KSP With MacBook Air 11 Inch?

[cutlercollin99]

Hello. I am moving to a new high school where they give you 11 inch Apple MacBook Air. I love playing KSP on my parents iMac and is works well. When school starts and I get the laptop, they expect me to play it on there. I do not knoe the exact year but I can estimate that it will be around early 2012- late 2014. Does that laptop have the power to run KSP? Would I need any texture reduction mods to help? I like to play with mods too, so would i need to stop playing with them in order for the laptop to run KSP? I apreciate all advice on the matter. Thanks a lot.

Collin

[Clouds]

early 2012- late 2014

That's quite a wide range. It makes it harder to answer your question because the speed of the Intel graphics chip got a lot better during those 3 years. A late 2014 would do OK (with low-medium quality settings), an early 2012 would be pretty slow, and in the middle will be...in the middle.

As far as mods go, that will depend a lot on how much RAM the specific laptop has. Most were made with 4GB, which will work best with only a few mods at a time. If it's one that was custom-ordered with 8GB RAM, it will be OK.

The MacBook Air, since it is thin, doesn't keep itself cool very well. Sometimes people even reported that it automatically has to slow its speed down temporarily to keep from getting too hot. If you can get a cooling pad with fans to use when playing KSP, that might be a good idea.

[stibbons]

I have a late 2013 11" Air, with the base (slowest) i5 processor and RAM bumped to 8GB. Only really run KSP for testing plugin code I'm writing. My install is currently stock + hyperedit.

The first important thing to note is that the video card uses shared RAM. Mine claims to dynamically allocate RAM, up to 1.5GB from my 8 total. If you're running with the 4GB that was standard on this model, then that will heavily eat in to how much is available for the game. I'd be surprised if video and OS overhead left more than 3GB for KSP.

I've decreased render quality to simple and texture quality to quarter res. The game seems playable with these settings but probably sluggish. I'm looking at the game running fullscreen on the internal display with a Kerbal 2 in Mun orbit, and the physics rendering is flickering in to the yellow range occasionally.

[Fisk02]

I use a similar macbook air and i don´t need any special add-ons that makes sure my laptop don´t explodes in an inferno of naked space men...

[cutlercollin99]

I apreciate everything from you guys. Thanks for everything!

[Aaronfinch123]

im planning on buying an 11 inch 2013 macbook air

im mostly going to use it for gaming on Kerbal Space Program and properly Roblox.

im also going to use it for imovie and whatching youtube videos sometimes but i will likely use my iPad for that instead.

[jwenting]

It runs pretty decently on my 2014 MacBook Air, but I've not installed any mods on it except for KER. Planning to try some, not gotten around to it yet.

Expect no miracles though, you won't be able to run at max resolution and all the graphics options turned up.