Magic Music Visuals

Hello all,

I was trying your app out tonight on a 2012 retina mac and the frame rate in full screen avg's between 2-6 fps. In windowed mode it is better but if i enlage the window it drops significantly. this macbook has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

Is there any way to improve the frame rate?

Thanks!

The frame rate depends on a lot of factors . The most relevant hardware factors are the display resolution and the speed/memory of the graphics card. The most relevant software factors (in Magic) are the graphics window size, the graphics rendering resolution, and the complexity of the scene being displayed. Other things are important too, like how many applications are running on your system -- you should exit as many as possible.

When your frame rate dropped significantly in fullscreen mode, what kind of scene were you working on? Was it completely empty, or were there a lot of modules in it?

The issue with Retina displays, especially the older ones, is that they are "underpowered". If you Google around a bit, you'll find posts like this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/66 ... 0&tstart=0. The Retina displays have very high resolutions, so even with a fancy graphics card, they can still go slow when trying to render graphics, especially in fullscreen mode.

The simplest way to improve your frame rate is to lower your display resolution (in System Preferences > Display). If you choose the "Scaled" option, and select a lower resolution, Magic will run faster. But, it will also look more blurry/pixelated. It's up to you to decide if the tradeoff is worthwhile.

Another thing you can try is lowering Magic's graphics resolution (Window > Magic Window Options > Graphics Resolution). This is the internal resolution at which the graphics are rendered. It won't be as much an improvement as the overall display resolution, but it's a good compromise if you don't want to change the display resolution.

Let me know if those things help at all.

thanks for your reply, I tried it on an older Mac Pro with a NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 1536 MB card and the frame rate is MUCH better. I will try your suggestions on my laptop though, much appreciated!