Matrix Games Forums

Just wanted to drop a quick note for all the many Mac OS historical war-game fans out there:

I've played this game entirely on Mac OS Catalina using Parallels and it runs great.

*For the tech "savvies": Parallels is basically just a Virtual Machine management program like VMWare or a host of other brands except its optimized for MacOS and it runs great on an iMac or MacBook Pro. It does cost some actual money vs VMWare... but with VMWare or wrappers like Wine, you have to spend a lot of time optimizing configurations to get them to work smoothly - even for 2D games... I don't think the time investment is worth it (other than for personal edification on VM configurations).

But my PC-Only wargames are performing so well on the Mac that I've gonna ahead and decommissioned my old i7 Quad Core PC.

Probably my most taxing PC game atm is "Command: Modern Operations" (and it performs better in Parallels on Mac than on my PC).

To be fair here's my setup:
2014 era ASUS PC, i7 (Pre-Coffee Lake), Quad Core. Nvidia GeForce PCI card, 32 GB System RAM.

1x 2019 iMac Pro 8 Intel Core Xeon.
1x 2019 Era 13" MacBook Pro, 32 GB RAM. Intel Quadcore i5.
All Operating systems at Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7

Wargame operations operating great under MacOS!

If you decided to get Parallels for this purpose though - I'd say definitely get the One-Time License vs the Subscription.

I have a freakin iMac Pro, bought a Parallels sub, and it still limited me to 4 processors and 8 GB of assignable RAM for my PC virtual machine.

That's basically what you get with the persistent license - except you'll save not having to re-sub every year.

Also - the sub doesn't dynamically transfer to whatever Mac you happen to be on. You have to get a subscription for each individual Mac.

One final last bonus to gaming this way: You can create one PC virtual machine on one of your computers, install all your favorite games - including steam and GoG, and then share/copy that PC VM image (basically just a big ass file) to other Macs with licensed copies of Parallels that you own - load it there. Huzzah. You can also back that PC image up and keep it in your back pocket like a mem stick should things ever go sideways.

I've found I only need 20-30 GB or less for Windows 10, plus whatever programs you want on top of that. Usually, 2D wargames are in the handful of GBs so as far as size, its a pretty compact and portable package of fun when you finally get it setup.

Pretty awesome... no more total re-installs when stuff goes sideways.

And definitely if you do this - clean out your PC install... You'll be amazed at the amount of junk they load Into commercial OS's (or maybe not).

This is a war-game only image - so you can chop that shit down to just like 20 GB for the base OS plus games.

It's satisfying to kill them off too - I suggest you be ruthless and freewheeling in your purge...

I do the same and have no issues running CMO or VV (or others - WitW/E, Flashpoint Campaigns). I've been using Parallels for many years, as I needed it for work research - and the ability to easily pass files back and forth from PC side to Mac side was key.

It's nice that the entire PC VM is just one large file you can move/copy.

Dave

Yes many advantages to being on Mac OS.

#1 for me: No incoming Family Tech Support Issues with PCs - I freakin love it.

I am now running CMO on MacBook Air M2 24GB Ram,
I'm no expert but everything is ok and the simulator runs fast.

I only notice one small problem:
. sometimes when i zoom in, most of the map is well defined but some parts remain a bit grainy, like i said i'm not a super expert.
Could it be due to CMO updates or mods?
I'm running the basic version, will buy some DLC later.

Do I need to update the software? if so how?

Thank you
g