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).
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Gaming on VMWare Fusion 2.0!
- Thread starter ravenvii
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Easy. Just look at your first post in this thread. Tells a lot about your perspective.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
Security?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good day sirs, I'll make my leave of this forum.
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