Michael, a 64-bit build and Mac native build would be massive, instant upgrade right there for me since I mostly work on Mac! Also, pretty please, can you have a look at HiDPI support on for the Mac build?

I write numerically intensive analog modelling software and didn't expect much gain between 32-bit and 64-bit builds because I don't use much RAM, but it was a big speedup due to faster SSE operations which I didn't expect, so hopefully it will make an even bigger difference to MOI since memory access will hopefully also be helped. I think the main SSE speedup was because you have twice as many registers (16 total instead of 8) to work with for the 64-bit build, so more twice as many things can be stored in the fastest computational memory possible.

Hi Andrew, yes I've been paying attention to HiDPI for the v4 Mac build and I'm expecting to support it properly with v4. I haven't tested it on an actual Retina machine yet but I have tested it using the Quartz Debug HiDPI mode and have got everything tuned up there so far.

The expanded SSE registers do seem to be helping, I did a quick test just now of a big fillet operation and in MoI v3 32-bit it took 30 seconds and in v4 64-bit it took 22 seconds (this was the Windows build). So that seems to be going in the right direction. I've heard that in some cases the switch to 64-bit can actually hurt performance since some data doubles in size and then doesn't fit in some memory access cache level where it used to fit. But I don't seem to be running into that so far.

Just being able to address more memory will be a big improvement for MoI though, it's pretty easy to run out right now when exporting out to mesh formats.

For the Mac version there are a whole lot of little weird things that should be tuned up with v4, like text is drawn using Core Text now rather than FreeType so it looks like other system text, you can resize windows from any edge, should look nice on Retina now, zoom to full screen mode works, shouldn't have to mess with "Displays have separate Spaces" for multi monitor to work, doesn't modify the Info.plist anymore so running from the Downloads folder won't fail because of Gatekeeper Path Randomization making the bundle read only, .... I'm sure I'm missing some more. But the single biggest thing that I'm hoping will happen is that MoI shouldn't be as susceptible to getting broken on new OS releases. Wineskin/XQuartz have been pretty fragile in that area.

So not too much longer before you'll be able to test this all out!

- Michael

Sounds great Michael!

A question: will all MoI V3 scripts remain compatible with MoI V4? I rely heavily on a few scripts, such as Max's ImportObj and Subdiv.

Thanks,

Hi Metin, yes that is the goal that existing scripts should also work the same with MoI v4.

But there have been enough changes in the back end stuff that it's possible a couple may not work at first without adjusting a couple of things, either in a couple of lines in the script or in MoI. But I think that shouldn't be common.

- Michael

It's comforting to know that current MoI commands / scripts will be compatible with MoI V4, or need just minor tweaks to work again, thanks Michael, and good luck with the last straws before the beta premiere.

I would like to have a possibility to make simulatons like in Inventor for example. To you plan something like this in V4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQA8f_l421Q

Hi Rudl, sorry no that's not in the plans for V4. I'm not really sure that MoI will ever have something like that built in, it's a pretty large area of work.

If you need to do that I would definitely recommend looking for some other software that could do that function for you now that you could import your MoI models into. You shouldn't wait to get it in MoI.

- Michael

Michael, when you will release the first beta of V4 could you please create a brand new forum thread specifically concerning ONLY the "V4 debugging and testing" ?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Marco, there will definitely be an individual thread specifically for the beta release, same as all previous beta releases. It will be titled something like "V4 beta Nov-11-2017 available now".

- Michael

Thanks a lot!

Ciao.

November 11th? Cool!! ;)

11 November ...

Armistice 1918 ? ;>)

11.11.2017 begin of "Fasching (Fastnacht,Karneval)" so i expect V4 at exactly at 11.11 o'clock!

<;-)

Michael,

Not sure if asked before, but will the UI CSS stay the same or will there be changes?

Hi Chipp, there are a few changes like there's a new class for controlling the borders of flyout menus rather than that coming from a bitmap image, and flexbox layouts are now done using the newer style standardized flexbox instead of the deprecated webkit-specific flexbox. So some css property names for flexbox properties are different.

Most of it is the same, there's like 50 lines different out of 1000. I've attached the CSS files here if you want to diff them to see the differences.

- Michael

Hi Michael!

@You : "...moi_v4.css..."

This is the very first public "piece" of the V4 !

:)

Hi!

This is a quick and only "visual" check of the difference between V3 and V4 css.

The video : http://take.ms/w6ct3

Ciao!

Hello Michael!

Just a "quick and dirt" question...

Maybe there's a little chance that soon I can get my hands on the wanderful iPad Pro 12.9 second generation with Apple Pencil,
a true "piece of cake" for digital artists/enthusiasts.

Is there any chance to see Moi running on iOs 11/iPad Pro ?

Thanks and have a nice day.

Marco (mkdm)

Hi Marco, sorry no I don't have any plans currently to do an iOS port, it's a fairly different system and that makes various complications such as not all the libraries that MoI uses have an ARM binary available.

Just supporting 2 operating systems has pretty much pushed me to the limit as it is.

You might want to check out Shapr3D, it's an interesting design program that does run on iPad Pro.

- Michael

Thanks Michael for the suggestion of Shapr3D.

I didn't know it.

Ciao!