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OS X Are you going to play Windows or OS X version of Elite: Dangerous?
- Thread starter steve62388
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It's because when FD were selling early access packs at a higher price than the release version one of the selling points was Beta (and before that Alpha) testing.
If they opened to all some people might be upset. I wouldn't be, more the merrier I say. I suspect this might change in future but we will have to see.
I see - and is it possible to buy the Beta access now or was that only for early adopters? Personally I only became interested in the game when I became aware it would support OS X. I was a HUGE fan of the game on my BBC B many years ago but the thought of having to maintain a Windows environment on my Mac was too much to bear...
I suppose I've waited this long so waiting a few more weeks/months won't matter. FD are missing out though because I'm a professional developer and could offer valuable feedback and detailed bug reports if I had access to the beta. I'm sure they could use as many OS X users as possible.
Thanks,
Craig.
I see - and is it possible to buy the Beta access now or was that only for early adopters? Personally I only became interested in the game when I became aware it would support OS X. I was a HUGE fan of the game on my BBC B many years ago but the thought of having to maintain a Windows environment on my Mac was too much to bear...
I suppose I've waited this long so waiting a few more weeks/months won't matter. FD are missing out though because I'm a professional developer and could offer valuable feedback and detailed bug reports if I had access to the beta. I'm sure they could use as many OS X users as possible.
Thanks,
Craig.
There was talk from FD that they would sell additional Beta access but nothing further has come from it. For this Beta we are in now I would say it's not going to happen, but it could change in the future for other Betas. So far there has been a Beta for each .1 release too, we are currently on 1.2.06.
A bit more on topic: I finally tried the beta. It works, expectedly quite a couple of bugs, and the performance is quite inhomogenous, with framerates ranging from 60 fps to 5 fps on my machine (2012 rMBP with Nvidia GT650M). I have to tinker with the settings a bit more, though. Other Mac users on the Frontier forums have also reported decent performances, even on Intel GPUs.
Is this during normal flight ? Cause during supercruise I remember there's an issue with a huge FPS drop on Windows version too (especially while you are passing near a planet IIRC).
During normal flight, including dogfighting, I get currently around 4050 fps. In supercruise normally around 60 fps, that drops to 2530 fps when approaching planets (that's about the same amount of framerate drop I see under Windows).
Where the framerate really goes badly down is when returning to a station, especially when being inside the station. Oddly enough, when I launch the game and start inside a station, the performance is much better (~20 fps, which is also quite close to what I have under Windows). There must be something going awry when the game tries to load the station's resources again.
It seems daft, but bear in mind some people paid for beta access - to give it away now would probably not be very popular with those people. I'd like to see them offer beta access for sale though.
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For reference, I'm testing on a mid-211 Mac Mini i5, with 4Gb RAM and the Radeon graphics card w/256Mb RAM. I get 50-60 fps with settings on Low, sometimes dropping to 5-20 within stations. Stations are normally around 20 once I've launched and it's settled down a bit. SuperCruise can still be laggy, as with the Windows version, but generally performance is twice that of my i3 laptop with 310M graphics.
And there's a giant bug in Windowed mode when using mouse control, where clicking the mouse to fire when the pointer has moved outside of the window switches focus from ED to Finder. This resulted in swift, firey death.
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I paid £39.99 for access to the game but not for Beta access. So far I've not even played the game because I don't have a windows computer and don't want to have to buy and set up Windows on my Mac.
How much typically did people pay for Beta access? Was it much more than £39.99 (around $60)?
I'm slowly moving all my game play over to my Mac...GOG making available some of their older games to the Mac side is really helping in this.
As simple as it sounds, rebooting into Win7 is just a Pain-in-my-You-Know-What...and waiting for all the updates to download...sheesh...annoying.
As simple as it sounds, rebooting into Win7 is just a Pain-in-my-You-Know-What...and waiting for all the updates to download...sheesh...annoying.
£100. I wasn't too fussed about Beta Access though, what attracted me at that level was free expansions in the future (lifetime if I remember correctly).
It sounds like there is some cool stuff coming in 1.3, which is a free upgrade.
FD has pulled a surprise with Elite: Dangerous appearing on Steam. Presumably the Mac version will follow when it's ready for retail.
I got a bit bored with it and am currently enjoying Kerbal Space Program. I anticipate I'll return to it at some point. It has nice flying fidelity.
Isn't 1GB VRAM needed? Which of Mac mini 2011 Radeon or Mac mini 2011 Quad core i7 is best for the mac client?
If you don't currently have access to the Mac Beta and are interested in getting it you may want to take the poll here:- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=135303
You never know, Frontier may take notice and you may get your wish.
You never know, Frontier may take notice and you may get your wish.
The current version of ED performs better (with higher FPS) under OS X than Windows, it's great to see.
I don't expect this delta to be permanent though. Reading between the lines of various posts by the developers they have introduced optimisations on the OS X version that will be ported to Windows. But it's nice to be the first in line for once!
I don't expect this delta to be permanent though. Reading between the lines of various posts by the developers they have introduced optimisations on the OS X version that will be ported to Windows. But it's nice to be the first in line for once!
Mac version has just been launched. You'll need to install Mono for the launcher to work (as I understand it). Sweeeet.
I'll probably stay playing on Windows unless/until head-tracking is included in the Mac version, but I'll definitely be giving this a run tonight.
I'll probably stay playing on Windows unless/until head-tracking is included in the Mac version, but I'll definitely be giving this a run tonight.
I'll be playing the Mac version but not for a while. I can't justify the time or expense with a lot unplayed games here to get to. I am looking forward to this in time though. It looks great.
i play the mac version and find it perfectly fine for people like me who just want to play elite dangerous without having to have a separate windows rig. the mac version will run on any recent macbook air or pro models, for the folks who want to run it on the go. i have a base model 13" pro from early 2015, and with lower settings I am getting a beautiful game that will run at around 60fps (not sure because I don't have an fps counter installed). Macs aren't the best for gaming, but a MacBook Pro 15" with integrated graphics will probably get the best experience by having ultra details and still run at native res (or as close to it as possible). The only downside to the Mac version is gamepad support. I had to find and Xbox one gamepad driver to just hookup my xbox one controller, then I had to manually setup the controls as there are no gamepad presets on the mac edition. Maybe Frontier will fix this, but with it being almost 2 full years since release, I have my doubts.