ANNOUNCEMENT: Deprecation of macOS version of ArcGIS CityEngine

[#1]

Dear CityEngine Community

Unfortunately I need to share the following news with you all.
This announcement will be followed by an Email to our macOS users very soon.

Deprecation of macOS version of ArcGIS CityEngine

We have made the decision to discontinue development of ArcGIS CityEngine for macOS. The current release of CityEngine 2020.1, for Mojave and High Sierra, will be the last available version for macOS. The level of effort to continue building and certifying the macOS version of CityEngine is too high given Apple's current hardware situation with two different systems (Intel- and ARM-based). As Apple transitions to the ARM-based chip sets, we will of course monitor the developments, and we may reconsider building CityEngine on Apple silicon in the future.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Kind regards

The CityEngine team

[REDSUN]

hi , 

I just installed the 2020.1 version of CityEngine. I tried it on two different MacOSX machines, but I always get the same problem."Procedural runtime initialization failed. See Log for details."

macOS Big Sur ：11.3.1 

processor：2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

[TaishaFabricius]

Hi @REDSUN 

Thanks for your post. The problem here is that Big Sur is no longer supported. CityEngine 2020.1 only supports up until MacOS Catalina.

I hope that helps to clarify. Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers
Taisha

[REDSUN]

thank you，I hope City engine2021.1support the Big Sur laster

[pinlv]

Dear company, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to use cityengine. This software is easy for me to use. I'm learning to try this software, but I won't be able to use it soon. I want to find a trial activation code, but I can't seem to find it. Could you help me? thank you very much.

[REDSUN]

You can apply for a trial。

[nicolaisteino]

Just saw. Ouch!

[nicolaisteino]

Hi @TaishaFabricius Could you share requirements for virtual Windows installs on Mac, such as Boot Camp and VMware Fusion?

[TaishaFabricius]

Hi @nicolaisteino 

I'm sorry for the delayed response, I only just saw that you wrote.

Very good question. We've done a couple of tests and know that it does work with VMware Fusion as it supports OpenGL 4.1. You will need to assign the minimum resources required for CE to the VM and the rest is a standard windows installation process. Please keep me updated. Im fairly certain is also works with Boot Camp but I have not tried that yet myself. We do also know that at this stage, Parallels won't work because they don't support OpenGL 4.1. 

I hope this info was somewhat helpful and yeah, sorry to be the barer of bad news re: macOS support. 🙂

[TaishaFabricius]

@pinlv 
you can download a free trial here: https://earlyadopter.esri.com/key/ArcGISCityEngineTrial

[nicolaisteino]

Hi @TaishaFabricius Thanxalot for getting back. I now dispatched the IT army to have VMware Fusion installed on my Mac. I'll keep you posted.

[nicolaisteino]

Hi @TaishaFabricius I have problems running CE 2021.0 for Windows on a VMWare installation on macOS Big Sur (11.4, most recent update) and my local IT support has problems figuring out why. Can you confirm that CE 2021.0 for Windows can positively run on a VMWare installation on macOS Big Sur?

Regards,

Nic

[nicolaisteino]

@TaishaFabricius I now managed to get CE 2021.0 for Windows running on a VMWare installation on macOS Big Sur (11.4, most recent update).

HOWEVER: As soon as I start to draw street segments or start shapes, the software freezes and I need to restart Windows.

Any explanation for that? Any solution to the problem?

Best,

Nic

[TaishaFabricius]

Hi @nicolaisteino 

Sorry for the late response, I somehow don't get notifications when people have tagged me on Community. I'll look into that.

When we tested it on a VMWare, we tested it with Catalina and it worked. I am guessing Big Sur is the problem here.

I will talk with the team and see if there are any workarounds, but as it stands now, we do not officially support running CE on Windows on a virtual machine. 

Maybe it would make sense to downgrade to CE 2020.1 for the time being? 
...and i'll see if I can get some troubleshooting tips for you. Likewise, please update me if you do get it working. ...this is trial and error for all of us.

Thanks!
Taisha

[LionelHenry_EsriFrance]

CityEngine 2023 now works on Mac with Parallels Desktop. ArcGIS Pro 3.2 as well. Sounds good. my setup: MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 32Go ram.

[ThomasFuchs]

Good news 😀 @nicolaisteino , @REDSUN , @pinlv 
Thank you so much @LionelHenry_EsriFrance for confirming CityEngine 2023 works on Mac with Parallels Desktop. I found this Parallels KB article that also explicitly mentions ArcGIS CityEngine 2023 (and later) can be used:

OpenGL versions supported in Parallels Desktop