Windows RT

Hi,

I'm having trouble trying to find out if Rhino & Grasshopper will run on windows RT, I have heard windows RT is very basic and does not support most windows programs however there are no clear definitive answers to this.

Anyone got any thoughts, This is for the windows Surface.

Thanks

Rich

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on November 11, 2013 at 4:20am

IMHO RT is kind of a dead-end OS for toy applications. RT will only run modernUI/Metro apps. It's like Windows 8 minus the desktop.

Since Rhino is a Desktop app, it won't run on RT.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on November 11, 2013 at 7:07am

Would you consider the iPad OS a dead-end OS for toy applications?

Well, it is for toy applications but not a dead end for consumers that want toy applications. Windows RT is the same thing, but should be much easier for developers to release the same app in both Windows RT and Windows 8.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on November 11, 2013 at 2:19pm

From a pro-software point of view? Definately yes. No power, no memory, nothing more than a few organizer and sketching apps. nice to have around. Nothing to work with.

And for iOS app as well as RT: they will never grow up, because they need to be able to run on phones as well. No mouse, no other input devices, reeeaallly small screens....

WinRT kernel is a really small subset of the Win8 runtime. That's like saying, you can port any x64 program to an old Pentium, because they share the same basic set of instructions.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on November 11, 2013 at 3:12pm

The thing is it's not a dead end if they find a market for these kind of applications. Apple has done it, Microsoft is trying. I personally don't see them worth buying, but lots of people seem to find value on an iPad.

What I'm saying is the other way around, they have this low power device and they made it very easy for applications that run on it to also run on devices that have the full desktop OS.

No one developing a power demanding application for a desktop is thinking to make it compatible with ARM devices.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on November 12, 2013 at 1:03am

Mobile and desktop apps really are two worlds, because they target different hardware. While you could easily port code from ARM to x86/x64, the whole user interaction won't work. I mean thats the biggest complaint about Win8 and it's metro screen on regular PCs.

Maybe dead end the wrong word. I mean that from a developer point of view. Marketing will find a way to sell those shiny items. Apple has proven that time and again. They are limited to a few tasks and are good at that. But that's it. They might grow up to look like regular laptops but are still just large smartphones.

Porting an existent program, especially large/complex ones is a difficult task. Just look at Rhino. Multiprocessor systems are available for consumers since the early '00s, multicores are available since about 2005. Still not the entire core of Rhino is threadsafe. And that's all staying on the x86 platform.

Permalink Reply by Richard Laycock on November 11, 2013 at 5:35am

Shame.....the RT tables are really cheap, it would have been awesome to run Rhino on it.

Thanks for the reply.

Permalink Reply by Anders Holden Deleuran on November 11, 2013 at 5:52am

Apparently you can hack a Surface RT to run X86 apps. Wouldn't recommend it though. If you are looking for something highly portable and cheap-ish to run Rhino, you can get pretty decent performance out of low to mid-range 11.6" Windows 8 touchscreen laptops. I currently use an Asus Vivobook at home, which I occasionally use for Rhino (mainly testing GH defs and writing Python components). It performs better than I would have expected and using the touchscreen for navigating 3D space works surprisingly well!

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on November 11, 2013 at 7:22am

Win RT is meant for ARM processors, which in turn are menat for low power, high mobility applications. While running an emulator for a high power CPU on a low power CPU is certainly possible, it seems pretty useless to me.

To run Rhino, you actually want a bit of power...

I have a VivoTab Smart running small Rhino/GH projects quite well. With the low power Atom CPU you get about 8-10 hours of battery and still habe a full Win8 OS.

Only thing is, I probably made some unintentional adjustment so gestures won't work for Rhino viewport navigation. They do on my Acer convertible, though.

Permalink Reply by Anders Holden Deleuran on November 11, 2013 at 10:50am

That was pretty much what I said. Recommending a cheap touchscreen laptop instead of an RT ;)

Permalink Reply by Jesus Galvez on November 11, 2013 at 7:22am

For those looking for a tablet with W8, the Asus T100 Transformer Book is a great choice. Here is some great insight into the awful move Microsoft did.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on November 11, 2013 at 7:47am

I'm sure there is a double standard here.

Microsoft just copied Apple and, as Apple did with the iPad, they released an ARM tablet not compatible with their full desktop OS (still it's a much more integrated than the Apple counterpart, it's very easy for developers to release new software to both ARM and Intel devices).

Besides failing at marketing it, I'm not sure why its so much more awful than the iPad move.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on November 11, 2013 at 6:55am

I thought the complaints that people were buying Windows RT tablets thinking it was the full desktop OS was anti Microsoft propaganda.

Seriously people, read before buying, Microsoft does give a clear definite answer about this for the average consumer.

If you want to hack/emulate your way around this is another matter but then you should already know what you are getting into.