Trainz with Apple Big Sur 11.0.1

ancall

New member
My poor old MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) runs Apple's Big Sur 11.0.1 without protest.

TANE SP4 is (still) barely playable on the least challenging settings so I never bothered upgrading to later editions.

What is your Trainz experience on Big Sur and newer Macbook models. I am planning to upgrade so running Trainz would be a plus!
 
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TANE SP4 is still running? My MacBook is running Catalina, only because of minimal storage, but other than that, ehh...
 
My poor old MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) runs Apple's Big Sur 11.0.1 without protest.

TANE SP4 is (still) barely playable on the least challenging settings so I never bothered upgrading to later editions.

What is your Trainz experience on Big Sur and newer Macbook models. I am planning to upgrade so running Trainz would be a plus!

Time for me to raise my head up, I was looking for something else about macs. What CPU is in your Mac?

If you open terminal and type "sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string", it will tell you (came from this page https://osxdaily.com/2011/07/15/get-cpu-info-via-command-line-in-mac-os-x/ )
I'm having no problems with my recently acquired 2015 Macbook Air (which was my sisters that I brought off ebay), seems to run TRS2019 on low with no issues but its running Catalina at the moment, going for the jump to Big Sur as soon as TRS2019 has finished downloading.
Interestingly, I fitted my MBA with a 512GB PCI-E based SSD which was hell to install, that seems to of increased performance considerably. The original SSD wasn't that fast by the looks of it.

For the record, mine is a core i5-5250U.
 
Also, I updated my Mac to Big Sur, and TANE is running fine. It seems to run better on Big Sur than on Catalina, maybe because of a better processor, I dunno.
 
Mac Specs

Time for me to raise my head up, I was looking for something else about macs. What CPU is in your Mac?

If you open terminal and type "sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string", it will tell you (came from this page https://osxdaily.com/2011/07/15/get-cpu-info-via-command-line-in-mac-os-x/ )
I'm having no problems with my recently acquired 2015 Macbook Air (which was my sisters that I brought off ebay), seems to run TRS2019 on low with no issues but its running Catalina at the moment, going for the jump to Big Sur as soon as TRS2019 has finished downloading.
Interestingly, I fitted my MBA with a 512GB PCI-E based SSD which was hell to install, that seems to of increased performance considerably. The original SSD wasn't that fast by the looks of it.

For the record, mine is a core i5-5250U.

Thanks for your reply,

My Macbook Pro is 8GB with
Intel (R) Core(TM) i5-528U CPU @2.90GHz and GPU is Intel Iris 6100.
The Intel Iris 6100 benchmarks at 527. The minimum spec for Trainz 2019 of Radeon 555 which benchmarks at 1115 see
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html. For the record, the minimum spec for TANE was just Intel Iris. Interesting you got a better result with a new SSD, maybe that means the disk is a bottleneck.

TANE SP4 runs on Big Sur with the lowest performance and GPU settings but its not a good experience. Unsurprisingly, not noticeably better or worse than previous MacOS editions.

I look forward to hearing about the new Apple M1 Macs as look like they would eat this for breakfast!

Cheers
 

Thanks for your reply,

My Macbook Pro is 8GB with
Intel (R) Core(TM) i5-528U CPU @2.90GHz and GPU is Intel Iris 6100.
The Intel Iris 6100 benchmarks at 527. The minimum spec for Trainz 2019 of Radeon 555 which benchmarks at 1115 see
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html. For the record, the minimum spec for TANE was just Intel Iris. Interesting you got a better result with a new SSD, maybe that means the disk is a bottleneck.

TANE SP4 runs on Big Sur with the lowest performance and GPU settings but its not a good experience. Unsurprisingly, not noticeably better or worse than previous MacOS editions.

I look forward to hearing about the new Apple M1 Macs as look like they would eat this for breakfast!

Cheers

i posted the verge review for the m1 mac mini on a separate thread, anandtech also has a great in depth review, I think the mini will run trainz ok, the M1 gpu seems a big improvement , but they are limited in ram to 16gb,
 


My Macbook Pro is 8GB with
Intel (R) Core(TM) i5-528U CPU @2.90GHz and GPU is Intel Iris 6100.
....
For the record, the minimum spec for TANE was just Intel Iris. Interesting you got a better result with a new SSD, maybe that means the disk is a bottleneck.

TANE SP4 runs on Big Sur with the lowest performance and GPU settings but its not a good experience. Unsurprisingly, not noticeably better or worse than previous MacOS editions.


ITs what I noticed for system performance although don't take it as conclusive, I can't say for certain as the SSD I am using is a regular PCIE based SSD from a PC (In fact, an Intel one) with a converter. However, that isn't the be all end all of performance. If I had Parallels running as well, it would be a sure way for poor performance. And that my Air sees not much use. Maybe you have a thermal issue and the fans need a clean.
Interestingly, TANE ran quite well on my 2012 MBP 15" on both GF card and the Intel card.

Also, check your CPU :) That points to a first gen Core i5. I mostly use PC's to run Trainz as I have a greater collection of PCs with mostly intel intergrated graphics chips, I have a few others like a couple of "Workstation" laptops (CAD cards in them), thin clients which I use daily, Toughbooks and various other types of laptops/tablets. Interestingly, only one Chromebook and one computer using Linux.

i posted the verge review for the m1 mac mini on a separate thread, anandtech also has a great in depth review, I think the mini will run trainz ok, the M1 gpu seems a big improvement , but they are limited in ram to 16gb,

I have thought about buying one, but my question will be:
- How well would it run Vbox or other virtualisation software? I'm tied to 3D Studio Max to make all my rolling stock with, currently do that remotely at the moment, so I don't have any data loss problems through theft.
- How well will it run Trainz?
- How well will it run any other game?
It would also be interesting to see how well 3DS Max renders on the Apple M1 through emulation/virtualisation compared to a normal Windows laptop :)
 
ITs what I noticed for system performance although don't take it as conclusive, I can't say for certain as the SSD I am using is a regular PCIE based SSD from a PC (In fact, an Intel one) with a converter. However, that isn't the be all end all of performance. If I had Parallels running as well, it would be a sure way for poor performance. And that my Air sees not much use. Maybe you have a thermal issue and the fans need a clean.
Interestingly, TANE ran quite well on my 2012 MBP 15" on both GF card and the Intel card.

Also, check your CPU :) That points to a first gen Core i5. I mostly use PC's to run Trainz as I have a greater collection of PCs with mostly intel intergrated graphics chips, I have a few others like a couple of "Workstation" laptops (CAD cards in them), thin clients which I use daily, Toughbooks and various other types of laptops/tablets. Interestingly, only one Chromebook and one computer using Linux.



I have thought about buying one, but my question will be:
- How well would it run Vbox or other virtualisation software? I'm tied to 3D Studio Max to make all my rolling stock with, currently do that remotely at the moment, so I don't have any data loss problems through theft.
- How well will it run Trainz?
- How well will it run any other game?
It would also be interesting to see how well 3DS Max renders on the Apple M1 through emulation/virtualisation compared to a normal Windows laptop :)
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/18/m1-macs-can-now-run-windows-apps-and-games-through-crossover-20/
 
Trainz runs on Big Sur just fine. I posted a thread a while back. TANE and Trainz 2019. Both on my 2014 Mac Mini.
 
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