Free tool VMWare Fusion lets you run Expresii on Mac Silicon machines.
Another Mac user asked about using Expresii on a Mac. So, I tried the latest version of VMWare Fusion. It became free even for commercial use since last time I tested it. Expresii crashed last week. Took me a few days to figure that it's the MESA 24.1.0 OpenGL implementation of GL_POLYGON_OFFSET_LINE crashing the app. Now at least the latest version of Expresii runs but you still can't switch to Brush Display to 'Mid' or above, since those would use an outline shader, which relies on GL_POLYGON_OFFSET_LINE .
Installation
You will first need to resgister for a Broadcom account before you can download Fusion. When you install Windows on Fusion, you should use the "Get Windows from Microsoft" option within VMware Fusion because this way some necessary drivers are already included:
You should use the "Get Windows from Microsoft" option
There are many installation guides for VMWare Fusion on the internet so just follow them if you are not sure. For my test, I used Windows 11. Remember to install VMWare Tools too.
USB drawing tablet working nicely
Yes, this time I don't need to use any third-arty software to use my drawing tablet WACOM Intuos Pro via USB. Just plug it to your Mac and VMWare Fusion gives you a dialog asking if you would connect it to the Mac or the Virtual Machine (VM) running Windows. See a video demo below:
Performance
I get only 30-40 FPS on an M1 machine with 8GB. Too slow for smooth painting. Fusion suggested that I allocate to the VM up to 5.6GB out of the 8GB as recommended by Fusion and I did that. Only 2 processor cores allocated for the VM. The VM uses a FullHD screen resolution. Using a higher resolution would consume more rendering power. The M4 gives roughly double the performance of M1 so if you have an M4 Mac, you should get a much smoother painting experience. For better performance, you should consider Parallels Desktop.
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