Dear Thortspace … Thortspace is draining my battery, what can I do?
Hi,
I’m using Thortspace both on my Laptop, a MacBook Air, and on my iPad. On the laptop, the battery level drops like a stone every time I switch on the Thortspace app. It drains at about 3–4 times the usual speed — no other app has this affect on my laptop.
Secondly, it seems to me that the laptop gets much hotter to use — I don’t think it is my imagination — it’s as if it is having to work so hard that it is heating up.
Is there a way of turning anything off that will slow the very rapid degradation of the battery and cool down the MacBook Air?
Thank you very much for the feedback. There is quite a bit going on here, so I’ll aim to take it one piece at a time.
The drain on the battery is unfortunately a consequence of Thortspace being a 3D app. We are always looking for ways to improve the performance of Thortspace, but the large majority of apps that deliver 3D graphics will tend to make a lot of use of all the hardware that your device or laptop or desktop has available.
So one thing to check is that you have the latest version of Thortspace installed on your device or desktop: https://www.thortspace.com/main/get-thortspace-app/
Another thing to check is that you have the latest version of your operating system installed, and the latest version of whatever graphics device software is available for your your graphics device — this particularly relevant on Windows devices and desktops.
One thing that would certainly reduce the battery consumption for Apps that are producing a lot of graphics would be to reduce the screen resolution (and therefore the number of pixels that have to be calculated and rendered). But I’m not sure how you or we could realistically take advantage of this.
In general the large majority of software that use 3D graphics will use more battery than other apps. The tech words are CPU and GPU but the bottom line is that all 3D apps make hardware do lots of work, and this means they will draw power from the battery and while the device is working harder it will also warm up.
Some hardware is able to cope better with this, and some not so well. And over the next couple of years, as hardware improves, it is likely to become a less significant issue for people. Effective “Augmented Reality” experiences will all involve 3D graphics, so if the hardware can’t cope with them it simply won’t exist.
I found a few links where issues in this ballpark are being discussed… some of these may be more relevant, some less relevant:
I’m only mentioning this to say that there could be some things that could be done under some related circumstances that may improve something, but there seems to be some suggestion here that updating the OS version could improve something in some cases on some Mac hardware:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sierra-killing-battery-life.2005822/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3157392/laptop-computers/tested-the-truth-behind-the-macbook-pros-terrible-battery-life.html?page=2
I found this link which discusses how well the Macbook air performs for “Gaming”. The reason this is significant is that game software tends to use the same approaches and use of hardware that Thortspace uses. One of the primary things that is innovative about Thortspace is that we have taken the use of game technologies and applied them to create a solution to business, productivity and educational needs.
https://www.quora.com/How-good-is-the-2016-MacBook-air-for-gaming
