my black mac has a lowly intel GMA 950 w/ 64MB video ram. no hackies, plain lion (10.7.2) on intel core 2 duo + 4gb main memory (although it can only access 3gb, don't ask me why, ask apple and/or intel). :(

Hi Luis,

> my black mac has a lowly intel GMA 950 w/ 64MB video ram.

I see - so that's the difference. That Intel GMA 950 chipset is much older than the Intel 3000 series.

On Windows, MoI can actually run on a GMA950, but on the Mac the display system that it uses needs to have certain OpenGL features available, and most likely the GMA950 just does not have the particular OpenGL function that is needed.

I'm sorry but I'm not too optimistic about making it work.

It looks like the MacBook line switched away from using the Intel GMA 950 back in 2007, so as far as I can tell I can't actually buy a new machine from Apple that has that graphics chipset in it anymore.

Right now to use MoI on that machine would involve using Boot Camp to boot to Windows, then MoI would run there.

On top of all that, the GMA950 is basically at the extreme far low end of things as far as 3D graphics computing horsepower goes. It's just not a very good system to use for 3D graphics oriented programs.

- Michael

I'm sure it's between OSX and the way they enable OpenGL, since Moi ran just fine on the same machine with Vista + W7.

I also tried it with Linux Mint + wineconfig a while back and was able to get the viewports going just fine at one point, but the rest of the ui would just not work properly...probably cause the wine 1.3 libs were still under heavy development (i think they were on alpha at that point)...

since then i reloaded the mac with lion and haven't looked back...

Hi Michael,

thanks for your efforts on the Intel graphics, but actually there is probably a little misunderstanding. There are quite a few chips with a 3000 in the name. Here is a short chronological list (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_X3100 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_Graphics ):

Graphic chips on motherboard:
Intel GMA 950 (MacBook 2006 - mid 2007) Luis's MacBook
Intel GMA 3000
Intel GMA X3000
Intel GMA X3100 (MacBook late 2007 - late 2008) My MacBook
Intel GMA X3500

Graphic chips on CPU chip (Sandybridge):
Intel HD Graphics 2000
Intel HD Graphics 3000 (MacBook Pro 13") Your MacBook Pro

Hope that helps a bit...
Chyman

I'm very excited to see MoI coming out for Mac OS X (even if it's running under X11). I'd truly love to see MoI on the iPad ;-)

I've got a v1 license (which I still use via VMWare Fusion), so my question is if I pay for an upgrade to v2 to get access to v3 beta will I then need to pay for another upgrade to get to v3 when it is released?

Hi Chyman, yup I was just figuring that out, that the "GMA" 3000 or x3000 is a different one than Intel HD 3000.

So far I know:

Does not work:
Intel GMA 950 chipset

Does work:
Intel HD Graphics 3000
All nVidia and ATI graphics seem to be working fine.


So far I do not know about the GMA 3000/x3000 ones.

Those are actually quite a bit newer than the GMA 950 though - the GMA 950 is particularly old. The 950 dates back to around 2005 and even right at that time that it was introduced it was at the extreme low end of the performance pile even then.


If anyone is running the current OSX beta with one of the GMA 3000 or x3000 Intel chipsets, please post how it is working for you.

And Chyman, you will be able to test it in just a few more weeks here when I release the public test version.


The GMA x3000/x3100 is a pretty substantial step up from the ones before that, so I have a pretty good expectation that it should work. According to the chart here the x3000/x3100 support OpenGL 2.0 which I think should be sufficient:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#Graphics_Media_Accelerator

I think that the cutoff point is actually probably OpenGL 1.5 level hardware - I think the current build needs support for "Vertex Buffer Objects" (VBO) - the GMA 950 only supports OpenGL 1.4 and that's missing VBOs.

I will continue to look a bit more though, I think that Wine actually has a fallback path for "no VBO" support but it appears to be buggy.


- Michael

Hi podperson,

> I'm very excited to see MoI coming out for Mac OS X
> (even if it's running under X11).

Don't worry - I'll be tweaking it some more with a few more native access points like with a native file dialog. By the time it's finished I think the main thing you'll have to live with is just an "X" in the title, hopefully that by itself is not enough to cause problems.


> I'd truly love to see MoI on the iPad ;-)

Unfortunately that's a very much different thing - the iPad uses a completely different kind of CPU than regular Macs, and so the porting method that I'm currently using is not possible to use for an iPad. Doing an iPad version would require such an extensive rewrite that I don't think that it realistically has much chance of happening anytime soon.


> I've got a v1 license (which I still use via VMWare Fusion), so my
> question is if I pay for an upgrade to v2 to get access to v3 beta
> will I then need to pay for another upgrade to get to v3 when it
> is released?

You will have to pay for a v3 upgrade if you want to use v3 when it is finished - that will be something like a year from now.

However, if you upgrade to v2 now you will not have to pay anything to get the v2.5 release which will be an OSX-specific release that I'll be putting out much sooner than v3, targeting something like the beginning of next year.

The v2.5 OSX release will be available to current v2 owners to download and use their same v2 license with without any extra purchase. It will also be a version that brand new customers who were waiting for an OSX version will be able to purchase instead of waiting all the way until v3 is released which is what I was originally going to do.

- Michael

Ok - I'm getting a little more zeroed in on the graphics chipset issue.

It looks like the thing that is required is OpenGL Frame Buffer Objects (FBO) which were introduced with OpenGL 3.0 .

It looks like this means that the minimum required at the moment is:

Radeon: HD series
GeForce: GeForce 8 or higher
Intel: Intel HD Graphics 2000 or 3000 (not any GMA version it looks like).


There is a fallback path which is supposed to allow things to work if FBO is not available, but it appears to be buggy for the case of multiple swapchains being used. I'll be digging into that to see if I can solve it.

- Michael

I'm noticing a strange behaviour which could probably be a bug.

MoI suddenly doesn't respond until I hit the esc key and then I'm stuck in "rotation mode". I'm not able to select anything all mouse actions rotate the model instead. In this mode the keyboard shortcuts also do not work. Other than this MoI works as expected. The only solution to get out of this was to quit and restart MoI.

I'm sorry that I'm not able to be more specific but I noticed this at least two times in the last days. I cant say what causes it. Did anyone also notice this?

Hi Martin, that definitely sounds like a bug but one that will be hard to track down without being able to reproduce it.

Please let me know if you see any pattern to it in the future like if it happens after some particular command is run or something like that.

Thanks,
- Michael

Hi Michael,

thank you for looking into this. I checked the glxinfo command on my GMA X3100. It seems to have OpenGL 2.0, but I also found VBO and FBO support in it:

OpenGL vendor string: Intel Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Intel GMA X3100 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL version string: 2.0 APPLE-1.6.36
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:
...
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
...
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
...

I think Apple called it version 2.0 because it does not implement all of 3.0, but at least some portions of it...
So perhaps there is still hope. I am looking forward to your upcoming public test version.

Kind regards,
Chyman

Hi Chyman,

> GL_EXT_framebuffer_object

From what I can tell having this extension available should be enough to make it work.

I'm still investigating it.

- Michael

Ok, I think I found the cause of my "Rotation Mode". It seems to be caused by using cmd-Tab to switch between apps.
Please do the following:


Open TextEdit

Open MoI and draw a solid box

Press cmd-Tab and switch to TextEdit

Write something

Press cmd-Tab and switch back to MoI

Try to select a surface of the box.

Voila, instant "Rotation Mode"

 

It only "works" if you use cmd-Tab to switch between MoI and another app.
A way to get out of "Rotation Mode" is to change back to MoI by clicking into the MoI window instead of using cmd-Tab.
I hope you can simulate that behaviour.

Update: It seems to fail only when there is no clicking involved while switching between the two apps.

Count me in as another Mac OSX user. I switched over about a year ago. So far I have not had any additional problems running OSX 10.6.8 on a Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro. As far as copy and paste problems, I do notice the Transformation tools all seem to work. I do get some "jumping around" on the screen when selecting curves in those tools if there are scroll bars present in the window. I do not recall the Windows version doing that.

Any way thanks a lot for making this happen!!

J. Tucker

Thanks very much for tracking down the sequence that causes it Martin, that should help out a lot in getting it fixed up!

I will be taking a look into it soon.

- Michael

hi Michael..

with regards to licensing:
would the following scenario be against the licensing agreement:

i have my mother company buy a v2 license (they use windows in the office).. which i'm sure they will install moi on if they were to buy it..

i use that license on my machine with 2.5 osx when available.

thanks for clarification.

Hi Jeff,

> i have my mother company buy a v2 license (they use
> windows in the office).. which i'm sure they will install moi
> on if they were to buy it..
>
> i use that license on my machine with 2.5 osx when available.
>

Are you the one that would be using it on the Windows install also?

Or do you mean that someone else would be using the Windows installed one, and then you would additionally be using the OSX version on top of that?

If you have 2 different people that are going to be using the software at the same time then you need to purchase 2 licenses for that scenario.

You can install the same license in multiple places, just so long as it is only being actively run in one place at a time, that's meant for one person to be able to use the same license on multiple machines that they use, not for multiple people to be using the same license at the same time.

For multiple people all using it at the same time each person should have their own license for that kind of use.

- Michael

right.. that's what i figured but just asking to be sure.

they're in FL, im in NYC.. there would be times i'm sure when both the windows and osx version are open at the same time.

but they bought my indigo and sketchup licenses (as well as their own) [and have said they'll transfer one of their rhino licenses to me when that time comes because rhino is too confusing for them :-)) ]
so maybe i can line up two sales for you via them :)
otherwise, i'll just get my own personal license as i'm itching to bring moi into my designflow..


thanks for the info.

@Jeff : and I believe that you can put your Moi version on USB key!

FYI. Not to be outdone by the machine, I was able to get Moi working on my little black mac by setting the offscreen rendering mode to "backbuffer" instead of "fbo" which seems to be the default.

Will test some more later on...

--Luis