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Does anyone use a MacBook for HoloLens development?

If so, can you please share your experiences?

Best Answer

Answers

  • DonaSDonaS admin

    Thank you so much!

  • I use both the Macbook Air and iMac. I have found that dual boot with Bootcamp works fine with one exception. Sometimes if you boot directly into Windows from power up then the virtualization does not work for the Hololens emulator. The problem is easily fixed by first booting up in OSX. Then go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk and select the bootcamp list to reboot into Windows.

  • @wintermoot Do you run from the local boot disk or an external hard disk? I am actually looking at a setup using Parallels 11 Desktop from a LaCie 4 TB USB-C disk. Do you think the USB-C drive might be too much of a bottleneck in performance or have any significant drawbacks for HoloLens?

    I know that I am loosing some performance with an external drive, but would the drive be not powerful enough for the holographic part of development?

    Thanks
    Chris Z

    Christopher Zenzel

    Shaping the Future by Being a Leader in Technology while Living with Autism (ASD). Looking for Opportunities in Magic.

    https://chriszenzel.com
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  • wintermootwintermoot ✭✭
    edited May 2016

    I run parallels from a VM on my ssd as opposed to an external drive or a bootcamp partition. Performance would depend on how much ram you have. If you encounter a lot of swap (for both ram and vram) the external disk might create a bottleneck. I have not tested this to determine if it causes any lag when actually running the emulator. I do however pull about 10mb/sec from disk (ssd) for vram swap while running the emulator as I don't have a dedicated GPU in my MacBook.

  • Thanks for the tip about enabling nested VM ... if anyone else is wondering where to enable that you first have to shut down your VM and then on the VM launch screen click on the gear box and then on "CPU & Memory" and then on "Advanced Settings" and then finally you can select the checkbox.

    I'm including 2 screenshots to show where those things are located and a third to show you what should appear after running the Origami app (or at least what I see now).

    Before I did that I would get a weird error about a Hyper-V administrators group, searching around I was worried about a post saying that if "net localgroup" didn't show a Hyper-V group I would have reinstall Windows 10.

  • has anyone tried this with VMWare Fusion?

  • I am just beginning on my 12" Macbook, but have HoloLens, so won't be using the emulator, so far no issues with VS and Unity in Parallels

  • I was able to run the hololens emulator from my Macbook Pro via Parallels Pro. You must have the Pro version to enable hyper-v virtualization
    http://kb.parallels.com/en/116239

    At first, it wasn't starting because I don't have enough memory.
    I tried starting the hololens emulator manually, I had to play with memsize parameter since I don't have enough memory on my Macbook pro, I ended up with 2008 instead of 2048

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\10.0.14342.0\XDE.exe" /name "HoloLens Emulator 10.0.14342.0.Ron" /displayName "HoloLens Emulator 10.0.14342.0" /vhd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Emulation\HoloLens\10.0.14342.1018\flash.vhd" /video "1268x720" /language 409 /memsize 2008 /creatediffdisk "C:\Users\Ron\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XDE\10.0.14342.1018\dd.1268x720.2048.vhd" /fastShutdown /sku HDE

    then I followed instructions here
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2911380
    and set MemoryReserve to 2008
    Then you can use the emulator inside VS2015

  • I plugged my HoloLens into my MacBook and it immediately deleted all my files. Then the MacBook battery caught on fire and the entire case melted, emitting showers of sparks. Then, after I'd run out of the room and turned to watch from the doorway, it exploded in a terrifying polychromatic firestorm, scorching some of the surrounding furniture. However, when the smoke cleared I saw the HoloLens sitting nearby, apparently unharmed, and looking extremely pleased with itself.

  • gleitzgleitz
    edited July 2016

    Using VMWare Fusion 8.1.1, I was able to set the OS type to Hyper-V, enable support within Windows, and successfully run the HoloLens Emulator inside the VM. Here are the full instructions.

  • I use both the Macbook Air and iMac. I have found that dual boot with Bootcamp works fine with one exception. Sometimes if you boot directly into Windows from power up then the virtualization does not work for the Hololens emulator. The problem is easily fixed by first booting up in OSX. Then go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk and select your bootcamp boot. Reboot from there and it fixes the problem.

  • @wintermoot Will it run in MacBook Pro 15" 2015 with dedicated GPU? I also wanted 3D Scan support (with directX 12)

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