Orbiter on Mac systems?? Does it work?

[Keatah]

Perhaps this has been discussed earlier, perhaps not..?

How well does Orbiter work on a modern-day Mac using Bootcamp? Or whatever method is used. Is it stable and smooth?

 

[Wally]

Bootcamp means running a native installation of Windows (XP/7), there's absolutely no reason why it wouldn't work. Meaning that you have a very real Windows installation on your harddisk, it's not emulated, like in Parallels or VMWare, so it will run like it runs on any PC (since using Bootmcap implies that you have to restart the Mac and boot into Windows). Speaking of emulation, last time I tried Orbiter in Parallels it dd work, but the framerate was awful and there were some annoying textures errors, so the game was pretty much un-playable. But they are doing steady progress with 3D hardware accelerators in both Paralleles and VMWare so who know, maybe in the near future all Mac users can enjoy Orbiter without having to restart the system and use Bootcamp.

 

[MikeB]

Orbiter is fantastic on a Mac! Last time I noticed, I was getting 160 fps. :thumbup:

I use Windows XP in a Boot Camp partition on a MacBook Pro. I currently have that partition set at 30 GB, but I've successfully run Orbiter with a partition as small as 10 GB. (I increased the size in order to run some other apps as well.) I experimented with partitions as small as 5 GB.

As Wally says, I found VMware and Parallels too slow to be fun (though Parallels was just barely playable). My Mac is a couple of years old, so new/faster ones might do better. Also as Wally says, the 3D drivers are getting better in the virtualization systems. Parallels seems to be ahead of VMware in that area.

I keep my Orbiter installations on an external drive, so that I can wipe and reinstall Windows without disturbing my favorite Orbiter configurations.

You will need the full keyboard, with the numeric keypad and arrow keys, not the standard smaller keyboard.

Feel free to contact me for further advice or to share your experience.

 

[cmunoz80]

Yes, you can run it on a bootcamped Mac as what others have already stated. On the topic of getting 160 fps on a Mac, that is because Macs are focused on the performance of their machines. You can also achieve that on another platform but you must upgrade your hardware specifically the memory. There is also an application called Crossover that supports windows executables, but just a few are supported, you can check it out.

 

[Linguofreak]

Yes, you can run it on a bootcamped Mac as what others have already stated. On the topic of getting 160 fps on a Mac, that is because Macs are focused on the performance of their machines. You can also achieve that on another platform but you must upgrade your hardware specifically the memory.

Memory is not the biggest concern for the performance of Orbiter. While it is true that not having enough memory will really kill performance, hardly any modern computer falls below that line, and memory over that line doesn't really help speed any. The biggest factor is likely ones graphics card, and that will vary from machine to machine with Macs as much as with PCs.

 

[Hielor]

Memory is not the biggest concern for the performance of Orbiter. While it is true that not having enough memory will really kill performance, hardly any modern computer falls below that line, and memory over that line doesn't really help speed any. The biggest factor is likely ones graphics card, and that will vary from machine to machine with Macs as much as with PCs.

Graphics card isn't much of a factor either, given that Orbiter is using DX7 (which was already old when Windows XP was released in 2001). Any graphics card from the last five years will have more than enough horsepower to run Orbiter at full steam. CPU is the main stumbling block for Orbiter, and you don't even really need anything that great. As long as you've got at least two cores and 2gigahertz or more, you're fine.

 

[orb]

O-F Staff Note: Thread cleaned up from off-topic comments. Posts and parts of posts not related to running Orbiter on Mac systems moved to OS WARS MEGA THREAD (Now with Mac crunchy bits!) thread.

Please keep this thread on the topic and leave discussing which computer architecture or operating system is better to OS WARS MEGA THREAD.