Gaming on VMWare Fusion 2.0!

[ravenvii]

With the release of VMWare Fusion 2.0, with it's DirectX9.0 support, I'm wondering what kind of gaming I can expect from it.

In other words, can I play F.E.A.R. on it? It's the newest game I have that's not Vista-compatible. I'm considering installing XP on VMWare Fusion, and replacing XP with Vista in my Boot Camp partition, so that if I want to play a game that doesn't run right in Vista, I can just play it in Vmware Fusion.

[Stridder44]

With the release of VMWare Fusion 2.0, with it's DirectX9.0 support, I'm wondering what kind of gaming I can expect from it.

In other words, can I play F.E.A.R. on it? It's the newest game I have that's not Vista-compatible. I'm considering installing XP on VMWare Fusion, and replacing XP with Vista in my Boot Camp partition, so that if I want to play a game that doesn't run right in Vista, I can just play it in Vmware Fusion.

http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-15445460.jpg?size=572&uid=%7B589F6D26-78F9-4626-B266-865B35467788%7D
http://images.inmagine.com/img/comstock/kcd00321/kcd00321045.jpg
http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-15508443.jpg?size=572&uid=%7BA2ADB786-40B8-4DB4-B2B4-D796E1DE1CCE%7D
http://blog.mrfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/laughing-jesus.jpg
http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1557/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1557R-297857.jpg

[ravenvii]

[failure of a post]

I've seen posts of people playing Warcraft 3 in the newest VMWare Fusion, so it's not too far of a stretch. I'm wondering what's the limit in gaming.

You can take your failure of a post and stick it up your anus - it should be no problem, since you got so many "poles" going up there already.

[kkat69]

I've seen posts of people playing Warcraft 3 in the newest VMWare Fusion, so it's not too far of a stretch. I'm wondering what's the limit in gaming.

You can take your failure of a post and stick it up your anus - it should be no problem, since you got so many "poles" going up there already.

I would stick with going to the VMWare fusion forums. You'll get a lot less assclowns there and more than likely better help.

In fact I'm curious too what people have tried. I have a huge arsenal of windows games left over, some I wouldn't mind playing again so I'll probably try a few see what happens. LOTRO is one I'm really curious on. If not, it's no great loss.

Good luck to you finding the answers you seek. Like I said, head over there, see what people there have tried, I'm sure they aren't flamed with senseless posts.

[Stridder44]

I've seen posts of people playing Warcraft 3 in the newest VMWare Fusion, so it's not too far of a stretch. I'm wondering what's the limit in gaming.

You can take your failure of a post and stick it up your anus - it should be no problem, since you got so many "poles" going up there already.

Forgive me for being realistic, but it's true. Games + Virtual Machine = terrible. How am I the failure here? You want to pay for a program that will run your games worse when instead you could simply run them, at full speed, for free? What's wrong with Boot Camp again?

[Keleko]

There's something to not having to shut down OS X and starting up Windows exclusively. Finding ways to avoid that situation is the whole point.

Personally, I'm starting to think a separate gaming machine isn't such a bad idea after all. You don't really need to spend a whole bunch of money on one unless you really want to. My previous Windows system ran all the games I play on my Macbook Pro in Bootcamp.

[Infrared]

I found the COD4 demo to be borderline playable at reduced
settings in Fusion.

Not bad considering, but well short of the performance in
Boot Camp.

[moslayne]

With the release of VMWare Fusion 2.0, with it's DirectX9.0 support, I'm wondering what kind of gaming I can expect from it.

In other words, can I play F.E.A.R. on it? It's the newest game I have that's not Vista-compatible. I'm considering installing XP on VMWare Fusion, and replacing XP with Vista in my Boot Camp partition, so that if I want to play a game that doesn't run right in Vista, I can just play it in Vmware Fusion.

Well, i just did a little experiment. I ran Half Life 2 and it ran very well. It exceeded my expectations. Yes, it's an older game, but I ran it in directx 9.0 mode with most settings oh high.

So, the moral is that they are making some great improvements!

[luffx]

There's something to not having to shut down OS X and starting up Windows exclusively. Finding ways to avoid that situation is the whole point.

Personally, I'm starting to think a separate gaming machine isn't such a bad idea after all. You don't really need to spend a whole bunch of money on one unless you really want to. My previous Windows system ran all the games I play on my Macbook Pro in Bootcamp.

That's what I did.

Built a gaming rig w/ all the goodies, including 2x 8800GTX 768MB.

Didn't cost that much, and it'll handle all of the fun games much better than any apple will for a few years.

[ravenvii]

I found the COD4 demo to be borderline playable at reduced
settings in Fusion.

Not bad considering, but well short of the performance in
Boot Camp.

Well, i just did a little experiment. I ran Half Life 2 and it ran very well. It exceeded my expectations. Yes, it's an older game, but I ran it in directx 9.0 mode with most settings oh high.

So, the moral is that they are making some great improvements!

Thanks guys!

Forgive me for being realistic, but it's true. Games + Virtual Machine = terrible. How am I the failure here? You want to pay for a program that will run your games worse when instead you could simply run them, at full speed, for free? What's wrong with Boot Camp again?

Look above. That's why your post was a failure.

That's what I did.

Built a gaming rig w/ all the goodies, including 2x 8800GTX 768MB.

Didn't cost that much, and it'll handle all of the fun games much better than any apple will for a few years.

LOL, that cost you, what, close to $1,000? I'm not going to pay that much for games. I'm perfectly fine with playing older games or newer games at lower settings on my MacBook Pro. Games isn't worth it for me to get another computer and LCD and everything, and isn't worth the space it consumes in my small studio apartment, either. I'd just buy a game console instead, for 1/4 the cost.

And I'll upgrade the MBP eventually, and play the games that are bleeding edge today. Sure I'll be a year or two behind, but I also have more money (the games will be cheaper then, and I don't have to have the latest and the greatest in hardware).

[Stridder44]

Look above. That's why your post was a failure.

Ok...

I found the COD4 demo to be borderline playable at reduced
settings in Fusion.

:confused:

I have nothing against Parallels/VMWare, but explain to me again how Boot Camp is bad (? Is the extra 2 seconds it takes to boot up into it? Spending $80 to run them significantly worse is a better idea?

And now you're denying VM is bad for gaming?

[ravenvii]

I found out VMWare Fusion has a evaluation, so I went ahead and downloaded it and installed XP + FEAR on it as an experiment.

Guess what? It's perfectly playable. Granted you have to tone the settings down to minimum, for ~30 fps, or medium for ~20 fps. It stutters at loading points and when you enter new large rooms, but that's it. Everything else plays at a steady ~30 fps.

Impressive for being in a virtual machine!

Why in a virtual machine? First, because we can. Second, because it's easier and cooler than booting into Boot Camp. I am posting this in Safari, and iChat, iCal, Gmail Notifier and Mail is running, along with VMWare Fusion, with the game paused. When I finish writing this, I will hit Expose, unpause the game and continue playing, with all of this in the background. Can you do that with Boot Camp? Yeah, didn't think so.

If you want the maximum gaming experience your hardware has to offer, Boot Camp is the better option, obviously. But if you don't mind toning the graphics down, and want to game under virtualization, the time has come.

And if it can play FEAR at minimum settings perfectly fine, I bet it can play older games at medium or even high settings.

Strider, you're just being an ass, and it's showing more and more as you post. No offense, but please go away.

[Eidorian]

I found out VMWare Fusion has a evaluation, so I went ahead and downloaded it and installed XP + FEAR on it as an experiment.

Guess what? It's perfectly playable. Granted you have to tone the settings down to minimum, for ~30 fps, or medium for ~20 fps. It stutters at loading points and when you enter new large rooms, but that's it. Everything else plays at a steady ~30 fps.

Impressive for being in a virtual machine!

Why in a virtual machine? First, because we can. Second, because it's easier and cooler than booting into Boot Camp. I am posting this in Safari, and iChat, iCal, Gmail Notifier and Mail is running, along with VMWare Fusion, with the game paused. When I finish writing this, I will hit Expose, unpause the game and continue playing, with all of this in the background. Can you do that with Boot Camp? Yeah, didn't think so.

If you want the maximum gaming experience your hardware has to offer, Boot Camp is the better option, obviously. But if you don't mind toning the graphics down, and want to game under virtualization, the time has come.

And if it can play FEAR at minimum settings perfectly fine, I bet it can play older games at medium or even high settings.

Strider, you're just being an ass, and it's showing more and more as you post. No offense, but please go away.I don't think everyone can fall in with being a minimum setting gamer.

Yes, you'll get laughs by wanting to game in a virtual machine. It's your choice so have at it. I'll just keep my $80 and get full hardware speed. You get have benefits of no rebooting and weird game compatibility issues though. It works out in the end.

[ravenvii]

I don't think everyone can fall in with being a minimum setting gamer.

Yes, you'll get laughs by wanting to game in a virtual machine. It's your choice so have at it. I'll just keep my $80 and get full hardware speed. You get have benefits of no rebooting and weird game compatibility issues though. It works out in the end.

I find I play games when I can access them on OS X much more than I do when it's in Boot Camp. If I can't just open it up and play, I'll just put it off, because I don't feel like rebooting. So it's nice to have it in a vm, best of both worlds.

Sure, the latest games like Crysis or CoD4 or what not, I'll play in Boot Camp of course, but I have neither of those games. In fact, some of my backlog is:

Command and Conquer: Renegade
Undying
Halo
Call of Duty (the first one)
Aliens vs. Predator 2


None of which are the latest and greatest, and will most likely work great in Fusion 2.0.

Seriously, what's your problem? I think you're the only one that's laughing.

[Eidorian]

I find I play games when I can access them on OS X much more than I do when it's in Boot Camp. If I can't just open it up and play, I'll just put it off, because I don't feel like rebooting. So it's nice to have it in a vm, best of both worlds.

Sure, the latest games like Crysis or CoD4 or what not, I'll play in Boot Camp of course, but I have neither of those games. In fact, some of my backlog is:

Command and Conquer: Renegade
Undying
Halo
Call of Duty (the first one)
Aliens vs. Predator 2


None of which are the latest and greatest, and will most likely work great in Fusion 2.0.

Seriously, what's your problem? I think you're the only one that's laughing.If Apple offered better GPU hardware choices I'd game in OS X.

On the other side I haven't had any luck with VM gaming so I gave up on trying to run Homeworld and Starfleet Command in a virtual machine.

Don't get worked up when you mention virtual machine gaming. You're more then likely not going to be taken seriously and most of the suggestions are going to be Boot Camp.

[ravenvii]

If Apple offered better GPU hardware choices I'd game in OS X.

On the other side I haven't had any luck with VM gaming so I gave up on trying to run Homeworld and Starfleet Command in a virtual machine.

Don't get worked up when you mention virtual machine gaming. You're more then likely not going to be taken seriously and most of the suggestions are going to be Boot Camp.

Try VMware Fusion 2.0. It has been VASTLY improved since they introduced DirectX9 support. For older less system-demanding games (and even the more demanding ones, at low settings) are playable. It's not like the old days of VirtualPC and the original releases of Parallels and Fusion anymore.

Not everybody takes gaming uber-seriously with dual GeForce's and running a $500 CPU. Some like gaming, but don't mind playing older games, and don't mind if the graphics had to be toned down. Fusion 2.0 brought virtualization into a realistic gaming choice for those people. The dual GeForce-wielding "it's more than a year old? GARBAGE!" people will, of course, use Boot Camp. I'm not saying Fusion 2.0 makes Boot Camp redundant, I'm just saying the level of gaming you can play on it has been greatly raised.

In fact, in my original post, I said the baddest most demanding game I'd try on Fusion 2.0 is FEAR. You do realize that game was released back in 2005, three years ago. Nowhere near the demands of Crysis or even Doom 3.

If I come on here and say "Yo dudes! Can I play Crysis: Warhead on VMware Fuzion 2.0?!?!?!1", I'd join Strider in laughing myself off the stage. This, however, isn't the case.

Fusion 2.0 was just released, what, today or yesterday? Give it a try, Eldorian, you might be surprised.

[Eidorian]

Try VMware Fusion 2.0. It has been VASTLY improved since they introduced DirectX9 support. For older less system-demanding games (and even the demanding ones, at low settings) are playable. It's not like the old days of VirtualPC and the original releases of Parallels and Fusion anymore.

Not everybody takes gaming uber-seriously with dual GeForce's and running a $500 CPU. Some like gaming, but don't mind playing older games, and don't mind if the graphics had to be toned down. Fusion 2.0 brought virtualization into a realistic gaming choice for those people. The dual GeForce-wielding "it's more than a year old? GARBAGE!" people will, of course, use Boot Camp. I'm not saying Fusion 2.0 makes Boot Camp redundant, I'm just saying the level of gaming you can play on it has been greatly raised.

In fact, in my original post, I said the baddest most demanding game I'd try on Fusion 2.0 is FEAR. You do realize that game was released back in 2005, three years ago. Nowhere near the demands of Crysis or even Doom 3.

If I come on here and say "Yo dudes! Can I play Crysis: Warhead on VMware Fuzion 2.0?!?!?!1", I'd join Strider in laughing myself off the stage. This, however, isn't the case.

Fusion 2.0 was just released, what, today or yesterday? Give it a try, Eldorian, you might be surprised.I'm not going to spend the money on yet another virtual machine product to virtualize what I can do on my Windows desktop natively and with many more hardware features. I'm glad that you had some success with running F.E.A.R. in Fusion.

It also doesn't take much of an investment in a video card nowadays for good performance. US$79-200 is a good range to start at today.

[ravenvii]

I'm not going to spend the money on yet another virtual machine product to virtualize what I can do on my Windows desktop natively and with many more hardware features. I'm glad that you had some success with running F.E.A.R. in Fusion.

It also doesn't take much of an investment in a video card nowadays for good performance. US$79-200 is a good range to start at today.

Figure in the case, the mobo, the cpu, the optical drives, the hard drives, and all that building a desktop entails, along with a LCD/keyboard/mouse (if you don't have one), and having to find the space for said equipment... all for games? If you take gaming that seriously, then this thread is not for you.

I'm not saying you should buy Fusion, Eldorian... there's a free evaluation. Just give it a go, and see what's possible. If you're happy with Boot Camp, all the power to you. In fact, I'm not planning to buy Fusion, it's not worth the $70 for me, I'll continue to use Boot Camp. I'm just being a normal computer geek ;) and seeing what's possible. And I posted here to start a such discussion, and went to test it myself, and am amazed with the results, considering the (horrendous) results of trying last year on the older versions of Parallels and Fusion.

[Eidorian]

Figure in the case, the mobo, the cpu, the optical drives, the hard drives, and all that building a desktop entails, along with a LCD/keyboard/mouse (if you don't have one), and having to find the space for said equipment... all for games? If you take gaming that seriously, then this thread is not for you.You're greatly exaggerating how seriously I take gaming. In addition you don't know what wonders a cheapo Dell + $79 video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102792) can make. I have a few friends that are going to be $500 gamers this Christmas.

I'm not saying you should buy Fusion, Eldorian... there's a free evaluation. Just give it a go, and see what's possible. If you're happy with Boot Camp, all the power to you. In fact, I'm not planning to buy Fusion, it's not worth the $70 for me, I'll continue to use Boot Camp. I'm just being a normal computer geek ;) and seeing what's possible. And I posted here to start a such discussion, and went to test it myself, and am amazed with the results, considering the (horrendous) results of trying last year on the older versions of Parallels and Fusion.I have a suggestion for you. Make a MacRumors guide about it.

[ravenvii]

You're greatly exaggerating how seriously I take gaming. In addition you don't know what wonders a cheapo Dell + $79 video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102792) can make. I have a few friends that are going to be $500 gamers this Christmas.

Well that's $400 more than what I paid for my PS2. And $500 than what I'd have paid if I *gasp* just play the things on Boot Camp! And if I sell this MBP, add $500, that'll be more than enough for the upcoming MacBook Pro, whenever it's released. There's just more important (to me) stuff I want to spend $500 on, you know? So spending $500 on what is essentially a gaming console, that takes up a lot of space, and buying a LCD so I can actually use it (sure, I can get a cheapo $50 LCD, but it's going to be crap, and still is $50 more), etcetera isn't worth it to me. I'm not exaggerating.

I have a suggestion for you. Make a MacRumors guide about it.

Sure, let's see where that goes.

[Eidorian]

Well that's $400 more than what I paid for my PS2. And $500 than what I'd have paid if I *gasp* just play the things on Boot Camp! And if I sell this MBP, add $500, that'll be more than enough for the upcoming MacBook Pro, whenever it's released. There's just more important (to me) stuff I want to spend $500 on, you know? So spending $500 on what is essentially a gaming console, that takes up a lot of space, and buying a LCD so I can actually use it (sure, I can get a cheapo $50 LCD, but it's going to be crap, and still is $50 more), etcetera isn't worth it to me. I'm not exaggerating.Yet you're still using Windows to play your games rather then your PS2. :rolleyes:

Keep in mind that I spent less then you did on your MacBook Pro for my MacBook and desktop. :p

Sure, let's see where that goes.I'm glad you changed your mind about the IQ of forum users.

[ravenvii]

Yet you're still using Windows to play your games rather then your PS2. :rolleyes:

Oh? So I can't be playing on both of them? *slaps forehead* I've been doing it wrong all along!

Keep in mind that I spent less then you did on your MacBook Pro for my MacBook and desktop. :p

Really? I paid $1,600 for mine. How much did you pay for your MacBook and desktop (don't forget to include the LCD... I don't own one)?

I'm glad you changed your mind about the IQ of forum users.

What IQ? Changed my mind? Wut? (;))

Guide: http://guides.macrumors.com/Gaming_Under_Virtualization

[Eidorian]

Oh? So I can't be playing on both of them? *slaps forehead* I've been doing it wrong all along!You want to game on Windows but you bring up how cheap your PS2 is compared to a full blown computer. What was the point of that?

Really? I paid $1,600 for mine. How much did you pay for your MacBook and desktop (don't forget to include the LCD... I don't own one)?I paid $1,600 as well! I can use both too! Sometimes simultaneously! Two computers for the price of one! I've had this LCD long before I had my MacBook and new desktop.

This is degrading into an instant message fest between us. I'd rather not continue using MacRumors for such a purpose.

What IQ? Changed my mind? Wut? (;))

Guide: http://guides.macrumors.com/Gaming_Under_VirtualizationAmusing ninja post edit but we can keep it between ourselves.

[ravenvii]

You want to game on Windows but you bring up how cheap your PS2 is compared to a full blown computer. What was the point of that?

Prior to the Intel switch, I didn't game on Windows. At least not since I switched in 2003 or so. Now I got an Intel machine, so I bought Windows for $7 at the University, and pronto! I can again play all the games I missed out on. I bought the PS2 for about $100 to play games on. I bought Windows XP for $7 to play games on and run Microsoft Office 2003 on (at the time 2008 wasn't out, and 2003 was available for $10 while I had to pay the full price for a student edition of 2004, so it was an obvious choice), and to run ExamSoft for law school exams. A mighty useful $7 spent, that is.

Both are nowhere close to $500 for a gaming console.

How, exactly, is that point problematic in your view?

[Eidorian]

How, exactly, is that point problematic in your view?The purpose of this thread is to discuss Windows gaming via a virtual machine. You had a positive outcome running F.E.A.R. at reduced settings in VMWare Fusion 2.0. You even went as far to take my suggestion to make a MacRumors Guide on the subject.

My experience in Parallels 2.0/3.0 and VMWare 1.0 was flaky and I wasn't able to run Homeworld or Starfleet Command I/II in them. My suggestion is going to be running it natively in Windows for now rather then dealing with virtualization for the best performance and compatibility results.

My next suggestion is that you keep trying more games in VMWare Fusion 2.0 and add your experiences to your fledgling guide.

What does the PS2's price compared to running Windows in a virtual machine or natively on hardware have to do with this?

[ravenvii]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss Windows gaming via a virtual machine. You had a positive outcome running F.E.A.R. at reduced settings in VMWare Fusion 2.0. You even went as far to take my suggestion to make a MacRumors Guide on the subject.

My experience in Parallels 2.0/3.0 and VMWare 1.0 was flaky and I wasn't able to run Homeworld or Starfleet Command I/II in them. My suggestion is going to be running it natively in Windows for now rather then dealing with virtualization for the best performance and compatibility results.

My next suggestion is that you keep trying more games in VMWare Fusion 2.0 and add your experiences to your fledgling guide.

What does the PS2's price compared to running Windows in a virtual machine or natively on hardware have to do with this?

Okay, this argument is becoming comical. Let's agree to disagree (but I'm not even sure if we even actually disagree in the first place).

Good night.

[alkar]

btw guys i tried crysis warhead on vmware just for fun, graphics set to medium and while it worked with some glitches, the game was running at 1fps with a 8800GT. Still, it's kinda impressive.

On the other hand, I tried Virtua tennis 3, everything maxed and it runs 60 fps and isn't that old. I noticed that you need to disable software shadows, else you have some glitches, but it's still running perfectly and is impressive.

While VMWARE is far from being perfect, it's definitly heading a nice direction while Parallels is still using Wine which offers nothing really better than Crossover.

[Stridder44]

I'm not going to spend the money on yet another virtual machine product to virtualize what I can do on my Windows desktop natively and with many more hardware features. I'm glad that you had some success with running F.E.A.R. in Fusion.

It also doesn't take much of an investment in a video card nowadays for good performance. US$79-200 is a good range to start at today.

Thank you. I'm trying to understand why the OP wants to waste their money and stop them from doing so (yes, I know it's their money and they can do what they want with it). Ravenvii you're contradicting yourself all over the place (what with consoles being better to game on), and you still have yet to give me any reason why Boot Camp sucks.

[ravenvii]

Thank you. I'm trying to understand why the OP wants to waste their money and stop them from doing so (yes, I know it's their money and they can do what they want with it). Ravenvii you're contradicting yourself all over the place (what with consoles being better to game on), and you still have yet to give me any reason why Boot Camp sucks.

You're putting words into my mouth. Nowhere did I say that Boot Camp sucks. In fact, I said somewhere before that I'm not planning to actually buy Fusion 2.0. I'm simply saying that you CAN play games on it, where before you can't. Nowhere did I say you should forget about Boot Camp and use Fusion. I simply said that it's now possible to play games on Fusion if you ever wanted to. In fact, in my ORIGINAL post, I said I was considering playing older games that are not compatible or glitchy on Vista, on Fusion, and play the newer games that are compatible and not glitchy on Vista, in Boot Camp.

And I never said consoles are better. I simply said consoles are cheaper, and suit MY gaming needs just as well as a PC that costs triple of what I would have paid for a console. And that was just a tangent argument between me and Eldorian when talking about the costs of a gaming machine. It's not really relevant to the main topic here, so forget about it.

You are the one who are contradicting yourself and putting words in other peoples' mouths.

Furthermore, not everyone (me included) have a desktop PC I can just stick a $70 video card in instead of buying Fusion.

[Industries]

You're putting words into my mouth. Nowhere did I say that Boot Camp sucks. In fact, I said somewhere before that I'm not planning to actually buy Fusion 2.0. I'm simply saying that you CAN play games on it, where before you can't. Nowhere did I say you should forget about Boot Camp and use Fusion. I simply said that it's now possible to play games on Fusion if you ever wanted to. In fact, in my ORIGINAL post, I said I was considering playing older games that are not compatible or glitchy on Vista, on Fusion, and play the newer games that are compatible and not glitchy on Vista, in Boot Camp.

And I never said consoles are better. I simply said consoles are cheaper, and suit MY gaming needs just as well as a PC that costs triple of what I would have paid for a console. And that was just a tangent argument between me and Eldorian when talking about the costs of a gaming machine. It's not really relevant to the main topic here, so forget about it.

You are the one who are contradicting yourself and putting words in other peoples' mouths.

Furthermore, not everyone (me included) have a desktop PC I can just stick a $70 video card in instead of buying Fusion.
I did.

In fact, all of your points are moot, because I can buy a PS3 and:

1) Use it as a computer (Linux)
2) Play games on it (ones that look decent) perfectly
3) Watch Bluray movies
4) Browse the internet
5) and do ********s of other things for $400 or so

Doesn't that sound nice? Or, you could buy VMware Fusion if you're one of those "laid back" gamers. I wouldn't laugh.

I, honestly, can't see anyone buying a brand new computer _just_ for games. Why not just buy a console?

[ravenvii]

I did.

In fact, all of your points are moot, because I can buy a PS3 and:

1) Use it as a computer (Linux)
2) Play games on it (ones that look decent) perfectly
3) Watch Bluray movies
4) Browse the internet
5) and do ********s of other things for $400 or so

Doesn't that sound nice? Or, you could buy VMware Fusion if you're one of those "laid back" gamers. I wouldn't laugh.

I, honestly, can't see anyone buying a brand new computer _just_ for games. Why not just buy a console?

Why are my points moot? I agree with you. People use whatever suits them.

Strider is basically saying that Boot Camp is always better than Fusion, no matter what circumstances, and therefore we should not bother talking about the merits of playing games on Fusion, else we'd be laughed at.

And I took offense in that.

[theLimit]

I am excited that games can now be played via Fusion. Boot Camp is great, and the clear choice for demanding games, but it can be a PITA with having to stop whatever I'm doing in OS X (editing in Logic, downloading torrents, etc.), wait two minutes for a reboot into Windows, play a game for thirty minutes, wait two more minutes to reboot into OS X, then resume whatever I was doing.

When I want to spend a few hours playing Mass Effect or Vanguard, Boot Camp is the way to go. Sometimes I just want to take a break and play Neverwinter Nights for half an hour or meet a friend in Everquest to do a quick trade. Between that and being able to run MS Office without buying the Mac version (I already have the Windows version), I may just be sold.

[Stridder44]

Why are my points moot? I agree with you. People use whatever suits them.

Strider is basically saying that Boot Camp is always better than Fusion, no matter what circumstances, and therefore we should not bother talking about the merits of playing games on Fusion, else we'd be laughed at.

And I took offense in that.

Now who's putting words in who's mouth? Please, point out where I said Fusion is always better than Boot Camp.

Buying it just for gaming? Yes, it's very laughable. For everything? No, there are a lot of cases where productivity is number 1, and that's where VM is excellent.

And I apologize; I didn't think you would get offended over a discussion about software.

[DrD]

Allow me to point out why virtualization is desirable, whether you're running games or not.

1. No need to partition your hard drive. With boot camp, you're required to isolate a portion of your hard drive from OS X and create an NTFS partition in it's place. A virtual machine, being a file, has a flexible file size and remains on your mac partition like everything else.

2. No need to restart your computer. I don't see the point of elaborating. I should point out that an earlier quote of 2 seconds is off the mark by quite a bit.

3. No need to isolate the operating environment. You can play Team Fortress 2 while video chatting on ichat while checking your mac mail. Expose lets you take your windows window and juggle it around with the rest of your programs, or bump it off the screen.

4. My favorite - You can run more then just windows. Want to give Ubuntu a try? How about Fedora? Suse? BeOS? You can install any number of operating systems, each contained in their own virtual machine file, all saved on your mac hard drive (no extra partitions), and you can run them all simultaneously - and swap between them with expose.

...SO...

The real motivation that I have for wanting to run windows games in virtualization, is so that I can keep all of the advantages listed above. They make your ability to run different operating systems seamless, more effective, and a lot more simple.

Boot Camp happens to have the better graphics drivers right now. Perhaps that's an understatement. But it doesn't have to be that way by any means. If virtualization programmers keep up the pace, then hopefully we'll see native DirectX to OpenGL conversion on par with Cider. And that would mean negligible loss of performance.

[oli2140]

I found the COD4 demo to be borderline playable at reduced
settings in Fusion.

Not bad considering, but well short of the performance in
Boot Camp.

Haha, I tried COD4 the day Fusion 2 came out, on a new intel iMac the graphics were outrageously bad, it was unplayable and it took 15 seconds alond to aim at something still from all of the lag. To be honest i think there will be few modern games that will run well on VMware at the moment.

[ravenvii]

Now who's putting words in who's mouth? Please, point out where I said Fusion is always better than Boot Camp.

Easy. Just look at your first post in this thread. Tells a lot about your perspective.

And I apologize; I didn't think you would get offended over a discussion about software.

This didn't start out as a "discussion", it started out when you posted a bunch of images of people laughing. The implication is very clear of what you are trying to convey.

[luffx]

I, honestly, can't see anyone buying a brand new computer _just_ for games. Why not just buy a console?

Because not everyone likes console games. Ever play CounterStrike for the Xbox? Even better, have you ever tried an MMORPG on a console? It's laughable.

I built a rig just for gaming b/c I like to play real games with real graphics. The original intent for the machine was Age of Conan (Windows only and requiring a strong graphics card).

Now...if I was a light/casual/sucky gamer, I wouldn't do that. ~_^

I mean, c'mon, how're you supposed to get that BOOMHEADSHOT! with low FPS & vid-lag?

Also, the machine also gets some video & programming use out of it. (Wasn't a deciding factor of the build though).

[Zortrium]

Haha, I tried COD4 the day Fusion 2 came out, on a new intel iMac the graphics were outrageously bad, it was unplayable and it took 15 seconds alond to aim at something still from all of the lag. To be honest i think there will be few modern games that will run well on VMware at the moment.

COD4 hasn't even been officially released yet on the Mac - of course you're not going to play a cutting-edge FPS inside a virtual machine. But I think it's more telling to look at something like Half Life 2 (not too old and still looks very good), which runs at perfectly acceptable framerates inside VMware on my iMac.

[Industries]

I built a rig just for gaming b/c I like to play real games with real graphics.
And how much did this cost?

[t19880821]

You can actually build a really good gaming rig for less than $1000...

On the topic of virtual machine. It has been said over and over again that when you want to play games, it works best when you're running windows natively. It's understandable why someone would want to just run something like Fusion. Who wouldn't want to exit their game and see OSX right there in front of their face? But there's some problems with that.

ravenvii you're sitting there saying "well try it you'll be impressed, blah blah blah" but i'm pretty sure most of us here know how terrible the performance is on VM vs boot camp. How many of you guys gaming on apple machines spent more than $2000 on their computer? This MBP I'm on right now cost a pretty penny, just under $2500.. that's with my student discount and the extended warranty. So why would I spend more money on something like Fusion, decide to play a game, and watch my $2500 play something like FEAR on minimum settings at 30FPS (which is TERRIBLE). When it comes to VM and gaming, it's not hard to understand why someone would laugh. Because the people the really use something like Fusion is so they can run non-gaming Windows apps for work or school, something that's not really worth partitioning your harddrive and rebooting into windows.

Also, it takes no more than a minute to reboot into windows. It's also a fairly simple process. All you do is reboot, hold the option key, select windows, and you'll be in windows in only about 30 seconds (yes, it's 30 seconds i timed it).

The point is... gaming on an apple machine is bad enough (unless you have a mac pro with an 8800). Why would you want to make it any worse?

[ntrigue]

Thanks Stridder44! Your speechless response made my night :)

Boot Camp is your best friend...

[NATO]

Chessmaster 10 works perfectly in VMWare Fusion 2.0, Thief II on the other hand is unplayably slow. Given the age of Thief II, I was really hoping it would have worked, but alas.

[ravenvii]

Also, it takes no more than a minute to reboot into windows. It's also a fairly simple process. All you do is reboot, hold the option key, select windows, and you'll be in windows in only about 30 seconds (yes, it's 30 seconds i timed it).

The point is... gaming on an apple machine is bad enough (unless you have a mac pro with an 8800). Why would you want to make it any worse?

Sure, it takes a minute, but that means I have to quit everything I'm doing on OS X, and boot into Windows.

I'm typing this in Safari, with iChat, Mail, iCal and Keynote running. I'm half-working on a presentation right now, and chatting with friends on iChat, and have my calendar open to check to-do's and the schedule for this week and next week, and Mail to, well, notify me of email. And along with that, I'm running Command & Conquer: Renegade (the main game I'm playing right now - I'm on the final level!) running in windowed mode in Unity. Seriously, how ****ing awesome is that? Renegade, being an older game, runs perfectly fine in VMware on high settings. And I'd gladly sacrifice performance for easier access for short bursts of gaming.

In fact, because of the hassle of having to reboot into Windows to play, I actually play my DS much more than I play Windows games. I just leave it on the desk, and open it up quickly to play a bit, then close it and put it aside, while waiting for a download or something.

Yes I'm sitting here and saying "try it, you'll be impressed" not because you can play it at an equal performance as Boot Camp. I never said "DUDES, Boot Camp is now unnecessary! Use VMware!", I simply said you'll be impressed because previously gaming on a VM is either impossible (no 3D at all) or next to useless (can barely run a 1998 game). Now it can run games up to 2006 or so, which is a gigantic leap.

Why is it so difficult for you people to understand that?

[martychang]

Ugh, the real issue is security. I'm not putting Windows onto my machine, ever. It will live in a VM sandbox or it will live not at all. I have games that only run in Windows, they happen to be better than anything I can get on the crappy things they call consoles. I play them however I can, VMs in this case. At the end of the day I use my computer for more than gaming/entertainment and will not compromise it's security in the name of entertainment.

[iMouse]

Ugh, the real issue is security. I'm not putting Windows onto my machine, ever. It will live in a VM sandbox or it will live not at all. I have games that only run in Windows, they happen to be better than anything I can get on the crappy things they call consoles. I play them however I can, VMs in this case. At the end of the day I use my computer for more than gaming/entertainment and will not compromise it's security in the name of entertainment.

I'm no Windows fan, but installing Windows in Boot Camp or in a VM solution like VMware Fusion or Parallels isn't going to change the security of the Mac OS. Actually, if you think about it, Boot Camp is a better way of keeping your Mac secure as when Windows is running, it has no way of accessing the Mac OS HFS+ partition without special software (Windows can't read HFS or HFS+ natively).

So, even if your Windows partition becomes compromised by malware, there's no way for the malware to attack the Mac's HFS+ partition to damage data. It may infect Windows, deleting or modifying files and registry keys, but it won't cause any harm to the Mac.

This may change a bit when running a VM solution. Since both VMware and Parallels have built-in options to allow you to read/write files to a shared folder on your Mac's file system from Windows as well as simple click and drag between VM and host OS, security is a tad bit more lax and in VERY rare circumstances could cause compromise of the entire Mac.

A VM isn't as much of a sandbox as you would think. ;)

[martychang]

I'm no Windows fan, but installing Windows in Boot Camp or in a VM solution like VMware Fusion or Parallels isn't going to change the security of the Mac OS. Actually, if you think about it, Boot Camp is a better way of keeping your Mac secure as when Windows is running, it has no way of accessing the Mac OS HFS+ partition without special software (Windows can't read HFS or HFS+ natively).

Wrong, Disk Manager in Windows can detect any partition, though it won't neccessarily know what format it is or be able to read it, and can delete it. Deleting the HFS+ parition is about the most complete damage you can have. It's an uncommon bug that seeks to simply destroy partitions, but Windows is so vulnerable to ill in general I'm not going to risk that.

The drag and drop functionality of the VMs is the only thing I'd be worried about at all, since you have to set up such a shared folder in the first place, something I'd never do. And I'm not a total expert on this, but I believe an attack using the drag and drop functionality would need to come from the Mac side, though this depends on how they implemented it in the VM software(i.e. if there's some device visible within Windows created by the VM software, than that could be used to ill). The real point is that as long as Windows only exists in a VM on a Mac, even a host-aware one, there's UNIX involved at some point, and where there is UNIX there's some crazy permissions scheme you can put on a resource that'll break what the attacker is trying to do(and possibly a million other things, but quite often none of them are useful to anyone but malicious entities).

In any case I like the odds better with a VM than something sitting on my hard drive.

[iMouse]

Wrong, Disk Manager in Windows can detect any partition, though it won't neccessarily know what format it is or be able to read it, and can delete it. Deleting the HFS+ parition is about the most complete damage you can have. It's an uncommon bug that seeks to simply destroy partitions, but Windows is so vulnerable to ill in general I'm not going to risk that.

What I meant by access is to actually be able to read the HFS+ file system. A good point about Disk Manager, nevertheless. However, when was the last time you saw a compromised system have its entire partition scheme deleted? At most, I've seen a few Trojans attempt to format by drive letter...which would rule out an attack on the HFS+ partition.

I think the last real attack on partitioned data was due to a botched Windows patch. Apple had done something similar with iTunes and external FireWire disks several years ago as well, so Apple is no different.

Most Windows, Mac and Linux systems (I know I'm excluding Solaris and the 2476782643 other operating systems out there) are attacked or compromised for a reason....so that they can be used to access other services on an internal network or be set up as a zombie to carry out other attacks or spam other systems across the world.

A VM solution can easily be reverted back to an earlier date, wiping the virtual disk to a state days before the attack where in Boot Camp, you may need to clean or format. But, we're talking about pre-compromise vs "I already got pwn3d" and need to fix.

There are both good and bad things about VMs vs Boot Camp when you talk about security. It basically comes down to how paranoid are you about which way the hackers are gonna make their way in and what they intend to do with "their" new zombie. :p

[t19880821]

I think we all understand what you're saying about VMWare. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that if we look back at how it used to handle gaming, and how it is now.. it's a significant change.

But... do you know how many of us want to play newer games? Sure, it's a great idea if you're only interested in older games... but that's about it.

Also, for me and many others, there's a time for work and a time for play. I have no interest in doing my work and playing games the same time. But if I wanted to, I can easily alt-tab in windows. And I can go into Firefox or AIM, put on some music.. whatever. Windows has pretty much the same basic functionalities as OSX. You don't NEED to be in OSX to check your mail or talk to other people.

Yes.. I can understand what you're saying about VMWare. If you want to use it, then by all means no one is stopping you. I'm just providing feedback to what you just said... "thanks, but no thanks... here's my explanation....." If one day, VMWare is pretty much THE SAME THING as running windows natively, and I'd be able to play the newer games for Windows, and I would definitely ditch boot camp. It's great to see the are making improvements on it, and hopefully they make more significant improvements.

[ravenvii]

Okay, if you guys think it's not worth discussing WMware, I'll ask that this thread be closed.

Good day sirs, I'll make my leave of this forum.