Enscape on MacOS

    norbertsf With the right system setup it should work out with the D500 and D700. You need

    • Full hardware acceleration
    • OpenGl 4.2 available
    • Current drivers

    Please check the bottom of our system requirements as well regards using mouse in a VDI.

    Quote from Marten_at_PipeRS

    Would of course be heaven for us if Enscape was on both Mac and Archicad!!!

    Support of ArchiCAD will come this year. Support of MacOS is still on our agenda and already got your upvote.

    Hi There,

    It looks like this topic has been thoroughly discussed in the thread above. But I just want to add my voice to the choir to beg and plea for a version of Enscape that runs natively on a Mac.

    I had the absolute pleasure of using Enscape at my last job, and I have to say that in all of my years of using various rendering engines, Enscape is hands down the BEST. You guys absolutely nailed it. THIS is the way design professionals should be working. You have managed to take something that, for us end users, used to be overly complicated and incredibly time consuming, and made it fast, easy and most importantly, reliable. With Enscape, I am able to use my time DESIGNING, and not endlessly fiddling with settings to get my scenes to look right. And then VR is just icing on the cake. I never really thought much of VR in the past, but now that I have used it in a professional setting, It's is hard to imagine how I am going to function without it.

    I'm hoping that there will be an announcement at the upcoming WWDC that will convince the Enscape team that Mac OS will work.

    If it does, and if you guys ARE developing a Mac version, I would love to be a tester.

    • Official Post

    Hi davidhard , thank you very much for your (and norbertsf 's ;) ) heartwarming feedback! Rest assured, your voice has been added to the choir.

    Anything 3D could be in trouble with future versions of MacOS, Apple are starting to deprecate OpenGL in favour of their own Metal engine.

    I'm sure Metal will be very good but any existing app such as SketchUp will have to be rewitten (at least partially) and that will not be cheap and may cause some smaller 3D devs to abandon MacOS.

    Would SketchUp be able to maintain cross platform compatibility if Windows is OpenGL and MacOS is Metal?

    Is the MacOS SketchUp userbase big enough to warrant the rewrite costs?

    Would a Metal SketchUp attract more users than the current version?


    https://appleinsider.com/artic…al-2-in-macos-1014-mojave

    I cant speak for the SketchUp software itself, just for our integration which is quite unrelated to the techniques that the main applications use.


    The fact that Apple expects all their developers to use Apple-specific interfaces and to get rid of cross platform technology makes an Enscape for macOs unrealistic. However: our webgl export will run on Apple devices.

    Thomas, are you publicly stating that Enscape will never come to the Mac, or at least not in the foreseeable future? The ArchiCAD userbase alone would probably be worth it. When an architect chooses the Mac over the PC, they generally choose ArchiCAD as most all AutoDesk software is Windows only. Just asking because I don't want to keep sticking around if it's not going to happen.

    kittonian It won't happen this year. And we have to see how Apple realizes their announcement to cut of OpenGL for MacOS in order to force developers to their own Metal 2 interface.

    Definitely count me in for a Mac version of Enscape!


    Lots of words have been spent already stating the fact that ArchiCAD users generally are Mac based and I can only agree...

    So, go guys! :)

    It will be a painful wait, like when you are waiting for a new TVseries episode...

    Enscape is a game changer for us. As a mixed shop (architecture, development, interiors, engineering, constructible modeling, construction) the truth is, the design team prefers to be creative in a Mac environment. Revit is fine, but so so limited. Interiors are much much faster in SketchUp, and as we've learned time and time again, Mac is a much more predictable platform for workflow. Every Windows machine has its own quirks. Enscape runs really well on one machine, but not so well on another with the same configuration. The beauty of the Mac OS is that everything runs the same on every machine. Thomas, I understand that you are a developer but what we really need is a predictable result on WHATEVER machine we run Enscape on. We had problems launching Enscape in VR at SketchUp Basecamp before our talk. On a very high end PC. We have launched Enscape on top of SketchUp under the pressure of presentation, and it gets weird and slow some days, and works great others. Like at AU 2017 or IBS the same year. Or when we were the keynote at Trimble in 2017. The Mac OS would be a great addition because it is stable. And consistent. SketchUp or Revit plus Enscape on Mac are more predictable and require far less tweaking. My iMacs and MacBook pros are much better for creative work. Faster, and more stable. Please put yourself into our space, and less the developer space, and develop Enscape for Mac. It's a no brainer from the user side. If you have doubts, I welcome you to visit our shop. http://www.trilogybuilds.com

    • Official Post

    Hi michaelrtrilogy


    thanks for your feedback! Please be aware that Macs are currently not really the ideal platform for VR at all. There's no Mac support for Oculus due to the lack of powerful hardware and Apple's restrictions regarding real-time graphics APIs (OpenGL beeing deprecated now) makes it extremely tedious for any developer to write real-time rendering software on Mac.

    Quote from michaelrtrilogy

    The beauty of the Mac OS is that everything runs the same on every machine

    This might be the case for non hardware demanding (e.g. office) software, but is definitely not the case for real-time rendering as this is extremely hardware (gpu) dependant and as stated above Apple unfortunately doesn't equip most of it's systems with state of the art graphics cards.


    So as Thomas stated above, these circumstances make it rather unlikely that Enscape will support Macs in the near future apart from our upcoming Web Standalone feature running in WebGL2 compatible browsers.

    “Please release Enscape for Mac”

    The above is written as if it’s simply a process of pressing a button marked ‘make Mac version’ and hey presto we all have Enscape for Mac ........ it’s not.


    I’m not a dev but I know enough to know that any app that runs on both MacOS and Windows are actually 2 wholly independent apps that only share their name and interface designs, they are written by 2 completely separate teams in completely separate languages/compilers (usually VisualStudio and XCode).

    For example, whilst both MS Word for MacOS and Windows have a button to make text bold that looks and functions the same I can guarantee that the underlying code is completely different and written by different people.... probably in different buildings or even cities/countries.


    On top of all of that is what Clemens pointed out, Apple are deprecating OpenGL in favour of their own 3D engine called Metal, so not only would a developer like Enscape have to employ an entire new team of MacOS devs they would have to reinvent EVERY single function from the ground up ..... should only take 5 or so years, a team of 100’s and a bottomless pit of funds .... easy eh?


    Now having said all the above it may surprise you to know I own a 27” iMac and a 15” MBP and not a PC and yet.... I use Enscape EVERY DAY ...... it’s simple I have Windows in bootcamp.

    I’ll admit it’s a compromised solution as my MBP’s graphics card only just meets Enscapes requirements but it works well enough and I have a PC for my 3D work and a Mac for my web stuff all in one box. The Mac is expensive but it’s cheaper than a ‘cheap’ Mac AND a PC.


    I originally had this arrangement as I hate with all my sole the MacOS version of SketchUp, Compared to its Windows cousin it’s (in my opinion) ghastly to use.


    Another thing to seriously consider is the graphics cards available on Mac’s, they are not optimised for 3D, the new iMac Pro’s can have either a Vega56 or 64 (https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ ) which depending on what review you read equate to 1060’s-1080’s good eh? ..... not really as the MacOS drivers favour 2D performance for the likes of FinalCut/Premiere not 3D. And even in its cheapest spec an iMacPro is $5000!!!

    I just purchased a new MacBook Pro 2018 i9 laptop, and have got enscape working, its not super smooth, but it is good. It only works on bootcamp and virtual machines simply do not support anything higher than open gl 3. Enscape, with metal, I hope you will consider a native version for Mac, you have a large audience begging for development on this. images below of my efforts


    https://ibb.co/hoAdt0

    https://ibb.co/iO44Y0

    https://ibb.co/cK2xmL

    99% of the projects you see here are built and renderered on my 2015 i7 MBP with Enscape and SU2017 in Win10 on Bootcamp, the other 1% were either done before we got Enscape but still on my MBP, or prior to me.

    https://www.dma-ni.com/dma_projects/


    As a Mac owner I'd like to think that theres a 'large audience begging for development' but I don't think its so nor to I think that Apple will ever make a machine suitable (see my coments above about Mac grapichs cards)