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Parallels Working On 3D Acceleration
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aswitcher said:
I really hope Apple doesn't knock the wind out of Parallels' sails by announcing similar technology as one of Leopard's "secret" features. While it would be great to have it built-in, I'd love to see the Parallels people enjoy a bit of success first.
Flowbee said:
I was wondering if this was why they didn't mention this at all. Maybe Apple did a deal with Parallels. Give us a few months before you go this route. They are even plugging it in their adverts.
While I also like the idea of no virtualisation and seemlessly running Windows apps, I prefer to contain them within a parallels window. The only advantage would be the potential space saved by no Windows install.
So news that Parallels will be offering 3D support excites me. The more using this rather than bootcamp, the better. Being able to switch from a Windows game to the Apple mail, Safari or the various other standard OSX apps is a brilliant advert for them. If you boot into Windows on a Mac, you will be slowly tempted to use a Windows app to do everyday tasks, OSX begins to be a hassle. The more people use the OSX apps, the more they realise how much better they often are.
So news that Parallels will be offering 3D support excites me. The more using this rather than bootcamp, the better. Being able to switch from a Windows game to the Apple mail, Safari or the various other standard OSX apps is a brilliant advert for them. If you boot into Windows on a Mac, you will be slowly tempted to use a Windows app to do everyday tasks, OSX begins to be a hassle. The more people use the OSX apps, the more they realise how much better they often are.
If this would run well with 1 GB of RAM and be able to play all the games I'd be able to play in Windows under Boot Camp, I'd DEFINITELY get this. ...As soon as I can find Windows for cheap.
Though I doubt this would happen, it would be REALLY cool if Apple could "obtain" Parallels and have seamless Windows virtualization built into Leopard. The only feature I'd have to request would be to ask permission to run a Windows process on the Mac side... just to be safe. I figure seamless Windows integration/virtualization would open up room for viruses and the like, no?Glassbathroom said:I was wondering if this was why they didn't mention this at all. Maybe Apple did a deal with Parallels. Give us a few months before you go this route. They are even plugging it in their adverts.
Kid Red said:
You probably want to get one of the last copies of VPC. MS did say they would support the product.
I suspect that you see no new PC emulators for the PPC, not due to the EOL status of the PPC Mac line, but because Intel has offered up this new Virtualization technology on the processor that far exceeds the performance of any synthetic processor.
On another note, this technology might be why it would be more difficult for Apple to put AMD procs in Macs.
Max.
Kid Red said:
My Quad G5 is in the same boat... however.....
What I generally do if I need to have Windows on the side is to fire up one of my PCs ( or parallels ), and use Remote Desktop to have both screens in one interface.
Works well, and there is no monitor switching.
Max.
Fortunately, I have no need for a PC or PC software. I don't have the MS VPC and my old copy doesn't work on G5s. So, I've lived for well over a year without the ability to run PC software and I don't think I will ever have to. It was more about envy to see all this news from various companies and nothing about use pre-Intel pro users ;(
walrus said:
Yeah, I had never heard of this feature. I don't use VMWare though. I'm just a geek.
So VMWare's implementation is essentially an API bridge of sorts, right? It detects an outgoing video call coming down, and it decodes it and translates it into the graphics APIs of the host? Doesn't this approach mean that incompatibility issues will crop up when the system gets bogged down in figuring out what the calls means or mis-interprets one?
I wonder in some relation... now that dual cores dominate new processors from Intel, and virtualization has become a big deal, are video card manufacturers developing GPUs that support virtualization in some analogy to the way the new CPUs do? Or for that matter, is Intel working on such a feature with their integrated chipset?
Akira said:
Wait, why are you including Maya? You can run that natively on OS X, right? Did you mean 3dsMax?
-Zadillo
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.Akira said:
Check it out:
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpress/index.php/2006/07/29/behold-i-give-you-messiah-for-mac-os-x/
and
http://www.babylondreams.de/wordpress/index.php/2006/07/29/messiah-on-mac-os-x-moving-proof/
nsjoker said:
Nope. Well.. Solitaire.. ofcourse!
But every fast flowing game is impossible to play (i.e. Doom 2, Quake 1).. even on my Quad! (thus the fastest VPC Mac ever.... or is the Dual 2.7 GHz faster...?).
DirectX games are totally out of the question.
Kid Red said:
I'd think QEMU should be able to do what you want and posably a bit more too.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
I was really happy that my Parallels copy arrived today.
I am even happier after reading this that I chose right in adding this product to my Mac.
I am even happier after reading this that I chose right in adding this product to my Mac.
Mmmmm
I hope this beta is better than the RC, I'd rather them get some isses ironed out before moving on. To be fair windows runs really well in paralells, but getting a network running was a nightmare. I had to go into the terminal to sort things out and so far networking is not 100%. I might be wrong but there doesn't seem to be any support for serial ports either (very un windows like). Most mac users won't want to go to a terminal window, most likely don't know what it's for, that's the mac experience - simplicity. Paralells need to work on this.
Forget 3D acceleration, we have boot camp, I dont use it, I don't play games, but if I did rebooting into windows wouldn't be much of a problem. OSX takes about 15 secs to load, windows takes about the same in paralells, so I have to guess windows in boot camp would also be something similar. Not to much of an inconvenience then.
I hope this beta is better than the RC, I'd rather them get some isses ironed out before moving on. To be fair windows runs really well in paralells, but getting a network running was a nightmare. I had to go into the terminal to sort things out and so far networking is not 100%. I might be wrong but there doesn't seem to be any support for serial ports either (very un windows like). Most mac users won't want to go to a terminal window, most likely don't know what it's for, that's the mac experience - simplicity. Paralells need to work on this.
Forget 3D acceleration, we have boot camp, I dont use it, I don't play games, but if I did rebooting into windows wouldn't be much of a problem. OSX takes about 15 secs to load, windows takes about the same in paralells, so I have to guess windows in boot camp would also be something similar. Not to much of an inconvenience then.
Nice, but I'd like to see something more basic - support for importing VirtualPC disks. I know the FAQ says they're working on it. I just wish they'd hurry up.
I guess that makes me an impatiant bastard customer.
I guess that makes me an impatiant bastard customer.
For folks wanting to run Windows software alongside Mac software, switching between apps, rebooting into Windows would be an inconvenience. But if you are just firing up to play the latest game, then I agree, the fast boot time of the OS'es really is not that big a deal. I have tried Boot Camp for a couple PC games, and it works great.fatfish said:
