Hello. I am a new user of View3dScene on my Macbook pro. I like it’s performances right now, but I was just noticing one thing:
I was just looking at my System Report application list on my Mac OS Mojave and noticed that one of the few 32-bit applications was View3DScene.
What I was wondering is whether a 64-bit version of View3DScene will be ready when Catalina is rolled out on Apple computers.
I find this program runs more smoothly than Instant Player, which I also have but which is loaded with bugs. So it would be nice to have View3DScene around when the bit 64-bit switch comes.
Yes, we will be ready for macOS Catalina, i.e. we will have view3dscene 64-bit release. If for some reason view3dscene 64-bit will not be released by September 2019 (when Catalina should be released, according to Wikipedia), please ping me and I’ll do it in “priority mode”
Details:
Currently view3dscene is 32-bit, because on macOS it is using Lazarus LCL ( https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ ), and Lazarus had poor support for Cocoa (a GUI widgetset that works on 64-bit) a ~year ago but excellent support for Carbon (that is limited to 32-bit). So I decided to stick with Carbon, until Cocoa support in LCL is improved, and thus view3dscene release is 32-bit on macOS now.
Two things may happen to enable view3dscene 64-bit on macOS:
Either Lazarus improves Cocoa support, including supporting TOpenGLControl for Cocoa. This has possibly already happened, I admittedly didn’t run latest Lazarus (from SVN) on macOS since ~2-3 months.
Or we (in Castle Game Engine) implement a “backend” for our CastleWindow unit that opens a window using Cocoa. Thus we avoid using Lazarus LCL at all. It’s similar to how we work on Linux (where we use GTK directly, instead of indirectly by LCL) or Windows (where we use WinAPI directly, instead of indirectly by LCL).
So, basically, if AD 1 doesn’t happen soon enough (assuming it did not happen already) then I will do AD 2
I’m a user of view3dscene on MacOS, and have not found any binaries that work on the current 64-bit only systems. This was one reason I delayed updating my OS for a while, but eventually I had to give in. It has been a bit more than two years since the last update, is there still a plan to produce this version?
I see there is also an open issue on github for the same topic:
Yes, we even had mac 64-bit version of view3dscene updated at one point, it was tested on Catalina. It wasn’t regularly updated (by Jenkins) though.
I’ll need to regain access to my mac machine (should be next week) at then I’ll set it up so that you have latest view3dscene snapshorts (on view3dscene | Castle Game Engine ) available for mac soon I will write here when it’s done.
Sorry it’s taking so long – I do not have access to a mac machine now. I’m trying to organize one, so that I can resume testing on macs (both for manual building, and automatic building using Jenkins). I should get it in January.
P.S. If you, or anyone else interested in mac compatibility of Castle Game Engine / view3dscene, has access to a working server with macOS, and can spare some resources by giving me access to the macOS server (e.g. though VNC or RDP) that would be much appreciated
macOS app bundle is not signed (for now). For the first time, you have to run it by clicking with right mouse button, choosing “Open” from the context menu, and then accepting to run unsigned application. Next time you can run as usual, by just double-clicking on the application.
I will write here when it’s done.