The Good News . . Running AM with WINE works great on Mac . . . the Bad News . . . Graphics / rendering not working [work-around: use v15]

[a.quaihoi]

Waiting for a new PC to arrive for new AM rig and I got to tinkering  trying to get AM to run on the Mac I have now, first tried Parallels which worked craptacular, then tried through wine, after reading on how to set it up and going through the process a few times, finally figured out how it all works. So, AM actually works fast and smooth without emulation penalty through WINE, BUT the  graphics driver support is not working, I think WINE is using a translation thing and passes graphics instructions though the host platform which translates it to the GPU, when I looked into the Open GL settings it look like it is using the stock minimum drivers /extensions and obviously Apple Has their own extensions . . . which you can see when you click the show all extensions from opengl options . . . when you quit the app, for a brief second the Apple GL Drivers kick in and the rendering works or redraws in AM as it closes . . . soooooo clooossseeee !!!! Does anyone know if Open GL engine drivers read from the system by AM ? Im thinking if there is someway to convert / translate the Apple native GL Drivers, then AM through WINE would work at almost native speed  perfectly, and yes I tried to install regular AMD Drivers onto the WiNE Wrapper but it wont detect the GPU, which points to communication between WINE and Mac OS  through to GPU hardware and translation layers . . . just thought Id share some tinkering, if it worked Mac users could have a viable option to work with AM on new OS and hardware  

[robcat2075]

So you can't even get a wireframe view? I presume render-to-file works.  Do onscreen (Q or SHIFT-Q) final renders work?

I wonder if previous versions of A:M would behave differently 

[a.quaihoi]

Hi Rob, everything works fine, you can Model in wireframe, real-time rendering doesn't work, onscreen renders don't work either, but overall it pretty fast all the same, you can run multiple instances of AM in different WINE apps, Render Cue also boots u and you can set console so I assume this also works, I also tested it in Crossover from Mac with a trial - but thats the same thing as installing through wine, I actually used Port Kit which supports 32/64 bit apps to Run on Mac Os Catalina.

Regular wine doesn't support Catalina yet, I did a bit of reading and one of the issues is, that WINE only supports up to Open GL 2.0 and I think its actually using open GL 1. etc. the you look at the GL Driver settings in AM Options its not reading the full set of Open GL Instructions available, pretty sure on Mac Os they have Open GL 4.1 drivers and extensions which don't have any translators for WINE, this would also mean the same issue for Emulation software like parallels and VM ware.

The issue seems to be be Open GL translation instructions or lack thereof interfacing with host platform drivers, doing a bit more reading on WINE HQ, they say that updates to support open GL Translation beyond 2.0 is a long way away. The good is that AM functions and in 64 bit through translation layer technology, its software drivers from the various platforms that don't work.

Im sure the peoples at Crossover could get it to work, or someone updates and recompiles WINE binaries with these missing instructions and updated open GL version implementation that would get AM, a lot of other Apps and games working through the translation layer.

I think Ive reached the end of the tinkering after exhausting all options that I'm savvy to, waiting on a new Dell PC to arrive to set up the new rig, my curiosity is taken care of    Many thanks to Jason for helping me through the tinkering ! 

I was really hoping that magically this would work so there was a solution for AM people on Mac, but looks like there is a long wait for this tech to get to the point where AM is useable.

[robcat2075]

19 hours ago, a.quaihoi said:

Regular wine doesn't support Catalina yet, I did a bit of reading and one of the issues is, that WINE only supports up to Open GL 2.0 and I think its actually using open GL 1.

I suppose you already tried setting A:M to use OpenGL 1 instead of 3?

Did you try a version of A:M that uses Direct X?

[a.quaihoi]

Hey Rob , Ive got installers for AM 19 to 15 - is 15 Direct X ? 

Last night I did a bit of reading and tinkered with installing various Mesa 3D Windows builds on Wine / Parallels, the earlier distributions allow software rendering - but this did not work for real time, the later and latest builds which use Vulkan SDK and Zink Divers to push through GPU instructions translated via Vulkan, although these drivers are reading inside AM it still doesn't fix the real time rendering issue, further reading and it looks like your processor needs to have AVX 2 instructions for this to work which my old Mac pro doesn't. I tried version 20 through to 23 which is the latest builds, but all come up short for real time rendering, perhaps someone with a Intel Mac with a newer processor with AVX2 might want to give it a try, one thing is with the vulcan drivers if you turn on Polygon rendering, that works, but shaded rendering do not for me. Im guessing that for me the miss match is due to not having AVX2 instructions on my old xeon processors that is stopping the Zink/Vulcan implementation really cant test it. If I have time tonight I'll tinker with version 15 if it supports direct x. 

[a.quaihoi]

Yes tried both G1 - GL3

[robcat2075]

 

V15 still has the OpenGL/Direct3D option

 

v19.5 (not out yet) will have an option to not install AVX...

 

However, I presume early versions like v15 won't have any AVX either?

[a.quaihoi]

will have to give it go tonight - the mesa3d is interesting as you could theoretically run it on Catalina and newer Mac OS and also on MX Processor Macs, if someone built a Mesa3D to Metal translation that would good too, but Im sure the Vulkan Implementation would work very well through Metal, considering the performance of the Mx series processors in emulating games through parallels etc., the horse power is definitely there on those chip to do a good job running AM, will be upgrading the Mac to the a Studio or M2 Mini soon so I can also try these out. The various non standard wine ports already have metal rendering in beta development

 

[a.quaihoi]

v15 works good through parallels with the direct x driver ! 

[robcat2075]

14 hours ago, a.quaihoi said:

v15 works good through parallels with the direct x driver ! 

Hooray!

And that's a modern Mac with an M1 processor?

 

I'd be curious to hear what the results are for the Three Teapots benchmark, in v15 and v19

[a.quaihoi]

Hey Rob, no, this is on 2009 Mac Pro " Upgraded with Opencore"  to 5.1, running max config of dual processors @3.46, 12 Core with maxed out Ram to 128gb, Radeon RX 580 8 Gb graphics card, I know this machine is beastly for AM if booted to windows, but most of our print and design jobs are done on Mac Side of things and dual booting becomes a PIA, the other issue is the Xeons in this machine are old now with a very slow single core performance which all new apps including AM greatly benefit from, not to mention no AVX instructions its time to upgrade, we will get a new MX Series Mac soon and then we can test out AM on emulation and translation platforms like WINE.

Going from the performance on this old Mac, I would assume that it would certainly fly on the new ARM Processors as they can emulate Direct X and windows apps really well, they support the AVX instructions too, so I am thinking that wine versions including crossover which support Mac OS Catalina and above, which also have Mesa 3D implementation will most likely work fine with AM18+ and future versions for production, including 32bit versions of apps.

The caveat being things which rely on the Rosetta emulation - most 32bit apps which would eventually be phased out, but with what the people are developing in software and performance of new ARM from Apple, even Nvidia tech for servers, new processor technology could have massive gains in emulated software. I really do want to try out the new version of AM with AVX instructions via this route eventually, if this all works well, then there is a common code base for AM but which can also be used on Mac OS and even Linux platforms without writing new code or any ground up rebuilds - Happy Days ! , as the Fonze would say AAAAiiiiieeeeeeeeee 👍 

Just waiting on Apple to see what they're doing about a new Mac Pro, might just buy a M2 Mac Mini in the meanwhile as they are pretty good bang for buck and regulate the old mac pro to a server and rendering slave. Im downsizing all computers at our shop, no more big boxes, just high performance tiny work stations that are highly effecient  and that don't suck too much power. We are getting a second Dell Precision 3260 Workstation Compact, at 2 litres, with a i7 or i9 with a Nvidia A2000 Gpu just for AM, massive performance, tiny foot print, tiny power consumption, and great price. Will upgrade this old Mac Pro after that since we really can do all daily work on it for now, then we can test out AM proper on new processors  

[Roger]

This is interesting, I have an older Mac Mini that I picked up for helping me in my day job.   Thought about getting an M2 Mac Mini but every time I spec one out I get sticker shock.

[a.quaihoi]

Hey Roger, 

I think even a base model M2 is pretty fast, one of my friends bought the first gen M1's when they came out when I egged him to buy one, in Australia it was about $998 if you consider the cost of a new phone, its pretty damn good value, the most amazing thing was, on stock configuration that little M1 was running rings around his maxed out Trashcan video editing mac - maxed out with full ram and dual D700 gpu's, he couldn't believe it and I suspected as much as prior to the the M1's if you actually edited video on a iPad pro its was blazingly fast. I hear you about the sticker shock on upgrades, a base M2 pro at $2000 aud over here is pretty good - BUT - the 512 GB HD is a real deal breaker, 10core Cpu + 16core Gpu + 1gb HD @ $2000 is the sweet spot, anything over that, might as well get a Studio, even when they release the M2 Studio's there wont be many 1gig M2' floating around as they are all built to order, they should make this the standard for a mid range machine while they prepare whatever it is they are planning to do with a new mac pro, but then again external Thunderbolt hard drives are fast and good price these days. Saying that, Im actually surprised at the performance we're getting for Davinci Resolve on our Old Mac Pro 4.1, dont think you can really go wrong if you upgrade either way, I would love to but its just that we dont NEED to, so we're bought the Dell machine pretty much for 3D work with AM exclusively   and have time to see what other new Mac's are coming 

[Roger]

I think what bugs me most about the M2 Mac Minis is they didn't make the base RAM at least 32GB.  Or if they were gonna go with 16 as the base, then 32 should have been a $200 bump at most. 

I'd be curious to know how an M2 Mac Mini or a base model Studio would compare to say, a 16 core Ryzen box with a similar amount of RAM and a decent GPU.   A 16 core Ryzen box with 64GB RAM, 3060ti and 1TB SSD is comparable in cost to a base Studio or fully maxed out Mini. 

 

[a.quaihoi]

Hmm I agree , perhaps when they add Mac Pros into the lineup they usually update the base specs, here's hoping they do something about this, it's time to complain to them !!

Im not too familiar with AMD CPU's, but Ive become a big fan of SFF builds recently and AMD Processors with GPU on chip is pretty much the rage as these dont need dedicated GPU in the small form factors, once again bang for buck I'd think they were on par or exceed performance on the M2 Minis in some aspects. I'll be putting in a RX6400 single slot in the dell for little while as at the price to performance is huge from a little card that sips little power before upgrading to to a A2000 with a bit more video ram. The norm is to use the feedback for on the apple site and let them now what you expect or want from their computer lineups, the funny thing is, it actually works as people read these messages and if the numbers are great enough they usually do something about it.

 Back in the days we bought a Dell Precision 540 Work Station with dual processors and Rambus Ram + a Wild Cat VR Graphics card which was the pinnacle of specs to run AM, very expensive exercise !! But man did that rig work butter smooth with AM - no crashes !! Funnily we also bought the Power PC G5 machines with dual processors and the Dell with dual 1.8 xeons was running rings around the dual power pc chips, I sold one of the two Power PC G5's to a buyer in another State and we got into a heated argument about performance on the new G5 machines and I questioned him as to why my Dell Machine with lower processor / ram specs was destroying a then a brand new top specced G5 machine, he shut up and bought the machine, in the following 6 months Apple announced the switch to Intel   

PC's will always be better for AM, but its good if there was an option for Mac on the new versions, expanding the user base and making it more accessible, we have our rig hooked up with a Aten DVI-D switch, so we can simultaneously use PC & Mac macs with a switch, if you need to use both, the AMD Build would be a interesting mix you should do it and post up the specs 

[a.quaihoi]

Hey Roger, Just checked, Entry Level Mac Studio with 32gb Ram is the same price as a M2 Mac Mini, with $200 bump for a 1 TB HD, this is pretty much the sweet spot, plus you get all the extra thunderbolt ports too ! Granted its running the older CPU, based on single core speed, there is marginal performance hit, I think this might be the winner  for our next interim machine 

[Roger]

23 hours ago, a.quaihoi said:

Hey Roger, Just checked, Entry Level Mac Studio with 32gb Ram is the same price as a M2 Mac Mini, with $200 bump for a 1 TB HD, this is pretty much the sweet spot, plus you get all the extra thunderbolt ports too ! Granted its running the older CPU, based on single core speed, there is marginal performance hit, I think this might be the winner  for our next interim machine 

I just checked used prices on Mac Studios with 64gb, Looks like they are running $2200-$2500.   I'm liking that price a lot more

Any ideas when the new Mac Pros are supposed to be coming around?

[a.quaihoi]

I think EVERYONE is waiting for this ha ha so much speculation, I am thinking they will announce it later this year with a release next year or we get surprised with a few hints in the next WWDC. ( My Speculation here ) I am thinking they will have some type of modularity, where by you can expand the machine with core modules / daughterboards which is probably interfaced with their fabric bus instead of PCIE, but also ( maybe ) retain some PCIE ports to add discrete cards, so you can get a base model with a  base specs but can also update to multi cpu/gpu SOC's when required which also has onboard ram, same interface for RAM Modules, the fabric interface will allow full bandwidth throughput with additional SOC modules, similar to the studio MAX and PRO chips being essentially 2 SOCS joined together , except on the Mac Pro there is an actual connector for expansion. Similar to Dual CPU's Motherboards, Logically this would be the way forward to a pro machine with ARM, it will be expensive which is the norm for a full specced machine, but they will keep entry level to 4.5  - 6k instead of the ridiculous 15to 30k machine they released for the last mac pro, then agin they could do nothing of the sort and just rerelease a X86 based architecture since the OS code will still run on it, its just speculation, don't now what they are cooking up and whatever they do everyone will still complain on the specs or expandability instead of using the damn machines ! Whatever they release it will make oder machines more value fr money which is a good thing for everyone

[Roger]

I always wondered who the heck they were trying to sell a $20k workstation to.   SGI might have been able to get away with that back in the day, but I think those days are long gone.

[a.quaihoi]

they probably just released it because people kept complaining about it, all the while cooking up the future driven new arm tech, then they realised it for the huge amount, then they released the Arm machines that pretty much were faster than the pro's - probably to make a statement lol, I remember we bought a maxed out G4 DP 500 on launch day with all the bells and whistles, LVD SCSI 10,000 RPM Drives, Media 100 Systems Video Card ( Prior to Avid Systems Video Processors ) as our video editing machine for broadcast TVC and video clips jobs, it was over 15k AUD for that but we actually bought it to replace a G3 machine to produce a couple of video clips it paid itself of on that first job, in some aspects the price of the previous Mac Pro is justifiable if there is a need, but not for everyday use and now in such a short period of time you can do all of that and more on a Mac Mini or a Studio its pretty crazy what they have achieved and have bought the tech to all of us for prices that are the same or below the cost of a new phone ! 

[a.quaihoi]

Didi a bit more reading, so apparently if we install molten VK on Mac, then compile and install the Mesa 3D Zink Driver we can have applications which rely on openGL to translate OpenGL calls through the Vulkan API --> Metal = Working Open GL App ! Not sure how this would work in something like VMware or Parallels as they utilise their own emulated drivers within app, but Wine / Crossover would be a better option.

Apparently this works great in Linux and they have released a Mac port of it which can support up to OpeGL 4.6, further reading shows people who have attempted to compile and install the Zink driver have done so successfully however they haven't been able to make any apps work with the Zink Driver, this implementation is probably some time away from actually working on Mac universally, demos shown of Open GL apps and games on Linux play very well !

The report is there is a few bugs in compiling as its a multiple step process, there is no GUI or installer for this and instructions for Mac are limited - but there is progress which is slow but progress none the less. This will be really good when Apple absolutely remove OpenGL on the OS as this translation will allow OpenGL Apps to run in future Mac OS Releases without native Open GL implementation, for now I think its early stages and they are ironing out the bugs.

Someone who is more developer savvy than me could probably have a go at compiling the Zink Driver, Molten VK is pretty easy to install from terminal through Brew, as there's no clear documentation for running the multiple apps to compile Zink and my lack of understanding developer lingo to piece it all together, the search continues for instructions and more importantly - time to tinker !!  

 

The Below image should have another arrow under Vulkan with a box for Metal API  for Mac Implementation