Hi,
According to the system requirements (https://learn.enscape3d.com/blog/knowledgebase/system-requirements-macos/), the now finally available plugin for Archicad Mac will only work on ARM Macs, and the vast user base of Intel Macs will be left behind. Is this correct, or will this change somehow in the (near) future, if at all?
The Pro machines of Macs and MacBooks have very good discreet GPUs, too, and I guess the majority of Archicad Mac users are still using this kind of hardware.
Please give us an outlook here.
Thanks.
Kind Regards
Roman
Hey @RomanS_2 , welcome to the forum! The system requirements for the new Mac release are in fact correct, and I’m not aware of any planned changes. I hope this helps!
It isn’t very pleasant, of course, as we Mac users invest in (expansive Apple) hardware with the idea of using this as long as possible because these are pretty good and reliable machines.
Now, we have to learn and understand that this long-term investment is not usable for certain applications. Rather disappointing.
Looking for alternatives instead because it is not reasonable to buy new ARM Macs just because some applications ignore the Intel-based Macs that are still doing a very good job.
Saw it mentioned in the archicad 27 release notes that enscape was getting mac support, which we were excited to hear news about. Well… we just ran into this same issue trying to (finally!) run enscape on our office mac and were dismayed to find out that buying sketchup and going through that as a proxy was the only option available to us. We were disappointed to say the least.
@RomanS_2@JackD Hi there, I feel your pain. Been on the Mac OS since 1985, seen many major Apple OS changes. But you have to be honest with yourself. Apple has abandoned Intel Macs, why would any developer like Chaos go backwards in developing their offerings. Apple is fully committed to ARM Silicon Macs for 3 years now and they are not turning back. I can tell you the Silicon Macs are way faster than the Intel Macs, so it might be time to consider investing in your future and pull the trigger on new Macs.
I know that doesn’t help in your current state of hardware, but you are going to need to move on for all your software at some point.
My big hope is Chaos is going to commit to bring VRay to ArchiCAD and the Apple OS!
Hi Robert, thanks for your thoughts. Yes, Apple is moving forward and the developers are following (have to). It is not economical to maintain compatibility with so many platforms, also given that Enscape for AC on Mac is quite fresh. At least it is ARM native in contrast to, e.g. Twinmotion…
Hopefully, Chaos will adapt to all technological advancements of the Apple silicon platform eventually.
I am now working on an M1 MacBook Pro and, yet, cannot use the full capabilities of Enscape (missing Hardware Raytracing). An M3 is then needed, I guess…
I hope that the once-existing Corona for Archicad will be revived…
And now I have tried it on an M3-powered MacBook Pro: Surprise! M3 provides Hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but the current Enscape version for Archicad Mac does not support it!
Hi, I have the same problem. No support for my GPU, on MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB! I hoped that Enscape 4.1 update would support is but unfortunately it still doesn’t.
We are aware of the demand for ray-tracing on latter Mac machines which support it, but it is also not as simple to implement this in the same way we did for Windows as we are dealing with a substantial difference in ray-tracing performance overall compared to recent NVIDIA GPU’s and such especially. Still, we are aware of this feature request and our developers are already looking into (alternate) solutions here.
In the meantime you can also feel free to forward this as a request via our Chaos Enscape Ideas Portal as detailed here which will be reviewed by our product management team directly and it helps them keep track of the demand for this or any other feature requests.
Hardware-Accelerated Ray-Tracing is not available on a MacBook Pro with M4 Max either FYI. I’m curious why Chaos has decided to show it greyed out when it’s not compatible, perhaps it’s just a cruel tease? Or perhaps it’s coming sooner that they’re letting on?
