Skytrak - Bootcamp - TGC 2019

[AntzInYourPantz]

I've read that some wizards were able to make TGC 2019 work an a Mac. So far I've tried the Parallels route and Bootcamp. Most suggest that Bootcamp might work.
I use a 2019 Macbook 16" and the latest s/w so specifications seem to be sufficient. (Other than not being a 100% Windows PC).
Problem with Paralles : Black holes
Problem with Bootcamp : When as a last step the program starts downloading the database , TGC stops and I'm returned back to Windows.


Any suggestions? I would be very happy if I'm not forced to buy a windows game laptop.
Thx!

[sirish19]

I've read that some wizards were able to make TGC 2019 work an a Mac. So far I've tried the Parallels route and Bootcamp. Most suggest that Bootcamp might work.
I use a 2019 Macbook 16" and the latest s/w so specifications seem to be sufficient. (Other than not being a 100% Windows PC).
Problem with Paralles : Black holes
Problem with Bootcamp : When as a last step the program starts downloading the database , TGC stops and I'm returned back to Windows.


Any suggestions? I would be very happy if I'm not forced to buy a windows game laptop.
Thx!

Hi AntzInYourPantz,

I have been able to get TGC 2019 working on my Mac through Bootcamp. Perhaps what I can share may be able to help you. I first wanted to try things out to see if it would even work before dropping a lot of money on either E6 or TGC 2019 without any assurances that it would even work. When E6 announced that they had a new iOS platform I thought I would give it a try. It was definitely nice, but the graphics on the iPad weren't great so I wanted to try things out on the computer. I first installed Parallels as they were running a free trial and E6 was also offering a free 2-week trial. I got Parallels installed and then went to download to install E6. But for some reason, my installation was also crashing mid-way through the setup. Thinking that it just wasn't compatible with Parallels, I decided to test out BootCamp. I installed a trial version of Windows 10 64Bit on BootCamp and gave it a go. Again, same issue, I couldn't get it to install as it kept crashing mid-way through installation. I had heard a few other people on here were using these apps with BootCamp so I thought it must be possible.

I contacted customer service for E6 and they kindly replied very quickly with this:

We’re not in the office today, but I see your support incident here.

We’ve seen this very recently with SkyTrack customers
Have you installed the 64bit version of the SkyTrak Software yet?

I don’t have my notes in front of me (not in the office) but if I remember correctly (and this is very new) you need to have Visual C++ 2012 installed.
And it’s installed automatically by the 64Bit SkyTrak software.

Let me know if that helps.

When I installed E6, I remembered seeing a pop-up saying that I needed to have Visual C++ installed and asked if I wanted to install it. I checked Yes and thought it installed but realized that I hadn't even installed the 64Bit SkyTrak Software yet. When I installed that, I believe it must have installed the correct version of Visual C++ 2012 because then I was able to install E6 software without any hitch. I would bet that you simply need to install the SkyTrak software and that will solve your problem.

I tried out E6 and liked it but at the end of the day, I felt that TGC 2019 would be a better option for a 1-time purchase of $1,000 and no additional annual fees for thousands of courses as well as a course designer that allows you to design your own courses. That is an especially cool feature if you take the LiDAR data and use Chad's tool and OpenStreetMaps to create an exact replica of real courses. So, I ended up going the TGC 2019 route.

Now, I do recall that it did take quite a long time to install both E6 and TGC 2019, especially since they have so many courses so it is advisable to just be patient. Also, one key thing is that when you create your partition for BootCamp, be sure to give yourself plenty of space. I initially created a 50 GB partition and installed E6 and then tried installing TGC 2019 and it gave me a message that there wasn't enough space to install. Even after deleting E6, there still wasn't enough space so I ended up needing to adjust the size of my partition. It worked well for me fortunately, but I had seen a number of cases where people screwed up their hard drives by doing that so I would just be careful. I now have a BootCamp partition of 150 GB and am using up about 100 GB of that with primarily for TGC 2019 (I actually got the two-pack of TGC and 2019 so I am probably using up a lot of space unnecessarily with TGC) and MS Office suite.


Regarding actually running TGC on the MacBook on BootCamp, the specs of my current machine are:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
Processor: 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
Memory: 16 GB
Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB

My guess is that this graphics card is probably not good enough to run this optimally but I find that it is adequate and probably minimum specs to run effectively. I do find that TGC 2019 does tax my computer quite a bit and I will have it running hard and running warm. TGC is also a battery hog and I can barely run it for more than 30 minutes without plugging in. Some people have suggested that it may be better with an external graphics card. but for right now, it is adequate. As I continue, I may look into getting a dedicated gaming laptop for TGC as I do also find that it is quite slow in the course designer. Also, when I connect to an external 4k monitor, I find that I need to lower the graphics resolution in order to get it to run smoothly without a lot of jerkiness. For now, it serves my purpose well.

I hope this helps.

Cheers.

[AntzInYourPantz]

Well thank you sirish19, really appreciate this!

I used 200Gb for Bootcamp

I gave up, and purchased an additional windows game PC.
Because I had already purchased TGC2019 at €900.

Rather disappointed at Customer service of skytrak and TGC2019.
Should be simpele sollutionto run the programs on a Mac.

[StodgyBarley]

Great info! Thanks very much for sharing! One of these days I will update my MacBook Pro and give this a go. An external graphics card would be incredible but I've heard that the game needs to be programmed for that.

[sirish19]

Yeah, most likely it wouldn't be as easy as just adding an external graphics card. That being said, I don't think I need full 4K quality on my 13 inch MBP in an outside environment. When I practice in the early evening/night (and likely annoy the hell out of my neighbors), it looks fantastic but during the day I get so much glare anyway that it hardly matters. If I were going to put it up on a larger screen or projection, that would be a different story, but for now, it works out fine.

[Sting Ray]

i have a 2019 MacBook pro with bootcamp and I've been running tgc19 for months. it works flawlessy.

[StodgyBarley]

Sting Ray Wow... this is great to hear! I'm wondering if if is because so new and you have a different graphics card than older models. Could you post your specs of your MacBook Pro? Thanks!! Someday I'll get this working after upgrading the MacBook Pro.