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Parallel’s planning on bringing FULL speed Windows gaming to OS X

parallelsvirtualization.blogsp… — Parallel's plans on adding full speed DirectX and OpenGL support in an upcoming beta. This will allow OSX users to fire up the latest Windows games and play them right from their OSX desktop without rebooting into Boot Camp.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 21, 2006

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  • pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -11/+67Not everyone markets like Microsoft.
  • jadedhalo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+57They say all of it will be included in an upcoming beta before the end of this year
  • RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -6/+40Why? To do this requires a valid MS windows license. I see no reason for MS to want to break this capability whatsoever.
  • cgseller, on 10/12/2007, -8/+39Makes me want a intel based Mac .... maybe if I wait just a few more months.... ;)
  • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -7/+35Where I was once salivating over the prospect of a dual-booting mac, I am now crapping my pants over the prospect of using a coherent OS, AND running my favorite games on it. MBP, here I come...
  • MrBabyMan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not being cynical, I really want this to happen.
  • StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27PearPC wasn't a scam. It was slow and buggy, but it certainly was a legitimate and open-source emulation program.

    CherryOS was the scam that ripped off PearPC's code.
  • Julikaefer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23There are no questions marks. There are some unicode LSEP characters in the feature list. Maybe your browser doesn't know how to show them properly so it displays question marks.
  • Kittyflipping, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18"Why? To do this requires a valid MS windows license. I see no reason for MS to want to break this capability whatsoever."

    To play devil's advocate for a second and not to imply that there would be an intentional "new feature" that would break support but... Wouldn't you be a bit nervous if your OS was *only* used for software that hadn't been ported to a competitor's OS?? Sure they're buying a license now, but what happens when that final piece of software gets ported?
  • codyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17If they pull this off, I bet apple will buy out parrallels and somehow incorporate it in the system for free.. or at least offer it for free... obviously windows won't come included but trust me, if people could buy a mac and in a few steps take there xp cd and in say under an hour be gaming.. talk about a selling point...
  • MySchizoBuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I don't think u understand Virtualization, Ur confusing it with emulation. Ultimate goal of Virtualization is to allow all OSes running on the computer to have direct access to the CPU while emulating a very small number of additional hardware. It will take some time to get there, But what parallels is promissing is definetly doable and the INtel and AMD chips are designed to do just that
  • Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14*shrug*. I'd settle for 90% of full speed...
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14SLI is a gimmick. How long would one have to wait until the graphics power in those 2 cards is bested by a single card? 5 months? From what I understand, an SLI configuration does not double the frame rate of a single card configuration.

    SLI is for bleeding edge, more money than sense gamers.
  • pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14This seems to be the reaction of a lot of people. If I was Apple, I'd be forking over cash and/or developers to Parallels.
  • thebusdriver, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15If this happens, it is really my last real reason to not buy a mac, nothing really holding me back from them after this is done other than my own bias against em.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11ohhh yeah almost time to get rid of my PPC powerbook for a mac book pro
  • ZachPruckowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10If you don't like OS X, don't read an Apple story. It shouldn't be that hard. If you can't check the category, at least look and see OS X in the title, and click a different story.
  • Antialias, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10We're not talking about the 1-2% fanatical gamers who spend rediculous amounts of cash to play games at 250 fps, we're talking your regular pc gamer with a $200 video card who updates their system every couple of years. Now they can have the mac experience, and have their gaming too.
  • ifthe21stcentu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Fentekreel:

    Cedega and Parallels will be using much different technologies. Parallels is virtualization, while will implement a layer of Windows API's for use with certain Windows apps (games).
  • kazem, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13less overhead than XP. Actually, here are some benchmarks from Wine. It's not as slow as you'd like to think.

    http://wiki.winehq.org/BenchMark-0.9.5
  • pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14I'm happy that they are working on CD ROM support. Until that happens, I'm going to keep using VMWare on my Linux box. EAC is about the only Windows program left that I still can't live without.
  • ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I really don't understand how this would be possible. You have an OS running in a virtual machine. There HAS to be some performance loss just for the over head of the virtual machine app alone not to mention the 2nd OS plus the app.

    If they can get it to work as advertised I'd buy a Mac.
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Who said anything about full speed? If anything is innacurate, it's your post. If you are running Parallels in full screen mode, the host OS should not need to use the graphics card at all. Also, the new Macs are dual core. One core + 98% graphics power = good enough for most games.
  • kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Mac Pro . . . games . . . parallels . . . drool
  • Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9SLI is entirely welcome to step behind me, pucker up, and kiss my ass. Seriously. One good card is plenty enough.
  • giantAppleCore, on 10/12/2007, -14/+20The thing is, even if they pull this off, Microsoft will just do what they did to IBM and OS/2 and create something new to break support for this.
  • aubelloc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I always wonder, with such comments, whether the poster talks from experience or prejudice...
  • smiley2billion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Those question marks are supposed to be return arrows, like on your enter key. (Firefox in Ubuntu says so...)
  • Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Wait a few weeks to see if they come up with a Core 2 Duo version...
  • Aero1, on 10/12/2007, -19/+24they dont seem to be sure about the new features by adding those question marks.
  • MonkeyFarts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ aubelloc:
    I guarantee you that 99% of the time it's prejudice, as based off what they're saying there is no possible way that they have ever even seen a Mac computer in person, let alone use one, within the last ten years.
  • superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6We're only shaking our heads in disbelief that after all the comments above, someone can still be so thick as to confuse virtualization with emulation.

    Why would you want a compuer that can only run one OS instead of two? I guess perhaps us "Mac lovers" can just count a little better.
  • Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Is it even *possible* for an OS to know that's being run under emulation?
  • quazywabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4did you not read the article or even the headline? Parallel is not made by Apple at all, it is a third party company making a third party software to work with a Microsoft Windows using a hypervisor.
  • gmillerd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Will the new directx stomp on this?
  • MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Something tells me that the overhead involved in doing this would only result in 'FULL' speed if your gaming doesn't go any further than Diablo 2.
  • neondiet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4
    Actually this could be quite a good idea, but for different reasons.

    The Parallels folk also have a version of their VM that runs on Windows XP (and soon Vista). Apple currently don't allow Mac OS X on Intel to run on any other hardware platform than their own. One reason is the loss in hardware revenue, but also because of the development and support mountain they'd have to overcome to make it work smoothly on the myriad of platforms out there. Personally I think this is the main reason.

    But imagine if Apple owned a VM which ran on Windows. One which was fast and supported 3D acceleration. They could ship an integrated Mac OS X + VM bundle to run on Windows, and wouldn't have a development/support mountain to climb. The host Windows OS would take care of that.

    It would be a great way for Windows users to try out OS X. In fact Apple could even ship a taster; a time-license-limited VM bundle on DVD with each iPod they sold. What a great way for Apple to open up their iPod users to some more of the Apple "experience".

    MS would hate it. But it's all good competition, right !
  • diecastbeatdown, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8still need a decent video card. don't expect your intel mac mini to run any of the latest great games.
  • archer75, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Now if I could only have my choice of video cards on Intel Macs.
  • pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No, actually it's not, and never has been.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
  • umrgregg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5From the comments on the OP link, they Parallels team thinks they may have a Mac Pro optimized version out next week.
  • twid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Um, how about Parallels for Windows and Linux, just to name one option? :)

    http://parallels.com/en/products/workstation/

    Also VMWare would work, but would cost you a lot more.



  • stripes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4My wife uses Parallels. I'm sure there is _some_ performance loss over using the bare metal...but we sure can't see it. I think that is in part because we loaded her MacBook Pro up with two gigs of RAM. I bet if we used Boot Camp we could measure a difference in the non-graphics performance, and we would be able to notice (without a stopwatch) the difference in graphics speed.

    However the bottom line for her is everything she needs to do in Windows is faster in Parallels on her MBP then it was on her last Windows-only notebook (which was only six months old).

    My guess is when Parallels does their magic to 3D graphics I'll be able to play modern PC games fast enough that I won't care that I could measure a difference if I used boot camp. Er, that is if I had an Intel based Mac.
  • ZachPruckowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If you go full-screen into Paralells, and quit stuff like the Dock and most of your OS X apps, you can get OS X down pretty far in terms of minimizing overhead. Heck, quit the Finder if you feel so inclined.
  • ElBob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wrong. It is going to be virtualized. The next person to say that this is emulation needs to have a fistfull of "READ THE ***** THREAD" shoved in their face.

    Beaten, but saying it still made me feel good, so I'm happy.
  • Quix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"EAC is about the only Windows program left that I still can't live without."

    I was with you until I found Max (http://sbooth.org/Max/). Its secure ripping still isn't at the level of EAC (though the developer is working on making it so), but I found it good enough for my needs that I could finally dump my PC (which in the end I was only using for games and EAC).
  • Lounger540, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Close but not quite. Parallels wouldn't use any API per say as in CoreWhatever or quarty extreme, nor does it have to convert DirectX to OS X opengl calls, because Windows is running on the hardware its self. What the VM has to do is manage I/O locks between the two OS's since they weren't designed w/ the idea of having to share the hardware in mind.

    If OS X writes data to the video card, it's expecting it to remain untouched. If two OS's are running directly on the card, all bets are off. That's what Parallels would have to handle, basically a traffic cop for the OS's with the underlying hardware being the single road.
  • SyDIGG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Apple should seriously consider buying Parallels before Microsoft can gets its paw on the company and ruin it.
  • superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's always possible that an emulator will have some sort of signature, heck it can even be as simple as the full device set the emulator purports to support.

    However it is much trickier to generically detect running in emulation (or virtualization) and since lots of companies are already running virtualized Windows instances today Microsoft really has no motice to shut this down since they are making good money from it. I, a Mac only user at home actually bought a licence for XP Home just so I could play a few games and run one or two other applications using Parallels on a Macbook Pro.
  • syclonefx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think they need to work on Full USB support first.
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