Board index FlightGear Support Hardware

Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Joysticks, pedals, monitors.

Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:11 am

I wanna buy a refurbished iMac from 2013 or 2015, still don't know which I choose. This has to do with whether it is suitable for Flight Gear or not. So which iMac from 2013 or 2015 have good specs? May also be a Mac Mini that is newer than 2012 as I now have a Mac Mini from late 2012.
I want some advice from other iMac users. Thanks.
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby V12 » Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:22 am

Hard to answer without specifications of that machines.
In general, You will need 8 GB RAM, nVidia GPU with 1 GB and minimal 2 cores CPU with highest available frequency. You can use lower specs, but FG will be compromited by visibility ranges, visual quality, low framerate etc.
Try to avoid AMD GPUs, they are troublemakers in FG.
Macs are overpriced, look for some gamers refurbished laptops.
I used FG on Dell Precission M4600 with i5 2 cores 2.5GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM and AMD 5950 FirePro GPU, that was reasonable config for decent low level flying with C172, or supersonic flights in very high altitudes and visibility 120 km with Concorde. For more realistic upper visibility more than 200 km You will need 32 GB RAM.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:17 pm

I saw a Mac Mini 2018 with this specs:

Intel QuadCore i3 3,6 GHz
Intel UHD Graphics 630 videocard
RAM 8 GB
128 GB SSD

Is this fine with Flight Gear also?
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby legoboyvdlp » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:45 pm

Unfortunately not really. The CPU is fairly good but an Intel 600 series GPU will have a lot of difficulty. You really need a Nividia or AMD dedicated card to have acceptable performance.

I would suggest not buying a Mac as they tend to be overpriced and poorly performing :D
User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:50 pm

No option for me. Period.
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby enrogue » Thu Oct 08, 2020 5:19 pm

It depends on what video settings you want to have

I have an iMac 21" late 2013 Core i5 with GT750M 1GB - its capable of running Flightgear, but not on the highest settings - not made great by macOS mishandling of DDS textures either.

I have tested Flightgear on a Kaby Lake Intel i5 NUC running Linux with HD620 (the generation before the UHD630), and it runs surprisingly well - just not on the highest settings - a 2018 mac mini running macOS should be similar

The intel HD/UHD graphics run better with more (& faster) ram as well - whatever ram is needed by the GPU for textures is taken dynamically from the OS

It depends on your budget really
User avatar
enrogue
 
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon May 19, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: London (UK)
Callsign: enrogue
OS: Ubuntu, macOS

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby Hooray » Thu Oct 08, 2020 5:45 pm

You might want to check back with the devel mailing list:


https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... /37066492/
James Turner (leading core developer/Mac based) wrote:
when i try to install FG 2018 3.5 on IMAC middle 2010 ( OS 10.6.8 ), at the end verification install this message appears :
"flightGear 2018 3.5 no switchable document system”
Haha that machine is archeology. No chance to run FlightGear 2018.3. Maybe there’s some ancient build around on a server which might run?

Kind regards,
James



https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... /37009959/
James wrote:Use 2018.3.5 or 2020.1, both of which have been updated to work on Catalina. Any other version *at all*, including 2019.x or 2018.3.4, will produce this warning.

This is why there was a large delay in producing releases late last year - Gene and I had to reinstall the macOS build slave form scratch, running Catalina, to get the latest Apple code-signing tools, and generate new binaries with the correct options set.

Kind regards,
James
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
Hooray
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 10:16 pm

enrogue wrote in Thu Oct 08, 2020 5:19 pm:It depends on what video settings you want to have

I have an iMac 21" late 2013 Core i5 with GT750M 1GB - its capable of running Flightgear, but not on the highest settings - not made great by macOS mishandling of DDS textures either.

I have tested Flightgear on a Kaby Lake Intel i5 NUC running Linux with HD620 (the generation before the UHD630), and it runs surprisingly well - just not on the highest settings - a 2018 mac mini running macOS should be similar

The intel HD/UHD graphics run better with more (& faster) ram as well - whatever ram is needed by the GPU for textures is taken dynamically from the OS

It depends on your budget really


The Mac Mini I describe have 8 gb ram.
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby enrogue » Thu Oct 08, 2020 11:34 pm

Yeah well 8GB is really the minimum with integrated graphics - it is possible to upgrade the 2018 mac mini ram (see iFixit)

I have to say my experience with the Intel HD4000/HD520/HD620/UHD630 GPUs is all on Linux - the drivers have gotten better over time & are probably the best supported open source
driver for linux (AMD ones are getting better). I've no idea how well they are supported on macOS as my iMac has an Nvidia GPU, which is NOT well supported on macOS due to an argument between Apple & NVidia (all apple gpus now are AMD or Intel)

Think carefully before you buy - a NUC would be smaller & cheaper for a similar spec (just running Windows or Linux though)
User avatar
enrogue
 
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon May 19, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: London (UK)
Callsign: enrogue
OS: Ubuntu, macOS

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby V12 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:16 am

My experience with Intel GPU is not very good. FG is nicely flyable only when You turn off landmass, transition and overlay shaders. But without that 3 shaders FG looks very poor. Old nVidia GTX 750 is far better choice.
If You can, try refurbished workstation class laptop with Quadro 2000 (K1000M is bit slow) or FireGL GPU.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 11:40 am

Ok, I find an Imac 21,1 retina 4k with 3,1 Ghz Intel core i5, 8gb ram and a Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 1536 MB and a 1TB HDD. Is this model good for FG?
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby enrogue » Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:46 pm

Theres some info & a comparison of the Iris Pro 6200 here

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iri ... 593.0.html
User avatar
enrogue
 
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon May 19, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: London (UK)
Callsign: enrogue
OS: Ubuntu, macOS

Re: Which iMac from 2013 or 2015 are good for FG?

Postby erwin969 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 1:36 pm

Ok, so that seems ok for FG what I read. But it's not a SSD drive, that's a bummer but I don't know if this really a must for second hand iMac's. Ok, it's faster and have a longer lifetime.
erwin969
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:09 am


Return to Hardware

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests