Mac Version feature restrictions?
by M. Jackson · in General Discussion · 01/20/2011 (7:12 pm) · 9 replies
On the product page for T3D (http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d), at the bottom there is a line that reads "*Not all features are available for Apple-based computers" that rather concerns me. Look as I may, I have not found any explanation of what that means exactly. I have found that some of the development tools like file converters are unavailable for any platform other than Windows. However, I see no indication if this is the extent of the meaning behind that line.
So, my questions are: (1) what of T3D is unavailable for Apple-based computers; (2) are the limitations only on the development side or is the Mac version of the engine less feature-full than the PC side; (3) does the line "Intel-based Macs only" indicate that Mac users are intended to use BootCamp, Parallels, or some other Windows virtualization or does this merely indicate that some Intel specific assembly code was used; and (4) what exactly does the omission of physX from the system requirements indicate?
So, my questions are: (1) what of T3D is unavailable for Apple-based computers; (2) are the limitations only on the development side or is the Mac version of the engine less feature-full than the PC side; (3) does the line "Intel-based Macs only" indicate that Mac users are intended to use BootCamp, Parallels, or some other Windows virtualization or does this merely indicate that some Intel specific assembly code was used; and (4) what exactly does the omission of physX from the system requirements indicate?
#2
01/20/2011 (8:04 pm)
I noticed that nVidia released a Mac PhysX SDK November of last year. Once I download my T3D I might experiment with turning it on for Mac... unless you've already tried and found that it doesn't work ;) 
#3
Thank Valve for even getting them to get it this far. Hopefully they'll get moving with full support for all shader functionality (shaders are several version behind too) and the neat stuff in OpenGL 3.x, perhaps 4.
So yes, only Basic Lighting is possible at the moment.
2)Editors are the same. It's engine features which are lacking, due to driver issues mentioned above.
4)PhysX for alternative platforms has been ignored by NVidia for ages. Again hoping Valve helps push some development in the right direction.
@David: Kinda not excited about PhysX anymore, but if you can get it working that would probably help Mac releases of T3D getting close enough feature-parity :)
01/20/2011 (9:34 pm)
1)Apple's OpenGL implementation used to be in the stone age. It has now advanced to the bronze age. They implemented most of OpenGL 3.0, but after that it starts to really suck.Thank Valve for even getting them to get it this far. Hopefully they'll get moving with full support for all shader functionality (shaders are several version behind too) and the neat stuff in OpenGL 3.x, perhaps 4.
So yes, only Basic Lighting is possible at the moment.
2)Editors are the same. It's engine features which are lacking, due to driver issues mentioned above.
4)PhysX for alternative platforms has been ignored by NVidia for ages. Again hoping Valve helps push some development in the right direction.
@David: Kinda not excited about PhysX anymore, but if you can get it working that would probably help Mac releases of T3D getting close enough feature-parity :)
#4
Well, as far as possible goes, Unity has proven that a modern deferred renderer can actually work on the Mac and even run well--though I suspect they lost a couple of engineers to suicides in the process :)
01/20/2011 (9:59 pm)
Quote:So yes, only Basic Lighting is possible at the moment.
Well, as far as possible goes, Unity has proven that a modern deferred renderer can actually work on the Mac and even run well--though I suspect they lost a couple of engineers to suicides in the process :)
#5
01/20/2011 (10:28 pm)
OK, only BL is possible at the moment without causing a major incident involving a weapon :) 
#6
01/21/2011 (11:35 am)
Getting the web plugin working on the Mac is also tricky. Snow Leopard broke a lot of web plugins including the Torque 3D one. You can run it on older versions of OS X but then you are likely to run into graphics driver bugs (including hard crashes of the operating system).
#7
01/21/2011 (11:40 am)
There was also one library which didn't compile for 64-bit, which would have to be fixed to work well with Safari. Some of us don't want to run 32-bit :)
#8
What is appropriate at this juncture is this: how much of a hindrance are these restrictions in actuality, because they don't sound very prohibitive at all?
01/21/2011 (11:55 am)
Alright, thank you all. This has answered my questions rather well, but it does bring up a couple of other questions that would be more appropriately asked elsewhere and after some degree of experimentation (I don't even have a Mac yet).What is appropriate at this juncture is this: how much of a hindrance are these restrictions in actuality, because they don't sound very prohibitive at all?
#9
01/21/2011 (1:59 pm)
Once 1.1 is out for Mac, you have the full editor that you find in the Windows version. So the limitations on the development side are really none. 
Associate Scott Burns
GG Alumni
2)Again, kind of hard to answer at this time but as with the first one the parity is mostly centered around the Advanced Lighting features
3) Not at all, that just means that the hardware pre-Intel Mac is not supported and isn't powerful enough to run the engine.
4) PhysX is a Windows only SDK. For physics on the Mac you'll need to use Bullet, which T3D supports already.