Edit Cone of Vision / Multiview still not working in 9.2.3 (build A4CE)

[3dworks]

As soon as I enter one of the 2 modes, picking of objects and zooming, panning or scrolling do not work. This has been for a few versions now, nobody seems to care to fix it?

Running on MacPro early 2009, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080, MacOS High Sierra 10.13.9, latest (and last) Nvidia drivers for Mac.

[Tech]

This is a known issue specific to macOS High Sierra that causes this behavior with OpenGL contexts that share data and are displayed in the same window as with Edit Cone of Vision and Multi-view. We have spent a lot of time looking for a workaround for this limitation without any success. 

The unfortunate reality is that future releases for form•Z will no longer support macOS High Sierra as Apple's own advances make it impossible to support these older systems (and hence hardware).

 

 

[3dworks]

3 hours ago, Tech said:

This is a known issue specific to macOS High Sierra that causes this behavior with OpenGL contexts that share data and are displayed in the same window as with Edit Cone of Vision and Multi-view. We have spent a lot of time looking for a workaround for this limitation without any success. 

The unfortunate reality is that future releases for form•Z will no longer support macOS High Sierra as Apple's own advances make it impossible to support these older systems (and hence hardware).

Thank you for answering. I am using High Sierra uniquely because the new version of FZ is not ready yet for M1 processors. My old Macs do not support Nvidia hardware in any MacOS later than High Sierra.

3 hours ago, Tech said:

 

 

 

[¢hris £und]

3dw,

I am running 9.2.3 on an M1max with 64 GB RAM.   Everything is running fine for me.  The only thing that I notice is, on complicated projects the OGL is laggy.  Or, when you show points, directions or normals, things can get laggy

 

But, I too am looking forward to a native build.

 

¢£

[3dworks]

I agree for small projects, like simple objects. But unfortunately, all of my projects are quite complex and working on M1 is not possible, as all operations are too laggy. Even simple viewport adjustements are taking too long, in the attached example a panning with the "hand" tool takes 20/30  seconds between each movement. I'm expecting a big jump in quality (hopefully with new shading modes as well)  and speed for the metal version of FZ.

[¢hris £und]

Point taken!  My projects tend to be more on a single but detailed item.  Not full scenes.

 

¢£

[ZTEK]

3dworks,

Did you try one of the shaded modes without edges?

This problem relates to Open GL and the real-time display of graphical information. Clearly, the most affected display mode is Wireframe, and you cannot use this mode when there are too many objects on your project. It doesn't work, period. With Shaded Full or Shaded Work, the problem becomes apparent when the edges display is enabled, and even Shaded Work can be slower than Shaded Full, depending on the settings.

I don't use the Edit Cone of Vision tool because its display mode is Wireframe, but amplified and multiplied for 3 screens, plus one in shaded mode. For this reason, I got used to using the Navigation Tools and the View Parameters palette editing the parameters numerically to generate my views.

I always like to work in Shaded Full with visible edges, using anti-aliasing, 2x multisampling, a single ambient light at 100%, and textures at 512 pixels. I never use shadows, bump mapping, or ambient occlusion and only activate these parameters to generate and save images for presentation purposes. The other Display Options are not very significant. In addition, I only use the endpoint, midpoint, and face center snaps, and I activate the others only temporarily when necessary.

I use several workarounds if the responsiveness is too slow with too many objects in the scene. The most important is to switch from Shaded Full to Shaded Work without edges, with all the other parameters at minimum, and with Hide Gosted activated. I use a keyboard shortcut for this, which is the best to do it automatically and not think about it. I use command+1 for Shaded Full, command+2 for Shaded Work, and command+3 for Wireframe. When working in formZ, my left hand never leaves the keyboard!

Scenes could be helpful too. I use them all the time for different purposes. Recently, I also started using them based on what I'm working on to keep visible what I need only, like a "temp folder" detached from the main structure. It's a new method I'm exploring.

Also, I change the resolution of my 4k monitor to 2k, at 2560x1440, in non-HiDPI (Retina mode), which only helps a little but is noticeable. I use the app SwitchResX for this, with a saved display setting for formZ that makes the change automatically when I launch it. So, again, I don't think about it.

Furthermore, I only use screenshots to save images, and before doing so, I change my monitor resolution back from 2k to 4k in HiDPI mode. Thus, any area of the screen will be captured at 144 PPI, which is sufficient for images in Shaded Full.

formZ 9.2.3, Mac mini M1, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

Edited February 24, 2023 by ZTEK