Gaming through hardware virtualization?

[nonameo]

Hi folks. I know long before AM2's and core2's virtual machines took a big performance hit. With the advent of hardware virtualization though, it seems that you can pretty much get close to the same performance out of a virtualized desktop as you can from a native desktop. Considering this, has any method been developed to wrap or somehow allow for 3D accelerated games to operate within a virtualized environment?

I'd really like to run linux as my main OS and then just open up a virtual windows box every once in a while to game with

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: nonameo
Hi folks. I know long before AM2's and core2's virtual machines took a big performance hit. With the advent of hardware virtualization though, it seems that you can pretty much get close to the same performance out of a virtualized desktop as you can from a native desktop. Considering this, has any method been developed to wrap or somehow allow for 3D accelerated games to operate within a virtualized environment?

I'd really like to run linux as my main OS and then just open up a virtual windows box every once in a while to game with

most virtualization softwares use a common device driver layer. So if you were to install something like VMware Server on a machine that had an intel network card, the host OS running VMWARE server would use an intel based driver, but what the VM host does is present the device as a common device like "vmware network card". This allows for virtual os images to be portable because the virtual OS is only dependant on having the "vmware network card", which it will be presented no matter what the real device is.

For video cards, it works the same way. On a virtualized OS, you wouldn't even see that you have a fancy video card, the OS would only see "vmware graphics card" and it is only good for standard SVGA display.

FOr something extensive like gaming, you really need to be using the HOST OS not a virtualized one. (this is assuming its a somewhat demanding game that requires more than just generic svga compatibility)

 

[JBT]

There is actually a way to enable 3d acceleration in Vmware.
enable 3d accel thread

 

[JBT]

Official VMware direction for VM5.0
http://www.vmware.com/support/...d_d3d_enabling_vm.html

and a list of DX9 games that work, semi work, and don't work.
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-1287