List of hardware that is reported to not adequately run Thortspace
Following a message I received today, I am going to start compiling a list of hardware which users report does not adequately run Thortspace (eg. their device starts getting hot).
(In the first instance this list is going to be very short, because it only has today’s report on it. As we collect more reports, the list will presumably get longer.)
Please note that we cannot in general determine whether a reported problem is specific to a particular device (which may, for example have a defective graphics card, or needs its graphics drivers to be updated, or may have been coincidentally misbehaving).
The basic system requirements for Thortspace App software are listed here:
Specific Hardware where we have had reports of problems
Macbook Air from 2013. 1.3 GHz Intel Core i5 processor running Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.3.
I downloaded Thortspace this morning and registered my account. Unfortunately, there is something with the Thortspace application that doesn’t agree with my computer. Without warning, applications started crashing and the hard drive started spinning to where my laptop was getting uncomfortably hot.
Once I quit Thortspace, the computer returned to normal.
I don’t seem to have this issue with other applications so I can only surmise that there is a conflict between Thortspace and my hardware.
Response from our technical support team:
For “hard disk spinning” we probably need to read “graphics card fans spinning”. The Air, especially the older ones, is just plain very weak hardware with even weaker cooling. It isn’t too surprising it gets hot when asked to do any 3D stuff; it prioritised being super ultra thin over almost all other traits, and they tuned it so that when running at full it gets uncomfortably (not… unsafely, but alarmingly to some people) hot rather than making it thicker for more cooling (or accepting even harsher constraints on performance).
Getting TS to work on it better would probably be a matter of detecting it and basically turning down everything we could to reduce load, at the expense of looking as sharp or having as high framerates.
Normally we can just let the system limit us, because the system is tuned to be acceptably behaved when running at full. It’s just the Air and maybe especially the early Airs which scare users when running at full and therefore force software to limit itself instead.
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