For those who want to use our paint app Expresii on Mac, here're some updated tests for you.
Tilt Issues
First, we verified that Expresii x64 (version 2021.02.22) artwork saving and snapshot export work correctly on Parallels Desktop 16. However, we found two issues with pen tilt reading on Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac: 1. Y-tilt is up-side-down. 2. Tilt reading is reported during hovering but not when pen is touching the surface. Pen display is XP-Pen Artist 12 Pro with driver version 2.18 (2021-02-26) on Mac.
Performance hit
For comparison, we also ran Expresii in native Windows 10 on the same machine. We get 55-70 FPS on Parallels and 80-95 FPS native Windows 10. That is, we get about 25-30% performance hit. Note that the FPS here is our simulation FPS rather than display FPS. The display resolution does affect the performance. The screen resolution is 1920x939 under Parallels, a little less than native FHD 1920x1080 of the pen display on which we ran native Windows 10, so we already gave a little advantage to running under Parallels when we measure the FPS.
Correct Tilt reading on Native Windows 10
The tilt reading is also correct out of the box on native Windows 10. We don't even need to install driver for the pen display before we can the correct tile values via Windows Ink. As you can see in the video below, we get tilt reading for both pen hovering and touching the surface. Previously, we have the tilt reading correct on Windows 10 (via Windows Ink or vendor's own wintab32.dll) for various tablet vendors including Wacom, Huion, XP Pen & Microsoft Surface Pen, so we believe we're reading the tilt values correctly from the app.
Previously, a user sent us a video of Expresii running on Parallels 15. She was using iPad + Apple Pencil for stylus input via Sidecar , and she also got that up-side-down tilt. At that time, we thought it could be specific to this sidecar setup so we just reversed it back via Expresii's setting (as shown in the above video) for correct control. But now we get inverted Y-tilt even on XP-Pen , so we believe Parallels should change its way interpreting the value for Windows Ink.
Test system specs:
CPU: i5-8259U
GPU: Iris Graphics 655 (Parallels Intel 14.7.8 driver with OpenGL 3.3)
Pen display: XP-Pen Artist 12 Pro with driver version 2.18 (2021-02-26) on Mac
Virtualization software: Parallels Desktop for Mac version 16.2.4 (49160)
OS: MacOS Catalina 10.15.7
Previously, a user sent us a video of Expresii running on Parallels 15. She was using iPad + Apple Pencil for stylus input via Sidecar , and she also got that up-side-down tilt. At that time, we thought it could be specific to this sidecar setup so we just reversed it back via Expresii's setting (as shown in the above video) for correct control. But now we get inverted Y-tilt even on XP-Pen , so we believe Parallels should change its way interpreting the value for Windows Ink.
Test system specs:
CPU: i5-8259U
GPU: Iris Graphics 655 (Parallels Intel 14.7.8 driver with OpenGL 3.3)
Pen display: XP-Pen Artist 12 Pro with driver version 2.18 (2021-02-26) on Mac
Virtualization software: Parallels Desktop for Mac version 16.2.4 (49160)
OS: MacOS Catalina 10.15.7
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