Using World Machine on a Mac !

[pclavett]

Decided to try World Machine but had a problem with running it on a Mac as it behaved erratically on Windows XP running through Parallels Desktop.

Some of the features were behaving well but other not and in particular the layout view would not function as the settings were not accessible on the left side and were covered by the a stretch of the layout. Other features were OK but without that particular feature....was limited. Found this out when listening to a host of new and good tutorials telling us how to use that view.

Decided to give VMware Fusion 6 a try as there was a free trial period and installed it, migrated the Windows XP to it and low and behold.....everything works fine. I had not been able to find the answer to my questions elsewhere (maybe did not try enough !!!) but decided to post this for the information. Might be good for World Machine to officially give this information for potential Mac clients ! Since then, have bought Fusion 6, only $60 ! Also migrated to Windows 8 which is a lot cheaper than Windows 7 and all works perfectly !

Later found an article saying that Parallels is better with gaming and Fusion better with rendering but they were not very specific about things.

BTW...XFrogs 3.5 works fine with both of them !

Thought this might interest you and take care !

Paul

[WFab]

Thanks paul !
some friends of mine are mac users and wanted a clean solution to the parallel's problem as well, this is great news.

[pclavett]

Hi Again
Am exploring World Machine on my Mac with the GeekAtPlay videos....good stuff for the $19 charged if you want all of them in one shot !
Finding a few small glitches on the Virtual Machine even with Fusion but so far minor !
The Camera for taking snapshots does not come out good but again this is not affecting very much the work that we can do.
Included are Screenshots of the glitch and will keep you informed of them as they pop up.....hopefully not a lot of them. Still believe that I will be able t odo reasonable work through Fusion but time will tell.
Happy Holidays all !
Paul

PS: first one, the look before the Camera Snapshot and the second, the one after. Clicking the reset brought me back to the good look !

[OlaHaldor]

Is there a limit to how many CPUs, cores and RAM you can assign in the $60 version of VMWARE FUSION? I'm considering getting WM Pro while it's on sale, and if I can assign as many cores as I like in VMWARE I'd get that too.

[pclavett]

Hi !
It seems to permit the number of cores available on your computer and you can allocate memory to your liking and availability but to a certain limit that is indicated to leave enough for the Mac system. Presently am running at 4 cores with memory of 5MB of RAM out of my 8MB available. It runs WM real well and the rendering is blazing fast but of course will take some minutes when cooking at >4000 pixels. It took about 10 minute yesterday for one of those large files and the time mainly for the erosion tab. The rest was seconds ! There are a few problems with the 3D view over 512 pixels and have not been able to fix it and it may have to do with the Retina Display and its resolution. Only part of it shows..about 25%. I will illustrate this later. So for the final view at high resolution I have to rely on the 2D view which comes out fine. It takes away some preview capacity but again find this to be a minor issue...at least for me. For certain keys also you have to remap your keyboard especially to get the delete function with the usual Mac key....but this is easy (but do not try to find the answer through Google !!!).
Take Care !
Paul

[pclavett]

Hi Again !

I had some problems with the 3D view and had tried to find a solution before, to no avail.....but now have determined a setting to be the problem. The 3D Accelerate option in Fusion does not seem to work well with WM. Have no idea of the particularities of this item but think that it was likely inserted for Gamers and playing with Video Games through the Fusion interface...probably games not available for Mac....but I could be wrong on this.
In any event, started toying with this and determined that if you turn this OFF, the 3D view works fine....be it a little more slow to respond with the rotation of the terrain in the live 3D view. The jpegs included show what happens with option ON, at 512 resolution, fine (jpg #1). At 1024...obtain only part of the view (jpeg#2). When I turn the 3D Acceleration OFF (jpeg #3)....I get back the full 3D view at 1024 (jpeg#4), 2048 (jpeg#5) and finally at 4096 (jpeg#6).

The trade-off seems to be a small decrement in responsiveness of the view to change the position of the camera view but ever so slightly....so all-in-all....not a bad deal !

I am almost through the GeekAtPlay tutorials and have not found other major issues.....so going quite well !

Will keep you informed if other issues arise and hope this will be of help to those Mac users that wish to work WM on the Mac !

Cheers !

Paul

PS: first 4 jpegs with this and last 2 subsequent for reason of the restriction to 4 attachments.

[pclavett]

Last 2 jpegs for the post above !
Paul

[pclavett]

Hi again !
There had to be something that 3D Acceleration did in WM.....and it showed up as I was experimenting with the layout view and decided to increase the size of the default project....see the results below. There is a repetitive pattern that comes out which is not too pretty and even if I change the startup project to 20 KM and open up from that one the repetition shows up. When I turn the 3D Acceleration "On".....it functions normally. So if I want the 3D View I have to sacrifice the layout option of changing the size and position with all my small layout lines and circles repeating themselves giving the terrain a checkerboard look !
Guess I still cannot get everything I want !
Sometimes I think I should get a small $300 PC to play with this but as a MAC Addict...cannot bring myself to that point...so will settle for the sacrificing of the 3D view above 512 !
If I can do with the 8 km Extent......I can get it all !
Have a good weekend !
Paul

[OlaHaldor]

What if you dual boot with Windows on the Mac? I'm strongly considering that instead of a virtual machine.

[pclavett]

How can you dual boot the windows on the Mac...to my knowledge Boot Camp permits you a real boot but you are not able to boot Mac at the same time...or am I mistaking ???
Paul

[OlaHaldor]

That's what dual boot is. You have the option to boot either to Windows or to Mac.
If you must run both at the same time, you're already doing it.

Looking at the trouble you're going through I'd personally rather have a true Windows partition to boot whenever I wanna do big builds and utilize all the resources available