Windows Virtual Machine on Linux and Video Games

gizza23 · 07-13-2007, 01:23 PM

Hi All,

Has anyone had the chance to run any Video Games on a Windows virtual machine in Linux? I want to take my windows installation and place it on a VM but I haven't heard of anyone trying out something so graphics intensive on a VM.

Thanks!
Gregori J.

acid_kewpie · 07-13-2007, 01:39 PM

you can't run opengl (or other hardware accelerated) games via any VM as it's not possible for the VM to directly write to the IO for the graphics card. to my knowledge this would require further CPU extensions to do this.

gizza23 · 07-13-2007, 02:04 PM

Wow, I should have known that from theory. hmm...

Thanks!

lord-fu · 07-13-2007, 02:17 PM

I have tried and it was a horrible experience. Although I posted that exact same statement in a thread a couple weeks ago and someone posted back that it is possible with a VM accelerated graphics driver, but I had vmware tools installed etc and it was rubbish. Don't know if they were talking about a different driver or not. Didn't look any more into it after that.
Good luck and by all means post back if you try and succeed.

acid_kewpie · 07-13-2007, 02:40 PM

things like vmware have improved mechanisms to render graphics in software with vmware-tools, but it can't get anywhere near the hardware, driver or no driver.

gizza23 · 07-13-2007, 02:45 PM

Yeah, now that I'm actually taking the time to research my goal I'm finding that VMs cannot support this type of usage on many different levels. The most important of which is not having direct access to RAM and the graphics card due to abstraction. So while there may be VMware tools it will do little to support the graphics that are needed to enjoy a game.

AceofSpades19 · 07-13-2007, 03:14 PM

theres a version of vmware on the mac that can do 3d hardware graphics acceleration

acid_kewpie · 07-13-2007, 04:36 PM

hmm, ok so vmgl exists... it was only the other day i was reading about the fundamental hardware problems involved for Xen i think it was...

gizza23 · 07-13-2007, 04:43 PM

I didn't see VMGL coming. I'll definitely check this out and test it. I've been itching to play Civ4.