Turning lighting down did it for me too. I can't just go out and get a new graphics card because FCP programs like Color are made just for ATi cards. Bleh.
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Spore running real slow on mac pro with ati 1900
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It's just unfortunate that the lighting setting is such a drastic change. Many games I don't require the settings to be maxxed out but the visual difference between lighting at low and high is enough to make me want to wait until a patch for either the game or OS X comes out to play it. The flowers look like little junky lego blocks or something with lighting on low but look really nice on high. The models look dull in comparison between the lighting levels.
Spore doesn't seem to be too demanding of a game.
I'm running a MacPro 2x2.8 w/ 2GB ram and the Radeon 2600XT graphics card and everything runs very nicely with all settings to high and the resolutions set to 1680x1050.
I'm up to the civilization stage now and there really hasn't been any slow downs yet. I wonder how the space age will take...
On another note, anyone considering getting Spore, BUY IT, its a great game. Especially for the casual gamer. It doesn't require you to devote your entire life to the game and it's easy to pick up and go!
It also is awesome to have a dual boot PC/Mac disc, where you only need to install the game with the CD and never have to use the CD ever again!
I'm running a MacPro 2x2.8 w/ 2GB ram and the Radeon 2600XT graphics card and everything runs very nicely with all settings to high and the resolutions set to 1680x1050.
I'm up to the civilization stage now and there really hasn't been any slow downs yet. I wonder how the space age will take...
On another note, anyone considering getting Spore, BUY IT, its a great game. Especially for the casual gamer. It doesn't require you to devote your entire life to the game and it's easy to pick up and go!
It also is awesome to have a dual boot PC/Mac disc, where you only need to install the game with the CD and never have to use the CD ever again!
I feel your pain. I feel like since I spent almost 500 dollars on this card when it was new, it could at least work as well as the ones that, at the time, cost 150 dollars.
Lighting Quality is set Low - everything else is High - the game runs smoothly, nice animation, the world renders quickly, it's very playable and looks great.
Play the game at Normal setting, it becomes much more interesting than at the default Easy.
I'm enjoying it - it feels big.
Play the game at Normal setting, it becomes much more interesting than at the default Easy.
I'm enjoying it - it feels big.
What settings (lighting, depth of field, etc.) are worth trying to keep as high as possible? Which of these are the ones that really give it that extra pop in the graphics?
And which ones aren't worth the resources to max out? As in, what you get isn't worth the processing power?
And which ones aren't worth the resources to max out? As in, what you get isn't worth the processing power?
My experience
i suppose this is a pretty old thread, but i guess i might as well say what happened to me anyway: so i have the late-2008 aluminum macbook 13" 2.0GHz and this game runs like crap unless i put mostly everything on low. btw i have 2 gb ram and a 9400m. at first i was disappointed because i was really looking foward to getting spore after all those years of hype, and it looks like a game from 2002 with low settings. i can choose to turn up 1 or 2 things to high but after that it gets really slow. so usually i just use high graphics effects and high lighting. i was looking foward to the "5x better graphics performance" of the "revolutionary" 9400m but it did not show at first. later i got COD4 and it plays nicely on medium settings, and it looks a hell of a lot better than spore. pretty good for an integrated GPU, dont ya think? looks like ill have to put spore on bootcamp... it disappionting though because i'll usually just be bored and click spore to play for a while, i dont want to have to boot windows every time... i guess it's worth it if the gfx improve but i already beat the game so there is less motivation for me to reinstall it.......
i suppose this is a pretty old thread, but i guess i might as well say what happened to me anyway: so i have the late-2008 aluminum macbook 13" 2.0GHz and this game runs like crap unless i put mostly everything on low. btw i have 2 gb ram and a 9400m. at first i was disappointed because i was really looking foward to getting spore after all those years of hype, and it looks like a game from 2002 with low settings. i can choose to turn up 1 or 2 things to high but after that it gets really slow. so usually i just use high graphics effects and high lighting. i was looking foward to the "5x better graphics performance" of the "revolutionary" 9400m but it did not show at first. later i got COD4 and it plays nicely on medium settings, and it looks a hell of a lot better than spore. pretty good for an integrated GPU, dont ya think? looks like ill have to put spore on bootcamp... it disappionting though because i'll usually just be bored and click spore to play for a while, i dont want to have to boot windows every time... i guess it's worth it if the gfx improve but i already beat the game so there is less motivation for me to reinstall it.......