So I would like to delve into learning cry engine, the machine I have is the new MacBook Pro retina. 2.6ghz i7, 16gb ddr3 ram, 256gb ssd, and whatever graphics card, nvidia something
If I bootcamp install windows 8 or 7… Would it run okay? Has anyone done the same on a mac?
Thanks for any information
the machine itself in Bootcamp is fine - the problem is Windows’ lack of support for retina screens. It’s going to be a tiny UI with a huge viewport. maybe someone’s figured out some hacks or UI configuration tools to make it work better by now - dunno. But Cryengine itself won’t have any problems running on such new hardware.
Bear with me for a second, honest question here, but how is it MS’s fault for not supporting Retina? And how does Retina even need specific OS support to begin with?
Retina isn’t anything special, it’s just high pixel density. I have a 16:9 2.5k monitor at home (afaik the mbp 13 is a 16:10 2.5k) that with no drivers or anything was perfectly fine the moment I hot swapped it from my older one in.
There’s nothing in win7 or 8 that would “not support” retina displays, which are pretty standard panel with a pretty standard interface, unless boot camp is doing something odd.
I also have to say I hadn’t heard of any problems in those regards, I see plenty MBPs running win7 without windowing crap oddly.
A couple reviews of gaming on retina display and bootcamp don’t seem to outline anything odd:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/03/macbook-pro-retina-display-windows-games/
http://blog.laptopmag.com/windows-7-tested-on-retina-display-macbook-pro-how-good-is-it
OGL and DX apps would definitely not be an issue.
Some apps don’t have the ability to quite work or render with such high resolutions to their best (for a while Chrome was in that bin), but that’s nothing to do with windows and all to do with old, or unforesightful apps. Plenty people have 2.5k monitors with no issues.
it’s MS’ issue that there’s no way to set a high-density display to use anything but the whole display, meaning menus and text are tiny. They’ll do it eventually but OS X has multiple options for how you want your GUI scaled or not for high-PPI screens:
It’s not going to be much fun squinting reading an as-is menu on a 2880x1800 15-inch screen in Windows. I have a 2011 17" MBP and even that is squinty at 1920x1200.
games will run fine but anything like UDK or Cryengine kit that uses widgets and text will be tiny without added support in Windows. I covered this plenty in a recent review of Parallels Desktop and VMWare, if you’re interested.
For some reason I misread your “tiny ui with a huge viewport” as a tiny view, and thought you meant it would have been surface cropped.
That said, win actually does have support for larger UI rendering (albeit limited to a couple settings only, 125% and 150% I think), and it works fairly well on most apps, but not every app out there is written to support such things. While the API could be better, and there could be more options, this is no different from what Apple offers (with more options).
In the case of something like game engines and apps with their own widgets, that simply doesn’t apply, as they either don’t use the standard widgets, or use appropriate dx calls provided for app scaling already.
Win8, which has to cope with more formats with the whole tablet thing, does even better than win7, but again, not every app takes advantage of it.
I have my uhwga monitor at 125% for the record, and it renders every app I use just fine, except those that use their own widgets instead of something like a recent Qt (IE: Softimage’s menus).
Some icons (which again is on the dev side of things) scale ugly because there is no large enough or multisize one provided, but I can’t say it matters much.
You’re laying at MS’ feet the whole issue, when it’s actually 80% on the app developers’ side. Win has provided facilities to deal with this for years now, and their own products using the same framework show it works well (as do other products). Again, could be better, but saying it’s missing entirely is wrong.
control panel > hardware > display | small, medium , larger.
i’m pretty sure there’s more options available for the UI settings… or even replacements like rainmeter.
Hey guys, thanks for all this information, really helped, I will just give it a go and see how it looks/handles… I find the retina screen looks gorgeous with general things but when it comes to software that doesn’t support it, it sort of kills the experience but software like maya looks generally looks fine, and its worth it for the hardware, handles amazingly with the flash storage…
Anyway thanks again guys
this scrolled across my screen this morning… just incase you got win8:
i think theres similar ways in win7 to do this too… just gotta google a bit.
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