OSX Stability - Whats normal?

[Leopard]

Hopefully quick one, having played on the Xbox for a couple of weeks I've downloaded this for the mac (macbook air), has 4G ram, enough disc space and the game will start (mostly).

Seems amazingly unstable though, easily upset, say by clicking a button in one of the tutorials or indeed selecting a tutorial.

System:

- Macbook air, 4GB ram, 128GB SSD, OSX 10.11.6, 1.6GHz i5, intel HD graphics 6000 1536MB, 1366x768 display

Ok that aside, what have I tried so far:

- cranked every graphics setting I can find to minimum

- tried full screen and windowed

- tried changing the screen size

- had the activity monitor open, doesn't seem to be running out of ram - this is when the application just opens so hopefully its not loaded too much to fill the ram.

- no other applications running, other than the usual background stuff you as a user have little control over.

 

Observed issues so far:

- random crashes, not found anything that is repeatable, just the basic flight tutorial as an example (the flea playing lawn dart), sometimes can complete, sometimes crashes part way through (with and without any control inputs occurring), sometimes the tutorial starts then just dies, and sometimes even selecting the button to pick the tutorial from the list kills it.

- cooling fan is at full power, guessing this is normal though as have had a few games do that, on the plus side in winter will cut down the heating bill

 

Had a look through the forums, mentions a checking permissions on ksp_osx, which I can't find (where does this directory end up?) as sorting that seems the next step to try.

Also mentions downloading an add on to manage graphic textures, clicking the link in the program crashed it the first time, the second time it opened a safari window _then_ crashed, managing to corrupt the desktop screen so its a graphics issue of some sort I'm guessing. Question though, once I download the add on, where do I put it?

 

Guessing since people do play this that such issues can be managed or mitigated, just need a few ideas on where to start to keep this running for more than the two-three minutes which is the record currently.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Leopard
Added system specs

[tater]

I could try loading it up on my air and check maybe later tonight. I have it on an iMac (i7), and it's pretty stable.

[Leopard]

Cheers for anything, it figures that this programme cannot be too unstable or no one would play it, so has to be an issue of some sort that can be fixed this end.

I blame all the lycra clad type in Brazil, Mrs L wants to watch bits for reasons I cannot fathom, and as such I can't get my evening fix of very definitely not putting little green guys and girls in any form of danger whatsoever.

Aware the macbook air may not be ideal for this, mostly down to the small screen, but hoping to use it to we generally muck about in. Would have something larger but for the lack of space to put it in.

Will stick with it, the game is worth the effort

 

cheers.

[Liquid]

I see the problem, you probably saw the minimum requirement of 3GB RAM and thought your 4GB machine should be more than good enough. Unfortunately, you didn't take into account the nature of integrated GPUs like the Intel HD 6000.

 

VRAM means video RAM, basically just memory reserved for graphics/video operations.

When you have a discrete GPU like the one that slots into a desktop machine, or the ones found in higher-end MacBook Pros, they use dedicated VRAM on separate GDDR memory chips on/near the GPU board/chip itself, faster than and separate to the main RAM.

When you have something like the Intel HD graphics 6000 1536MB, the 1536MB part refers to the 1.5GB of your main RAM that it's using as VRAM. So your 4GB of RAM, minus the 1.5GB that the Intel iGPU uses as video memory, equals 2.5GB, which leaves you 0.5GB under the minimum requirement. Considering that the OS itself also needs memory, you probably have less than 2GB left to play with, and that's probably the source of your crashing.

As is the trade-off with such thin/light machines, MacBook Airs have everything and it's uncle soldered to the motherboard, so there's no way to change the CPU or RAM (shoulda went with the 8GB one). The game only needs 512MB of VRAM, so your best bet would be getting the iGPU to allocate less RAM as VRAM, but as far as I know there's no supported, official way to change this (though there may be unofficial ways to do it): https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT204349

Integrated GPUs use shared memory (from RAM)	Discrete GPUs use dedicated memory

 

 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Liquid

[Leopard]

Ahhhh, interesting, expected problems with more complex stuff but thought the basics would work. Will have to see if there is anything I can do.

 

admit I'm used to seeing system specs that consider this sort of thing. I.e. If it says 3GB that assumes that's 3GB in a machine physically but also assumes the OS is loaded

 

ho hum.

will give a few things a try but if that fails will be trying for a refund 

[tater]

I just DLed it to my laptop. I have the same macbook air I think (early 2015 i5). Launched a career, flew first mission. Fan running immediately, but it works.

Training worked, too.

Edited August 15, 2016 by tater

[Leopard]

Weird, tried again tonight, no joy, few minutes, crash, if it even starts.

unlucky I guess, never mind, refund request in and back to the eggbox.

pity, for a few minutes I even had an aging joystick working with it which is oh so much nicer to fly with.

guessing it's a memory shortage of conflicting with something, either way life is too short when I could be flying on the telly

cheers for the help and good luck to those who have it working

[Kerbal101]

Get a thermal monitoring program (to watch APU temperatures) and get software like CPU burn.

Start and watch your CPU temps. They should not exceed the thermal room, which can be for Intel found on their ARK site.

If this is the case, you probably need to renew the thermal paste and replace the fans or oil them and clean the laptop.

 

I had stability issues with Xeon x5647 until I replaced the Scythe 12cm slim silent fan with a regular(!) one, which trippled the airflow (CFM). It worked fine with AMD Phenom II 945, but the airflow was way too weak for Xeon.

[GDJ]

You may have to run KSP with lower graphics settings. First I would drop everything graphics-wise down to the minimum and run KSP that way. If it doesn't crash, then try bringing up the settings a little bit. On my old iMac I found dropping the anti-aliasing and syncing completely stopped alot of my gameplay issues. Shaders take up alot of GPU processing, so you might want to back that off a bit too.

Everything else about your computer looks fine.

If I can run KSP v1.2 with a early 2008 iMac with integrated graphics, 4Gigs of RAM, and my cooling fans can keep both the Penryn CPU and GPU at 38C then you should be able to do circles around me easily. 

Edited October 15, 2016 by GDJ