Schedule for OS/X Beta Testing?

[grimfish]

Yeah, I was actually trying to strike through parts of my original post. I thought about it on the way home from work, and forgot about the extra bit of magic the unity engine adds to it (duh, its right in the name) over just straight mono. My apologies, i'm still a little salty over decades of crappy mac ports and the desire to have Fantasy Grounds working natively on my mac instead of running it in wine. I don't second guess the decision to using Unity. That is the only thing that really makes sense for multiplatform, and I walk back my earlier comments.

FGU really does look nice. The performance is good on my early 2009 Mac on El Capitan running 10.11.6 EXCEPT for the images and maps. I wasn't kidding about finally having nice crisp modern text. Little nice things like that show that FGU will eventually be greater than FG Classic. Y'all have done a great job on it so far. There is just a lot of emotions wound up in a highly anticipated release.

I guess part of my panic is the realization that I feel a little stuck. I have options, but none are very palatable.
1.) I've paid for an item I won't be able to use for the foreseeable future, unless I buy a new computer
2.) Run Windows in Bootcamp or VM on my existing Mac (untested - just hopeful, also defeats the purpose of having a Mac version) which isn't optimal
3.) Continue using FG Classic until...see #1

I'll eventually buy another Computer, so assuming I'm still playing and using FG, it will sort of take care of itself.
The conundrum is whether my group stays on FG Classic or moves on to FGU without me. (I'm assuming you can't mix and match FGC & FGU)

Do you have an estimate for how long you will continue to support FG Classic once FGU is released?

Thanks again for all the effort. I'm off to install Windows to see how that works!

[Moon Wizard]

You can not mix and match FGC and FGU. One of the reasons we can improve FGU in some ways is because we can break free of certain constraints with the current FGC development platform.

We are beholden to some degree as to what Mac, Windows and Linux OSes we can support based on what Unity requires. The current version of Unity 2019.2 requires Mac OS 10.12.

On FGC support, we have no firm plans for how long to continue supporting FGC. It’s going to be driven heavily by how much FGC is continuing to be used. We also have the difference between active development (ie continuing improvements) and maintenance support. For now, our lab is to continue adding features to both when they can be shared, but the focus will definitely be on new capabilities that FGU opens up.

Regards,
JPG

[pollux]

I've paid for an item I won't be able to use for the foreseeable future, unless I buy a new computer

I feel for you, but you should know that if you buy a new computer it won't "just" be for FGU. You're running a system that Apple itself doesn't support anymore. You're already not receiving security updates from Apple. It's a little hard to know this because Apple doesn't publish an end-of-life policy for OSX. Microsoft and all Linux Distro vendors do publish such a policy, which makes it very clear when you're going to stop receiving security updates. Apple just... stops publishing security updates... silently... which is pretty confusing and leads people into these kinds of surprises. They have already stopped updating OSX 10.11 and I believe 10.12 as well.

People who create OSX software DO track the updates that Apple releases, and they stop supporting old versions of OSX when Apple does. Here are some links from people who do this kind of support status detective work:

1. Here's howtogeek discussing that Apple has no published end-of-life policy and describing how you can check if your OS has gotten updates recently: https://www.howtogeek.com/350901/whi...urity-updates/
2. Here's the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science alerting its own students and staff that El Capitan is no longer supported by Apple and will no longer be supported by School of Computer Science IT staff. They further note that 10.12 will stop being supported in October of 2019 (which has since passed). https://computing.cs.cmu.edu/news/20...elcapitan.html

So while it's a drag that you're in this situation unexpectedly... it's also no accident that Unity doesn't support OSX 10.11. Unity lacks this support not because it's a "crappy mac port", but because it's a well supported platform for releasing well supported mac apps. And as such, the Unity software engineering team tracks what OSX releases Apple themselves support, even though Apple doesn't tell anyone what that list is. The Unity team then publishes their list of supported platforms... which may look arbitrary without the above context, but which is well grounded in Apple's unstated policy.

The TLDR here is that you should REALLY consider upgrading your Mac regardless of your FGU experience. If there's a serious security vulnerability in OSX 10.11, Apple is unlikely to fix it and is unlikely to tell you (or anyone) that they're choosing not to fix it. You have definitely missed security fixes already, and without tracking the fixes that Apple releases for newer releases of OSX its impossible to know how serious the ones you're missing are.

[sturtus]

Thank you for all your hard work on the Mac builds.

Is there any plan to implement a lower render quality option for systems with onboard GPU's, like any MacBook under 15"? Starting digging into Unity docs, and it seems like it's a core option. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/clas...sSettings.html

I'm asking because I have a 2017 MBP, macOS 10.14, 16GB RAM, and onboard Intel Iris Plus 640 GUP. FGU runs really well until I open a map. FGU at current build on 12/23 pegs my GPU when I open up a map, and doesn't relent until it's closed, affecting my entire system with half second delays or more. I'm testing with a copy of Volo Guide's beholder player's map to see if there are any noticeable performance improvements between FGU updates/builds.

It also appears you have tentative minimum requirements for GPU's that include DirectX info, but since DirectX doesn't exist on Macs, does your Mac dev have any recommendations? Have you tested forcing the Metal API as opposed to the Auto GPU API option in Unity? I'd be curious to see the differences between a Metal and OpenGL build on Mac, because my assumption is that Metal performs better and I'd love to know. ( https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Metal.html )

Thanks again!

[sturtus]

As a followup question, do you need additional Mac testers? I happen to have access to a few expert Tier 1/2 Mac support engineers with some spare systems. If you had a test routine, I'd be happy to run it on some devices for you. Cheers!

[pollux]

Is there any plan to implement a lower render quality option for systems with onboard GPU's, like any MacBook under 15"... FGU runs really well until I open a map... affecting my entire system with half second delays or more.

Not a dev... but having read dev comments in other threads, they have confirmed that very little effort has gone into optimization yet and that they do plan to spend more time on optimization later. "affecting my entire system with half-second delays or more" sounds pretty bad... maybe there is something specific they can look at sooner that's affecting you and certain classes of mac users. But in general, they're fixing broken functionality first and planning to focus on improving performance later.

Also, consider creating a new thread for specific issues like this performance problem. This thread is super old, super long, and has many unrelated topics in it.

[grimfish]

Not to dredge up old saltiness here, but i'm still using FGC on my old insecure mac. I am considering buying a new Mac this year. However, it will certainly not be an Intel based one, and instead will be an M1 based. I think I saw in another thread that FGU may be updated to work on an M1 mac sometime next year (this year? 2021?). What is the current guidance for buying a new Mac? Use FGC in wine and use wine through rosetta? Use FGU in Rosetta? Buy an intel mac?

Thanks and hope the team there has a great new year!

[Dire Weasel]

FGU apparently runs very well on the M1 under Rosetta.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...based-mac-mini

[LordEntrails]

Not to dredge up old saltiness here, but i'm still using FGC on my old insecure mac. I am considering buying a new Mac this year. However, it will certainly not be an Intel based one, and instead will be an M1 based. I think I saw in another thread that FGU may be updated to work on an M1 mac sometime next year (this year? 2021?). What is the current guidance for buying a new Mac? Use FGC in wine and use wine through rosetta? Use FGU in Rosetta? Buy an intel mac?

Thanks and hope the team there has a great new year!

There are multiple reports of users using an M1 with little to no issues.

[ddavison]

FGC won't run on the Mac OSX since it no longer supports 32 bit applications. FGU should run fine on it.