysmal (i eg, I zoom with the scroll wheel and it is taking 5 seconds between each step screen update! ) this is in a modified Shaded display mode that has been optimised for speed (flat shading, no shadows, etc). On my older intel iMac, it is pretty smooth. not perfect - it is quite a complex model, after all), but it would be maybe 10-15FPS rather than the 0.2FPS the M1 Ultra is getting.
To day I’m disappointed is an understatment. Everything else I run on this machine is blisteringly fast. I can run Twinmotion with every setting dialled up to the absolute max, with a massively detailed scene animated water, detailed reflections, and complex lighting, and still get better than 30FPS. but Rhino running in the most basic stripped back Shaded mode is so slow it is not even usable. Even Wireframe mode is less than 1FPS
Sadly Rhino is a crucial part of my toolkit (I’m an architect) and it seems I have no other option but to go back to my old machine.
V8 will be the fix.
Rosetta seems to be a general performance failure.
I know it’s a moving target, but for the sake of future planning, when might we see RH8 for mac appear? are we talking 3 months? 6 months? a year? more?
The best guess is we hope to have the major coding done by the end of the year.
Then the process if writing tutorials and all that work begins. That process always uncovers problems that require more work.
When that settles down, we get to the point of “Release Candidates” and ramp up the number of people using it. This gets us to an initial public release.
I’d guess mid 2023 based on past development cycles.
Thanks John, that’s helpful to know.
That process is very much dependent on users willing to help us drag it over the release line.
What can we do to help? I more than happy to do what I can. We will keep the M1 Studio Ultra in our office (along with two others), and a few people will still be running rhino on them (for simpler projects). I can periodically test projects on the rhino WIP and provide feedback. If there is anything else I can do, or specific things you’d like me to test, then just let me know. Also happy to run up versions with diagnostics enabled, etc.
Hi Ben -
Just to make sure - this is when running Rhino 7?
You mentioned running the Rhino 8 WIP earlier but I’m not clear on how much testing you did on that.
When you launch the WIP, start a new file, and put it in Metal mode, does it then lock up right away?
-wim
Use V8 when and where you can, but always have backups in case there is a problem.
When you hit a snag, figure out the detailed steps to repeat it, send us those and and any files that are needed so we can repeat the problem here.
If we can repeat the problem in a debug build of Rhino, we can figure out the cause and fix or work-around the issue.
Rhino development is s Team Sport.
Hi Wim, This is using the latest version of rhino 7 on both machines. I tried Rhino 8 WIP on the M1 machine to see if it was any better, but it froze totally when I enabled the Metal pipeline. If it is of use, I can repeat the process and send you a screen capture video
Further experimentation - yesterday, when testing in the WIP on the M1, I loaded up my working model (a 1.3Gb architectural model) and it was running similarly slowly to RH7. I enabled metal, and immediately got the spinning rainbow beachball. the beachball was even stuttering, which I’ve never seen before, though my cpu usage didnt go up. I had to force quit the WIP after waiting 10 minutes or so with no change.
Just now I opened the WIP on the M1. It immediately did an update to the latest WIP. I opened a blank template. Metal was still enabled from yesterday, and it seemed ok. I then tried opening the same model from yesterday, and after loading, I got an initial view of the model in wireframe, then the spinning, stuttering beachball. I left it for 15 minutes or so to see if it would resolve, but it hasnt. RhinoWIP is using 0.2% CPU, so it appears to be stuck waiting for something, rather than being busy. Does the WIP generate log files I can send you?
I tried opening a much smaller file, around 50Mb. This loaded up ok. switching between metal and the old pipeline, metal seems faster. it doesnt display pointclouds though.
I tried another smallish file, 75Mb. i switched back and forth between metal and legacy, and metal is much faster. legacy mode switched itself back to a reduced wireframe view after a few seconds. metal stayed smooth in the shaded mode. the first time I switched from wireframe to shaded, there was a bunch of screen corruption (see attached image), but this cleared as soon as I moved.
i switched between various view modes, which seemed fine, until i switched to Raytraced while metal was enabled. rhino immediately crashed completely. (I submitted the crash report). I had video screen capture running while doing this, and can send you the video file if it is helpful.
I also tried a 200Mb file, which loaded up fine. again, metal was much faster but had a strange video artefact happen - I had a bunch of closely spaced parallel elements. these rendered fine from some angles, but from others there seemed to be some rendering issues/corruption ocurring. legacy mode did not show this behaviour. again, I have a screen capture of this behaviour, and can supply you with the model file if it helps.
In this pair of images, the difference is clear:
In this pair, from a different viewpoint, metal is fine:
last view in metal, where it is particularly clear:
I will try with various other files, working my way up from simple to very complex, and report back what i find. To clarify, all of this testing is being done on the M1 Ultra, running Monterey.
The later Intel-based macs weren’t as good as the older models (e.g.: “flexgate”), so the suggestion to get around Rhino 7’s poor functionality with the silicon chip macs by buying a newer Intel version isn’t a good one for non-Rhino-orientated reasons.
Hey John, how do you upgrade?
Use the Buy page on the Rhino Web site.