VPC 7

[JzzTrump22]

Will you be able to play games on this version? And what are some new features that will be included? Anyone have a good article i could check out?

[BakedBeans]

yeah i would be very interested in any new features and articles that anyone could give....

doubt games will be great on it tho

[invaLPsion]

I heard a rumor stating that VPC 7 would actually take advantage of your video card...

[Grimace]

There isn't much available yet - M$ has been fairly vague. Games - very unlikely. The most noticeable improvement is that the computer's video card will be utilized more than before.

[JOD8FY]

Well, it's supposed to have native graphics card support, enabling you to play PC games on your Mac. It's also supposed to be noticeably faster and be able to run on the G5. And, it's supposed to be released in the second half of this year. They changed that from the first half of this year because it took longer to create than they thought.

I'm glad you started up this thread, and I hope it doesn't die soon. I really want VPC 7 so I'm hoping this will be a good place to start up the info/rumors.

Best wishes,
JOD8FY

[JzzTrump22]

I'm really hoping it comes out this second half. It's a lot sooner then you think. It would be great if it takes more of an advantage of the video card. I didn't get the 128 for nothing.

[Grimace]

I'm really hoping it comes out this second half. It's a lot sooner then you think. It would be great if it takes more of an advantage of the video card. I didn't get the 128 for nothing.
we're in the second half now!! :D

[JOD8FY]

we're in the second half now!! :D

Yea, it's too bad that the second half ranges from now until December! :D

I wish they'd provide more details about it. When they do, then we know it's just around the corner...

JOD8FY

[javabear90]

so a dual G5 at 2.5 ghz w/ a geforce 6800 ultra should be able to play a few games. That would be very cool.

[zulgand04]

The reason they pushed back the date was so that could put XP s2 in without haveing to worry bout updateing it 3 months after it was released and makeing it easier for the user, XP is whats holding up VPC7, once thats out VPC7 will be out shortly after.

-Neal

[wdlove]

Microsoft Office 2004 at last I heard is due out his month. I was hoping the VPC 7 with be available with the Professional version as before. My preference would be for them to be released at the same time.

[JOD8FY]

Microsoft Office 2004 at last I heard is due out his month. I was hoping the VPC 7 with be available with the Professional version as before. My preference would be for them to be released at the same time.

Office 2004 has been out for a while. However, the Professional edition has not because it always includes VPC. Since there is no VPC 7 it is not available yet.

Microsoft said that the delay was caused because when they had set out to create VPC 7, they had expected that it would take as long to create as Office. They said that VPC requires much more time to debug than Office and therefore it caused a delay.

It would be great if it came out this month!

JOD8FY

[johng723]

Microsoft Office 2004 at last I heard is due out his month. I was hoping the VPC 7 with be available with the Professional version as before. My preference would be for them to be released at the same time.

Actually several sites are already taking pre-orders for microsoft office 2004 professional which does come with virtual pc 7. They say that it ships at the end of september though so I guess we'll have to wait a little bit longer.

[stoid]

I hope that VPC7 doesn't turn into another Longhorn waiting game! :eek: :rolleyes:

[JOD8FY]

I hope that VPC7 doesn't turn into another Longhorn waiting game! :eek: :rolleyes:

Or a "The Mouse BT" waiting game! :D

I hope it comes out before September... :(

JOD8FY

[MacDawg]

I'm not getting my hopes up too much about VPC7. You would think that Microsoft would be able to take advantage of their own OS, but history tells us that it will be bloated and full of bugs. Oh well.

[m.r.m.]

i seriously doubt vp7 will let you play any game relying on frames per second. maybe you'll be able to enjoy age of empires or something like that, but not half-life 2 or doom 3.

[JOD8FY]

i seriously doubt vp7 will let you play any game relying on frames per second. maybe you'll be able to enjoy age of empires or something like that, but not half-life 2 or doom 3.

Maybe not, but I love Age of Empires - one of my favorite games, actually.

But if VPC 7 does have native graphics card support, then why wouldn't games run well on it? What other necessity is being emulated?

JOD8FY

[Dr. Dastardly]

Does anyone else think that this will debut at the Paris show?

[JOD8FY]

Does anyone else think that this will debut at the Paris show?

That is a possibility. Actually, it just might.

I can see it now - "...and while we're on the subject of G5, (referring to G5 iMac) I am pleased to introduce Virtual PC 7 which is now compatible with any G5 powered Macintosh...."

This could be some show in Paris! :)

JOD8FY

P.S. - What do you think of my script, Steve? :D

[BrianKonarsMac]

Maybe not, but I love Age of Empires - one of my favorite games, actually.

But if VPC 7 does have native graphics card support, then why wouldn't games run well on it? What other necessity is being emulated?

JOD8FY

DirectX?

[JOD8FY]

DirectX?

Nope - rumor has it that because there is native graphics card support, it will not emulate DirectX, but rather run it as it does on a Windows machine.

So what else might not allow it to play intense games? :confused:

JOD8FY

[BakedBeans]

are they offering free upgrade from vpc 6 if we brought now like they did with office?

[Sol]

i seriously doubt vp7 will let you play any game relying on frames per second. maybe you'll be able to enjoy age of empires or something like that, but not half-life 2 or doom 3.

Even if the emulator is optimised for dual G5 processors and takes advantage of the graphics card, running the latest games would not be ideal. However games like the original Half Life could run with great frame-rates. Many PC budget titles would be worth running on VPC7 if it delivers the features we have been promised.

[JOD8FY]

are they offering free upgrade from vpc 6 if we brought now like they did with office?

I havent seen any yet. Try checking around on this site: www.microsoft.com/mac

Good luck,
JOD8FY

[m.r.m.]

i´m not even that sure about running half life. ok, i agree that it may run, but what good is it if you only get 50-60 fps. many would say, better than not running at all, but if you´ve spent $3000 on a computer, i´m sure we all can agree that you want 100 fps, and yes that is a tremendous difference. :p

i guess we´ll just have to wait and see, since this is all speculation and gut feelings without any or with very little substance.

[ravenvii]

Heh, the human eye couldn't see any better than 60 fps, so there's no difference if it's 60fps or 1 million fps... lol... Yes I know it's an average, and higher means it's more likely to remain above 60 fps at all times... so I guess I'd hope for 70 fps.

And 3000 bucks just to run 70 fps? Sure, you gotta remember it's all emulated, and you get to run OS X plus all Windows programs you would want. If VPC7 is as Microsoft promised, I'm getting rid of my PC and getting a PowerMac.

[7on]

lol, and what most people forget is that Half-life isn't that much graphics demanding. It was realized in '99 and I even got the Day One demo with my Voodoo3500 card. And I honestly don't why people need above 60fps on games (I can even deal with 30). ID has said that they fixed this in the new DOOM3 engine, by setting up a mandatory frame limiter. It's all about the Quake3 fiasco where you can get 300+ FPS on today's machines.

Being good at a game doesn't mean you need awesome FPS, you just have to be good. Consoles even run at (on NTSC) 720x480 @ 60fps (though TVs are 29.97, the frames are interlaced meaning 2 frames in one).

You can already run HL1 on VPC6 @ 3fps so 30FPS isn't that far-fetched if MS has better GPU support.

[JzzTrump22]

If it does have graphic support, do you think you will be able to run less graphic intensive games like Civ3? I just bought the game a few months ago for pc and haven't played it because i got my PB shortly after. So it would be cool if i could use it in my mac.

[JOD8FY]

If it does have graphic support, do you think you will be able to run less graphic intensive games like Civ3?

I would think so. But does anyone know if it would be able to play Age of Mythology? If it could, that would be awesome.

Also, I have a 7200 RPM external HD. If I were to install VPC onto it, would it run better than on my 12" Rev. B HD? How would it affect gameplay?

Thanks,
JOD8FY

[FightTheFuture]

i could be wrong, but wasn't it connetix that developed VPC 6 - and then sold it to microsoft, who updated it from there on? maybe microsoft will definitely make this emulator fly better then before. i really hope so. it would give me a reason to ditch my dell and pick up a G5.

[JOD8FY]

i could be wrong, but wasn't it connetix that developed VPC 6 - and then sold it to microsoft, who updated it from there on?

That is correct. And I too am hoping that Microsoft will do a better job of creating VPC.

JOD8FY

[7on]

They could even tie in Windows to make it work better/faster (some PPC code even). Hopefully it'll be exponentially better.

[thatwendigo]

Why do people even want VirtualPC, rather than a full port of the operating system to PowerPC? The NT core, which is the basis for XP, had full support for the PowerPC architecture from NT4.0 (and I thnk 3.8) onwards because of a technology that they called the hardware abstraction layer.

The only thing you'd really need to emulate then are application APIs so that calls to the OS are flipped from their x86 origins and run as PowerPC code, then flipped back. The OS itself, and much of the other underpinnings, could be run natively. This wouldn't hurt Microsoft one bit because they could charge for Windows on the mac platform, and it would only help the market overall because people who needed windows compatibility but only wanted one machine could do it without kludgy emulation of an old processor and hardware.

[Nermal]

MS could release VPC with a special version of Windows that uses PowerPC code. The PowerPC code can be executed natively, and the CPU emulation will only be needed for any additional applications you install. By making the core OS PowerPC native, there should be a tremendous speed boost. It will also decrease piracy of Windows because people will want the faster "VPC version" of Windows, rather than using the copy that came with their Dull.

[Veldek]

I don’t want to shatter everyone’s dream, but I read in a German magazine, that tested the VPC7 beta, that it’s too slow to run even older games. I hope that’s because it’s a beta, but you should perhaps make yourself comfortable with a disappointment.

[jsw]

Why do people even want VirtualPC, rather than a full port of the operating system to PowerPC? ....

MS could release VPC with a special version of Windows that uses PowerPC code.

I don't think anyone would rather have VPC (emulator) than a true port - except for those who wanted to run something other than Windows on their emulated PC (but why would they? the Mac is already a UNIX system... perhaps to run old DOS games? ;)).

I just don't think MS is willing to dedicate the resources to it. Plus, unlike VPC, MS would have to port each of the OSs it wanted to sell, as opposed to just an emulator underneath. Pretty expensive proposition for what they see as a tiny market.

[JOD8FY]

I don’t want to shatter everyone’s dream, but I read in a German magazine, that tested the VPC7 beta, that it’s too slow to run even older games. I hope that’s because it’s a beta, but you should perhaps make yourself comfortable with a disappointment.

I hope you're wrong... :(. Did that article say anything else about VPC 7? Maybe a release date?

Thanks,
JOD8FY

[yamabushi]

If you buy MS Office X Professional before the end of the month you can get MS Office 2000 Professional (including VPC 7) for free when it ships. Do a search for "ms office x" at the
Apple online store (http://store.apple.com).