Author Topic: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?  (Read 3499 times)

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Offline jg18

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Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
I noticed that the new MacBooks including the Pro versions all have some form of Intel integrated graphics, except for the most expensive Pro which includes an AMD card.

I'm curious which of these models are actually even capable of running FSO with an acceptable frame rate, especially the more resource-intensive versions like the MediaVPs and TCs like Diaspora, or more demanding features like deferred lighting and shadows?


MacBook:
Intel HD Graphics 5300
2304 by 1440 pixels

MacBook Air 11-inch:
Intel HD Graphics 6000
1366 by 768 pixels

MacBook Air 13-inch:
Intel HD Graphics 6000
1440 by 900 pixels

MacBook Pro 13-inch non-Retina display:
Intel HD Graphics 4000
1280 by 800 pixels

MacBook Pro 13-inch Retina display:
Intel Iris Graphics 6100
2560 by 1600 pixels

MacBook Pro 15-inch Retina display:
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
or
Intel Iris Pro Graphics and AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB of GDDR5 memory
2880 by 1800 pixels


I'm guessing the Retina versions would need the resolution turned down to non_retina levels (that is, 1280x900 and 1440x900) to be potentially playable.


Thanks.

EDIT: Correction.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2015, 02:31:11 am by jg18 »

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
I don't know but hi, it's always good to hear from you!

 

Offline jg18

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Re: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
Thanks, Battuta. I've actually been pretty active on the SCP internal board. I'm working with chief1983 on completing SquadWar integration, as well as writing up documentation for the netcode.

Also although I'm no graphics coder, my Internet research suggests the following answers to my question:

15" retina MBP with AMD card: Yes
15" retina MBP with Intel Iris Pro GPU only: Most likely

13" retina MBP with Intel Iris non-Pro: Maybe, hard to say

The rest: Probably not

 

Offline niffiwan

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Re: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
This isn't directly related to OSX & graphics performance, but there's been some reports that the latest versions of OSX can't run FSO at all, and probably won't be able to until SDL2 (antipodes) gets merged. Not sure if that affects your decision or not...
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Offline chief1983

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Re: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
Yeah, although I still am not having issues during any testing I've done on my Intel Iris based Macbook Pro.  It's running 10.10, we'll be upgading to 10.11 soon so we'll see how that goes.
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Offline Echelon9

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Re: Are the new MacBooks able to run FSO?
The engine should scale down well enough, to handle even the bottom end Macbook Air with features turned off. For reference, I did most of my Diaspora development on a Macbook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) ...

A couple of (temporary) things to keep in mind:
  • niffiwan is correct that you will need to use an antipodes branch until the SDL2 middleware gets merged into master, and then into a release.
  • We can do more to support the Intel integrated GPUs. They have an unfairly held view of being non-performant, whereas recent generations are fine for our purposes. I'm doing work in this area on Linux with the Mesa open source driver for Intel. This may also deliver benefits for Intel-based Apples as well.