Posts by philmoz

    I think you're going to be waiting a long time for any Mac updates. IPACS has said nothing for months.


    It looks very much like they have abandoned the Mac platform.


    FS2 on the App store stopped getting any updates 2 years ago even though the Steam version was still updated - at least they offered people a free changeover from the App store to Steam.


    A Mac version of RC8 was never even offered on Steam which is very surprising - if they already have an App store version surely it would not be hard to publish if via Steam as well. The same goes for RC9 - if IPACS were serious about supporting the Mac why not make this available via Steam and offer RC8 App store users a way to move to Steam like what was done with FS2.

    To get this to work on the MacOS version of RC8 I had to rename the folder and .tmd file and change the uppercase 'C' to lowercase.

    The file system on MacOS may be case sensitive depending on the setup.

    As you can see from the screenshot the display is very hard to read.


    All the extra OSD elements under the View menu are rendered very small and hard to read (model settings, flight information etc).


    It would be really nice to have a proper setting to scale all the OSD elements.

    Jet-Pack - there is no 'render scale' setting in RC8 on the Mac. If you mean 'Pixel density' under 'Graphics Settings', then that has no effect on the text size.


    Here's a screenshot of what it looks like on an iMac 5K screen - pixel density was set to 75.


    On an iMac Pro with 5K display it's way too small - really needs to be fixed please.


    A slight workaround to at least be able to read the text is to enable the scroll gesture for zooming in the Settings / Accessibility / Zoom tab.

    Set this to the Control key and you can use the mouse/trackpad + Control key to zoom in on the display where the mouse is located.

    Don't forget to zoom back out to continue flying :)

    In case it helps here are some screen grabs from Xcode Instruments tool with a Metal Trace.


    RC7 - Appears to be double buffered and maintains a steady frame rate aligned with VSync.


    RC8 - Appears to be triple buffered; but the display doesn't seem to be able to maintain a steady rate. VSync alignment looks odd as well.

    I'm seeing screen tearing - visible break where objects and terrain is sheared horizontally (same as reported for FS2).

    Also experiencing stutters where frames appear to be dropped (although FPS counter does not change).


    I appreciate fixing things like this can take time; it's not totally unusable (but not as smooth as RC7).


    One thing is the plane does not appear to be affected, only terrain and objects. Even if the plane is close and quite large it remains stable; but I can see tearing in the background behind it.

    Mac version of RC8 is very disappointing :(


    Looks like it's based on the FS2 code and has the same tearing and stuttering in the display.

    Even at Low & 50% settings the display is not smooth - unlike RC7 which is super smooth even at Ultra 70% on my Mac.

    FPS counter shows a solid 60 frames.


    This is on an iMac Pro with 32GB Ram and Vega 56 GPU - it should really not have these issues.


    At the price being charged this is pretty poor (IMHO).

    Many thanks, these are awesome :)


    There are a couple of issues on the Mac version of FS2 (2.04.11.01):

    - Rutan Long-EZ - crashes the app after selecting the aircraft and pressing the Start button to begin flying.

    - Beechcraft C18S - OK in the air; but on the ground the plane keeps resetting like after a plane crash (rear door starts to open, then plane resets).