BUG: TPA 4.10 and Yosemite, Tables extremely slow.

Hi,

Anyone else having a problem with TPA 4.10 and Yosemite (OS X 10.10)?
All tables and menus are extremely slow.
Impossible to play.

Is there some sort of fix or work around for this?

Korjaajat said:

Hi,

Anyone else having a problem with TPA 4.10 and Yosemite (OS X 10.10)?
All tables and menus are extremely slow.
Impossible to play.

Is there some sort of fix or work around for this?

Click to expand...

I'm having the same problem with my new IMac. The ball keeps slowing down then speeding up. FS is definitely looking into this, but no answers as to when this will be straightened out. I'll be on my iPad untill then.

Version 4.1.1 is still having the same problem.

Slowdown issues with the mac port have been around since October 2013. I'm not holding my breath for a fix from farsight. I just keep hoping that an OS X update or nvidia driver update magically fixes thing

Yeah. I also keep my fingers crossed. I've made a clean install (formatted the drive) of Yosemite and installed the latest version of Pinball Arcade and it still slows down. It's really sad Farsight doesn't seem to care. It would be good if they joined the discussion here.

We most definitely do care. Were the tables playing fine before the yosemite update?

Thanks for visiting the Mac section, Stephen!

There's been a "slowdown" issue since at least Mavericks. It seems to impact users differently though.

As far as I can tell there's also still a frame rate issue related to AA settings - there should be a warning to never mess with those settings on a Mac.

Stephen Snow said:

We most definitely do care. Were the tables playing fine before the yosemite update?

Click to expand...

Stephen, I had sent in an email regarding this previously. Both my 2010 iMac and 2012 MacBook Air were able to run the game without issue with 10.9. The iMac could use full graphics settings, and the Air more reasonable ones, with no problems playing at all. Now, no matter what the settings, both of them, updated with 10.10, exhibit the sporadic slowdowns that others have described for a while. The slowdown is even noticeable when the pinball machine is rendered after selection from the game menu, when no game is in progress, so I would figure that it has something to do with the graphics being rendered.

-John

Thanks for joining Stephen!

Personally I first experienced the intermittent slow-down bug when I bought my new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro Retina (late 2013) last October. The computer which shipped with Mavericks is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and 16 GB RAM.

I have since tried most everything, played around with different settings (in game and OS–like turning on the NVIDIA card all the time) and made fresh reinstalls formatting the harddrive (today I'm running Yosemite). No matter if I turn off post-processing and lower the resolution—it still slows down from time to time. At the same time, my old MacBook Pro from 2008, also running Mavericks (not Yosemite yet) is running the game just fine with post processing turned off. So that's something truly odd.

On affected system the bug will be obvious during a game you play for some minutes but if you only play it for say a minute or so the intermittent slow down will perhaps not have showed up yet. This is important to remember. The game can be ridiculously fast, almost too fast at the lowest settings, but it will still go into slow-motion from time to time. Just for clarity: It's also no problem using the high detail level and post processing on, or anti-alias at a decent level – the game will run just fine until the intermittent slow-downs occur.

Anyway, great to see you here Stephen! Please involve us and keep us informed. Would be great to have this issue solved!

You can also see more of these reports in the forums. Check out threads like:
http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/6924-High-CPU-and-settings/
http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/9113-OSX-Version-4-1-1/page2

I spoke with our OSX guys, and the problem seems to be most definitely linked to Yosemite, we're working on it right now and hope to have it fixed soon. We're not quite sure exactly what happened yet, but we are considering this a high priority.

I sure hope Farsight truly addresses this problem as they say they will. I used to buy each table as they were released, but after the tables became practically unplayable I simply stopped buying them. The real insult is not being able to enjoy the tables that I already did purchase!

LOL

This has been going on since Mavericks. Not just a Yosemite problem.

Megahurtz said:

LOL

This has been going on since Mavericks. Not just a Yosemite problem.

Click to expand...

This is true.

Correct, the bug has been there since Mavericks.

I also used to buy table releases and played the game almost daily. But now I havn't played the game for over a year (besides testing each release in hope for a fix).

Still running 10.8.5

Because of this bug

TPA 4.3.0 no fix yet. I will still keep checking the updates, but I will not play the game like this.

I'm sorry to say that I've just about given up trying to play pinball on a desktop or laptop computer. I'm not convinced a "trouble free" experience is even really obtainable at all. Can it be that's there's just too many background processes that are running to make for an uninterrupted and free-flowing pinball experience? Unfortunately, I've come to this conclusion after spending too much money already trying to play on an iMac. Sure, there's some good days when things seem to go right, but overall things don't go right and the experience has soured me. I've stopped buying tables for OS X and even IOS. I have recently started playing TPA on xBox One. The experience has been nothing short of stellar when compared to computer play. No ball lag whatsoever! The thing that pisses me off though is now I have to buy the tables all over again. But if it means actually being able to play these games without pulling my hair out and waiting for some update that never seems to happen, it might just be worth it.

BTW, I understand xbox one is a computer in and of itself, but not in the conventional sense where a gazillion things are running in the background at the same time.

There's a quick fix that worked for me: simply disable App Nap for TPA !
to do so: in your Applications folder select TPA and press  + i to get info and in the info window check the App Nap to disable it.

wizard33 said:

There's a quick fix that worked for me: simply disable App Nap for TPA !
to do so: in your Applications folder select TPA and press  + i to get info and in the info window check the App Nap to disable it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing, but I'm not seeing a check box for disabling App Nap in the info window?

UPDATE: I'm assuming the App Nap option is only relevant for laptop users?

not sure if App Nap is just for laptops, I think it's for any Macs. Here is some info here: http://osxdaily.com/2014/05/13/disable-app-nap-mac-os-x/
Also, if you get the slowdown problem, it's always useful to quit and relaunch TPA: that also worked for me.