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.

 

[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.

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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_Virtualization

Amusing 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?