Hey Michael,

I've been trying to spread the word about how capable and easy to use MoI is. I've seen lots of people on various forums talking about it. My wish is that you're very successful and are able to support MoI on the Macintosh platform at some point in the future.

Here are some posts about MoI from the EIAS forum at CgTalk:

Sadly, there is no Mac version :(
juanxer

and

I've wanted to give MOI a try for a long time. Every so often I visit its forum to see if a third party has appeared to help port it to OS X. But so far I just admire from afar
I'm still on PPC Macs and my current budget only extends towards software upgrades. However, I'll be upgrading to a Mac Pro next year, then I'll give MOI a spin.
AzOne

So there is definite interest out there.

Hi Kurt, thanks for spreading the word!

I have heard from quite a lot of people wanting a Mac version, so I don't have any doubt that there is a demand for it. It would actually be a really nice fit as well since MoI's UI would just fit in well on a Mac.

If it was easy for me to produce a Mac version I would certainly do it!

Unfortunately it is very much the opposite of that, it would involve a huge amount of work, maybe something like a year of working full time just on that alone. It will take quite a while before I will be able to gather up that much time.

One thing that may happen sooner than that is if I can overhaul just the display system to work using OpenGL as an option instead of only Direct3D. That would enable it to run on the Mac using an emulation system like Parallels, so that might be a pretty good thing for me to shoot for. It's still a fair amount of work to do that, but much less compared to a full port.

- Michael

Yeah.
It could be a great think to have this greate software on a Mac.

But I know it's a greate work to port software across platforms.

1103.5 In reply to 1103.3
I spent about 4 months creating the custom curve display engine for MoI. It's definitely a special state-of-the-art thing, I don't think that it is actually matched in the display engine of any other CAD program out there, even $30,000+ ones.

I developed a custom engine to get greater speed, and also to get some special effects that weren't possible with the basic DX one.

- Michael

SOMETHING SPECIAL, INDEED

Would OpenGL users will have to compromise in terms of quality ?.

Hi Yannada,

> Would OpenGL users will have to compromise in terms of quality ?.

No, it should be possible to generate the exact same display.

The big open question is how well Parallels handles OpenGL calls by a Windows program running inside of it. Hopefully they do a good job of handing data straight through to the Mac OpenGL driver.

- Michael

thanks Micheal, thats sounds good.
My personal opinion is that all you valuable time should go on porting Moi straight to OSX (emulation systems dont do it for me), but then again I am only one user.

> My personal opinion is that all you valuable time should go
> on porting Moi straight to OSX (emulation systems dont do it for
> me), but then again I am only one user.

Hi yannada, the problem is that it is such a large amount of work that it is hard for me to schedule it.

Doing that would mean freezing MoI in its current state for about a year or so (possibly longer) while all my effort went to just that one project.

Choosing between that and adding a year's worth of modeling features to MoI, right now I have prioritized working on modeling features and adding new functionality instead of porting.

- Michael

I really don't see why everybody is so concerned with having Mac version. All of the new Mac's can run as PC anyway. And i think most people will upgrade to new systems before Michael could port Moi to Mac. And during that time, Moi's growth will suffer... I think it would be a big mistake to slow down development of the PC version. The best hope is to wait for someone to knock on Michael's door with a ported version in hand. This is what happened to McNeel, who always said they will not make a Mac version of Rhino...

jonah

hi Micheal, sorry i think you miss understood me.
What I meant, was if and when you spent time on Mac OSX it should be towards a native application support.
Anyway all I want to know is that Micheal is open to support other platforms like Mac.

<The best hope is to wait for someone to knock on Michael's door with a ported version in hand. This is what happened to McNeel, who always said they will not make a Mac version of Rhino...

Oh man I HOPE SO
I am one of the many Beta RhinoOSX testers and i must say it comes along well BUT Moi is ADDICTIVE.

It is true that modern macs can run pc apps but its kind of overkill installing gb's of windows for a couple of hundred mb's of apps that we may want to run on our macs.

It doesn't affect me so much as I still own more pc's than macs but that will soon change for me and all of my associates in the near future who have also made the choice to move to macs.

Either way I am still looking forward very much to the release of Moi.

Cheers

Mike R

Hi Mike - I definitely realize that for a Mac owner a native Mac version would be best.

But it is a huge amount of work for me to make that happen. I just simply do not have the time available to accomplish it...

I wish I could make MoI do everything that every person wanted, but I can't.

- Michael

Just a heads-up. I'm running the latest build of Parallels (5580) and moi displays fine in the split (quad) view. If I switch to a single view like TOP I get a white window. So as long as I stay in the quad view, everything is fine.

Thanks Paul, that's good to know, that's quite a bit of progress. Maybe it won't be too much longer until they have the final kinks worked out.

Please post here again if you see any more improvements.

- Michael

jbshorty: the problem about installing/using bootcamp on Mac or any virtualization solution like VMware or Parallels, is that you must install windows and own a windows licence to do that. Then, it's no more the same price at the end for the customer (MoI+Windows). And if I'm not wrong, the low end version of Vista are not compatible (from a license point of view) with the virtualization.

About the Mac release itself, a native release is always better, especially on graphic software like MoI. I also understand the Michael point of view. The development of Amapi on Mac was always a problem and was big "time eater" (Yes, I was from the Amapi Dev team). Even if the mac userbase is growing very fast, Michael will have more customers on PC and since he is alone, it's better for him to focus on one development.

I am confirming that MOI runs on Parallels for Mac build 5570 (in Leopard). Others may have already confirmed this, but I couldn't find any. So the Direct3D thing on a virtualized Mac is a non-issue as far as I can tell. It still isn't as good as a native app, but it does mean that those people who run a virtualized Window to run things like Rhino anyway (like me) will be able to rock MOI. Sweet.

FYI re: Windows licensing costs: our students get Windows for $30, which we require that they install on their mandatory Macbook Pro laptops. We haven't, yet, required Parallels, but that may be coming at some point.

_P

I stumble across that @ Rhino OSX Forum and it makes me wonder, would that be the case this MOI as well?


>eric_m
Seems like it could almost just be an easy port over from windows.



The time, effort and expertise required to produce a version of Rhino for the Mac may only be fully understood by a software programmer.

One of the biggest problems is that not everything in Windows has a OSX counterpart. Yes, the Rhino core complies pretty well under OSX, but anything GUI/interface (like toolbars, menus, mouse actions, dialogs ...) all have to be rewritten for the Mac OS.

In addition, RhinoScript for the PC uses Microsoft's Active Scripting technology. Because Microsoft does not provide Active Scripting for the Mac, RhinoScript is not available on the Mac platform. For Plug-ins to work on the Mac, they will require that their 3rd party libraries have Mac binaries available. If the providers for these libraries do not compile their code for the Mac, the plug-in will not be available on the Mac.

Here is a little fun trivia. Rhino was first born an AutoCAD plugin called AccuModel back about 1994. Because we did not have control over the ever changing AutoCAD video interface, Rhino development was moved to a stand alone Windows product. For the first five versions of Rhino, all we had on staff were Windows programmers. Then Marlin volunteered to help us out and the Mac alpha came on line. Rhino/Mac history is now in the making.

Hope this helps.
Mary Fugier
Robert McNeel Technical Support

Is MOI using the some Scripting technology as Rhino and if not which one? Is it available on the Mac platform?

Thanks in advance and sorry for all the questions, is just I am trying to understand (my name is dummy).