Parallels Working On 3D Acceleration

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

Parallels spokesman Ben Roudolph has revealed that Parallels is working to support 3D acceleration in an upcoming release of the company's flagship Mac product, Parallels Desktop for Mac.

What's more, Parallels Desktop for Mac will see "fast 3D graphics support," presumably to help cater to gamers who want to run Windows games without having to reboot their machine using Boot Camp and a separate Windows partition. --via MacWorld

The news comes as Microsoft has announced plans to cease development of a univeral-binary version of VirtualPC for Mac and VMWare is showing off a beta of their virtualization soluation. Both VirtualPC and VMWare to date do not offer full 3D acceleration. However, recent announcements by TransGaming and <a href"http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/06/20060630170338.shtml"]CodeWeavers[/url], both of which promise to allow more games to run well natively in Mac OS X (albeit via different methods), has stepped up competition in the Mac gaming realm.

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[yellow]

Good Newsies!

[amac4me]

Nice. I welcome anything that would get more people to make the Switch. If Parallels can get this to market, it would help Apple.

[Grimace]

Let the gaming thread begin...

[bigandy]

i'll take eight!

[vniow]

This would seriously kick ass.

I'm curious how they would acheive it though, would it be able to access the full (or at least partial) acceleration of the graphics card or be emulating a seperate one, sort of like Virtual PC did on the PPC platform but more powerful?

[Eidorian]

Great news!

Even it's only limited due to shader issues I'd love to be able to play my older 3D games without rebooting.

[Akira]

Forget games, think about CAD and 3D software!

Finally AutoCAD and Maya on a MacBook Pro, while being able to do the rest of your work in Mac apps.

[Xacto]

If you run games with Bootcamp, will it take advantage of the 3D card?

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Xacto

If you run games with Bootcamp, will it take advantage of the 3D card?

Yes. BootCamp allows fully native 3d performance, and also allows Windows to utilize all available CPU power so you don't have the burden of a host OS (i.e. Mac OS X) running in the background.

However, this means every time you want to game, you have to re-start you computer. Parallels is trying to take out that step for all but the most hardware-intensive games (as then I'm sure you'd run into the fact that you have the overhead of virtualization).

[nagromme]

Originally Posted by Xacto

If you run games with Bootcamp, will it take advantage of the 3D card?

Yes.

Originally Posted by kainjow

Awesome news. Unless something drastic happens soon, native Mac games aren't in a good position right now

Agreed--but I think something drastic IS going to happen soon: the growth of the Mac market as a whole. That is a positive to help outweigh some of the sales native game companies will lose to Windows solutions.

Remember two things about the Windows solutions to date:

1. You still have to buy a copy of Windows. Some people will do that, but NOT the whole market of Mac gamers.

2. MANY people were ALREADY willing to game in Windows (and used a PC to do it). So the people running Windows games on a Mac aren't in fact all "lost customers"--many of them are just doing what they always did (only easier).

So I think there's a sizable chunk of native Mac game demand left. I know I'm part of it myself!

A smaller chunk than before? Very possibly--BUT a smaller chunk of a much larger whole, as Mac sales continue to rise.

Only time will tell, and I can see why these are scary, uncertain times for some Mac game companies. But I expect native Mac games AND Windows ports/conversions to live on.

And for Mac gameERS, things are looking better than ever.

[mdntcallr]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Yes.

2. MANY people were ALREADY willing to game in Windows (and used a PC to do it). So the people running Windows games on a Mac aren't in fact all "lost customers"--many of them are just doing what they always did (only easier).

So I think there's a sizable chunk of native Mac game demand left. I know I'm part of it myself!

And for Mac gameERS, things are looking better than ever.

Yep, i play on my pc tower. woudnt mind getting a new mac tower, or imac with better graphics card.

and a macbook pro (with merom)

Essentially that way i could then play, work and travel with what i need for my house.

[WildPalms]

Originally Posted by Xacto

If you run games with Bootcamp, will it take advantage of the 3D card?

Xacto, Bootcamp is a process to allow a dual boot into the Windows operating system.

Once you have booted into Windows, you are completely in Windows, no emulation, no translation, etc...

So, if Windows can access the 3D card then yes, you can take advantage of the 3D card.

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what Bootcamp is about.

[lar34]

Very Toasty indeed, bring on the games. However I do have an architect friend who needs AutoCAD on a Mac. So this is good news indeed.

[kainjow]

Awesome news. Unless something drastic happens soon, native Mac games aren't in a good position right now

[Lollypop]

Im dying to know how they will do it, and what Direct X they will support, I could run a few very old games in Parallels without 3d support and it all running on the CPU.

Maybe they will create a virtual driver that translates the windows Direct X instructions to openGL for mac and then simply display those results or something... these are exciting days for the mac indeed!

edit: second time today someone says exactly the same thing as I did the exact time I say it... must be a slow day for me

[kenaustus]

Sad to see Parallels push MS out of the market . . .

Overall I think Parallels is going to win this market unless VMWare comes out with a very good product at a very good price. At least we can enjoy the competition over the next few years.

[iKwick7]

Originally Posted by Akira

Forget games, think about CAD and 3D software!

Finally AutoCAD and Maya on a MacBook Pro, while being able to do the rest of your work in Mac apps.

Exactly what I was thinking! Great for my macbook, but even better for a Mac pro! (which I will be getting sooner or later). I'm definately sold!

[Glassbathroom]

Originally Posted by Akira

Forget games, think about CAD and 3D software!

Finally AutoCAD and Maya on a MacBook Pro, while being able to do the rest of your work in Mac apps.

Yes indeed! Well said, there is more to 3D than games.

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by Akira

Forget games, think about CAD and 3D software!

Finally AutoCAD and Maya on a MacBook Pro, while being able to do the rest of your work in Mac apps.

Wait, why are you including Maya? You can run that natively on OS X, right? Did you mean 3dsMax?

-Zadillo

[Akira]

Originally Posted by Zadillo

Wait, why are you including Maya? You can run that natively on OS X, right? Did you mean 3dsMax?

-Zadillo

Try running (the PPC-only) Maya on a Intel Mac. I've been told (on many occasions) that it just doesn't work. And even if it did work, it would be terribly slow with Rosetta, so you would be better off running it in windows anyway.

[spetznatz]

Originally Posted by Zadillo

Wait, why are you including Maya? You can run that natively on OS X, right? Did you mean 3dsMax?

-Zadillo

Trouble is, Maya is NOT a Universal Binary, and you wouldn't want to run it under Rosetta.

Further trouble, Autodesk (when I spoke to them the other day) refused to say if they were working on a UB of Maya. 'It's something we're looking at' was all she would say. Given that Maya is written using XCode, porting should be a no-brainer. Other 3D apps (Cheetah, Cinema4D, Modo) had versions out very quickly.

So Maya to be the first victim of Boot Camp?

Still, great news if Parallels can do this properly.

[Akira]

Originally Posted by spetznatz

Trouble is, Maya is NOT a Universal Binary, and you wouldn't want to run it under Rosetta.

Further trouble, Autodesk (when I spoke to them the other day) refused to say if they were working on a UB of Maya. 'It's something we're looking at' was all she would say. [...]

Exactly. And we all know how committed Autodesk is to the Mac platform

By the way, some months before Apple announced the Intel switch, Autodesk asked users if they were interested in a Mac OS X version of their AutoCAD software. I replied that I would die for one, just because my university (TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture) uses it on all their workstations. I got a reply they received my mail, but never heard from them since.

And some people think Quark is a lazy company, using their flagship software as a sucked dry milk cow. At least Quark supports Mac and Windows...

[AlexK]

Originally Posted by Akira

Forget games, think about CAD and 3D software!

Finally AutoCAD and Maya on a MacBook Pro, while being able to do the rest of your work in Mac apps.

Actually I posted several days ago about the actual possibility of running professional 3D applications under Parallels workstation. I also made a screencast of messiah (a professional character animation software based on openGL) running together with several quicktimes, iMovieHD, iSight capturing and Exposé showing all windows. Unfortunately I had to change the video again, because of license issues (I also showed a beta product running by accident). But it still shows a lot of the above.

Check it out:
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpres...-for-mac-os-x/
and
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpres...-moving-proof/

[Akira]

Originally Posted by AlexK

Actually I posted several days ago about the actual possibility of running professional 3D applications under Parallels workstation. I also made a screencast of messiah (a professional character animation software based on openGL) running together with several quicktimes, iMovieHD, iSight capturing and Exposé showing all windows. Unfortunately I had to change the video again, because of license issues (I also showed a beta product running by accident). But it still shows a lot of the above.

Check it out:
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpres...-for-mac-os-x/
and
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpres...-moving-proof/

Wow AlexK, that's great! Now if only Apple would release Merom MacBook Pro's and I'm all set for the new academic year