moonislune Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Okay, its been a while since Parallels has been out. Why haven't they released a video driver with directx support? Isn't it about time? Or do you think they're waiting for Leopard to come out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Okay, its been a while since Parallels has been out. Why haven't they released a video driver with directx support? Isn't it about time? Or do you think they're waiting for Leopard to come out? It's been a while....I didn't think less then a year since introduction of a completly new product was that long. The fact is that Parallels has made HUGE advances in the very limited amount of time they have had since their first beta release. Virtualizing a full SVGA environment is a tough gig. Parallels has stated that they eventually do plan Direct X support, but that will probably not be in this upcoming release as they are now in RC2 and that is nowhere to be found. It will probably be at least a year before we see Direct X support in a virtual environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 2, 2007 Author Share Posted February 2, 2007 (edited) It's been a while....I didn't think less then a year since introduction of a completly new product was that long. The fact is that Parallels has made HUGE advances in the very limited amount of time they have had since their first beta release. Virtualizing a full SVGA environment is a tough gig. Parallels has stated that they eventually do plan Direct X support, but that will probably not be in this upcoming release as they are now in RC2 and that is nowhere to be found. It will probably be at least a year before we see Direct X support in a virtual environment. I agree that Parallels has made huge advances but for $79 + the cost of XP, it seems a bit pricey to only have a semi-functional Windows system. While Boot Camp is a godsend, seriously...who wants to reboot just to play a game or run some video applications that require DirectX? I hope that VMWare tries to beat them to the punch. Perhaps this community can put a little more pressure on getting that feature out? Edited February 2, 2007 by moonislune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Well Parallels has already stated they are working on full 3D acceleration on Windows, these guys have been absolutely fantastic in how far the product has evolved since their first release. I just want to make two points here... 1. Is $79 really that much for a product of this caliber? I will be the first one to admit to using let's just say creatively acquired software. After doing so with Parallels and seeing how well it performed, I was easily convinced to go out and buy the actual product. These guys are making a product that blows away the competition and when something this good comes out I am more then happy to pay for it just to encourage the developers to keep up the excellent work. 2. Plus the cost of XP.....unless you are running on a beige box, you probably already HAVE a copy of XP. All you Dell, Gateway, IBM folks who are running Hackintoshes got a copy of Windows XP with your computer. The only people who have to buy a separate copy of Windows are those who bought true Macs. Now I think there are still a good number of features the Parallels has to continue development on. 3D graphics, firewire support, external iSight support are just a few. Give them time though. I am running the latest beta 3150 and am blown away. You would think there was a five year development cycle between the first pre-release beta to the current RTM to the latest beta when it has not even been a year yet I think. This is a company that really knows how to get results and I would encourage all who use Parallels to spend the $79 and give the developers the incentive to keep evolving the product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riemann Zeta Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Give the Parallels team some credit. I have Windows 2003 (NT 5.2) running in Parallels at virtually full speed compared to a real x86 box, with all visual effects enabled (and a theme that is essentially Aero minus the translucency/shaders). I think that the Parallels team has made huge strides in very little time. As far as DirectX support goes, I really doubt that it is even possible to get near native speed D3D emulation, especially with current-generation GPUs. I think that a good first step would be getting accelerated DirectDraw and other 2D library support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 9, 2007 Author Share Posted February 9, 2007 (edited) Seems like VMWare beat Parallels to the punch. Check this out. Best of all its still free and anyone can sign up for the beta. Edited February 9, 2007 by moonislune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ampidire Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 of course VMware Fusion doesn't have Coherence mode and this is an unrelesed build that is shown. Not to mention we have no way to tell what version of DX is actually supported by that build. You need to understand how difficult it is to emulate 3D environments in a virtual setting. Virtualization has been around since computers were conceived and just now we're starting to see 3D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embio Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 www.osnews.com states it is Direct X 8.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 anyone tried the mks.enable3d = TRUE feature in VMWare Fusion, current Beta ? If so, does it enable DX8 ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 9, 2007 Author Share Posted February 9, 2007 anyone tried the mks.enable3d = TRUE feature in VMWare Fusion, current Beta ? If so, does it enable DX8 ? Surprisingly, the command does work in Fusion. When I run dxdiag from the Start-Run box, dxdiag shows that 3d acceleration is enabled! Now, if I can get a few games to work... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 Great ! Did you try some max payne 2 or tony hawk like in the video ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 9, 2007 Author Share Posted February 9, 2007 (edited) Great ! Did you try some max payne 2 or tony hawk like in the video ? I overshot at first. Installed DirectX9 and tried to run Madden 2007 (I still havent gotten over the Bears losing the SuperBowl). Unfortunately, the game starts, plays the sound, but the video is black. Tony Hawk, you're next. Edited February 9, 2007 by moonislune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 (edited) It seems DX9 games don't work. Hopefuly DX8.1 games do work with DX9 because my XP has DX9 by default... Gonna try Vice City. EDIT : Ok so that didn't work, neither did Warcraft III which is a DX8.1 game. Sound but no video. I'm beginning to think this beta of VMware sucks Or maybe it's because I have DX9 and not DX8.1 (i'll let you do this test, i'm done now). The weird thing is War3 running in OpenGL works perfectly... I thought that VMware only supported DX and natively, and actually wouldn't convert DX to MacOS opengl (it seems it works like Croosover... If this is the case, it sucks). Edited February 9, 2007 by cyclonefr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigxcpu Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 Give the Parallels team some credit. I have Windows 2003 (NT 5.2) running in Parallels at virtually full speed compared to a real x86 box, with all visual effects enabled (and a theme that is essentially Aero minus the translucency/shaders). I think that the Parallels team has made huge strides in very little time. As far as DirectX support goes, I really doubt that it is even possible to get near native speed D3D emulation, especially with current-generation GPUs. I think that a good first step would be getting accelerated DirectDraw and other 2D library support. man, you know the difference between aero and normal xp interface? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlyboy Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 How would one enable - mks.enable3d = TRUE - in vmware Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 (edited) edit the VMX file or something like that (don't know the extension by heart)... and add that line with textedit Edited February 9, 2007 by cyclonefr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlyboy Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 Thank you m8 ill give it a try out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 put DX8.1 if you can and not DX9, that would be a better test than mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 9, 2007 Author Share Posted February 9, 2007 It seems DX9 games don't work. Hopefuly DX8.1 games do work with DX9 because my XP has DX9 by default... Gonna try Vice City. EDIT : Ok so that didn't work, neither did Warcraft III which is a DX8.1 game. Sound but no video. I'm beginning to think this beta of VMware sucks Or maybe it's because I have DX9 and not DX8.1 (i'll let you do this test, i'm done now). The weird thing is War3 running in OpenGL works perfectly... I thought that VMware only supported DX and natively, and actually wouldn't convert DX to MacOS opengl (it seems it works like Croosover... If this is the case, it sucks). So far, I'm not impressed. TH3 was slooowww and I tried with both Directx9 installed and then on a new xp image with directx8 only. TH3 worked well with DX8, TH3 not so well with DX9. I'm running on an Imac 2ghz 1gb ram. I wish we knew the specs of the mac on the youtube video. Perhaps I need more ram? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 Ok I'm quite disappointed, i'm now 100% sure that all what it does (for now) is translating DX instructions into OpenGL ones so MacOS video drivers can manage them. So even if DX9 is completely supported, it's gonna be like Crossover and nowhere near the speed of running the game in native Windows. This isn't virtualization to me but more emulation (D3D to OGL) which is a shame. The mac on youtube was a macbook pro with 1GB of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonislune Posted February 9, 2007 Author Share Posted February 9, 2007 Ok I'm quite disappointed, i'm now 100% sure that all what it does (for now) is translating DX instructions into OpenGL ones so MacOS video drivers can manage them. So even if DX9 is completely supported, it's gonna be like Crossover and nowhere near the speed of running the game in native Windows. This isn't virtualization to me but more emulation (D3D to OGL) which is a shame. The mac on youtube was a macbook pro with 1GB of ram. Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed too. It seems like VMWare doesn't have bragging rights just yet. Should I apologize to Parallels now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlyboy Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 (edited) Hi again fellas this vmware is {censored}e lol , I went too watch the demo again on youtube and if you watch the demo look and listen too the part that tell you how too enable 3d accelaration its a differant version from what we have as we dont have a display option in the virtual machine menu . Edited February 9, 2007 by curlyboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaS Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 Hi again fellas this vmware is {censored}e lol , I went too watch the demo again on youtube and if you watch the demo look and listen too the part that tell you how too enable 3d accelaration its a differant version from what we have as we dont have a display option in the virtual machine menu . Yeah it is a different version... must be some internal build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 Still, using OpenGL to render DirectX sucks There is no way it'll run Crysis (yeah I know ) on OSX one day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonpool Posted February 20, 2007 Share Posted February 20, 2007 Just a wild guess. Since Windows can run natively in Intel Mac, why not one day visualisation software can 'visualise' graphics card using the real one in the host system? If this happens, there will be almost no loss of graphical performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts