Gameplay in Parallels Desktop 8 with DirectX 10 and DirectX 9 games.
- Thread starter Andrew@Parallels
- Start date
Gray Matter
I have a new iMac purchased a month ago with Mountain Lion and Parallels 8 Desktop. I purchased and downloaded from Amazon the PC game Gray Matter. The game installed fine, but when I click on the icon to start playing the game, it crashes and goes to the Window error report window. Has anyone gotten this game to work on Paralles VM?
Thanks,
John
I have a new iMac purchased a month ago with Mountain Lion and Parallels 8 Desktop. I purchased and downloaded from Amazon the PC game Gray Matter. The game installed fine, but when I click on the icon to start playing the game, it crashes and goes to the Window error report window. Has anyone gotten this game to work on Paralles VM?
Thanks,
John
RolandLeth
Bit poster
Hello guys,
I also have a mid-2011 iMac, maxed out and I have black boxes in games after upgrading to Parallels 8. I'm running OS X 1.8.2 with Windows 7, SP1.
If I uninstall Parallels 8 and reinstall 7, everything is working fine.
I tried the solution(s) here http://forum.parallels.com/showpost.php?p=451194&postcount=3 so far, but without luck.
Should I also try video.no_depth_load=1? Could you also please tell me what this flag actually does? And if in the future Parallels will be updated to not need this flag anymore, since Parallels 7 works just fine?
Thank you.
edit: Well, that was a silly question if I should try the bootflag you suggested. I went ahead and I tried it, but still no, I get the same problem.
For the record, yes, i tried reinstalling Parallels Tools. Going back to 7 reinstalls them anyway, then back to 8, same story.
I also have a mid-2011 iMac, maxed out and I have black boxes in games after upgrading to Parallels 8. I'm running OS X 1.8.2 with Windows 7, SP1.
If I uninstall Parallels 8 and reinstall 7, everything is working fine.
I tried the solution(s) here http://forum.parallels.com/showpost.php?p=451194&postcount=3 so far, but without luck.
Should I also try video.no_depth_load=1? Could you also please tell me what this flag actually does? And if in the future Parallels will be updated to not need this flag anymore, since Parallels 7 works just fine?
Thank you.
edit: Well, that was a silly question if I should try the bootflag you suggested. I went ahead and I tried it, but still no, I get the same problem.
For the record, yes, i tried reinstalling Parallels Tools. Going back to 7 reinstalls them anyway, then back to 8, same story.
Last edited:
Chris Connor
Bit poster
Can't play anything in my Steam or Origin library as it's all on my Thunderbolt SSD drive that I can't pass into Windows 
. What a pain.
. What a pain.William Geck
Member
I just found this thread. At the risk of being called out for double posting, link I should also mention that this is for Windows XP, and I do not know if this is related to DirectX 9.
I installed Steam/Fallen Enchantress, and the installation prompted an install of DirectX 9.0c. The game works fine (sometimes tiles are darker than they should be, but otherwise works well). The problem is that after 10 minutes of gameplay, my mac runs out of memory, and slows to a crawl.
MacMini Mid2011
OSX 10.8.2
8 GB Memory
Parallels 8
-Windows XP SP3
-DirectX 9.0c
-2GB memory allocated to Windows, 256K Video memory, 3D acceleration on, enable vertical synchronization
-Steam - Fallen Enchantress (up to date)
Ticket: 22940403 -> But I had to quit the game to get it responsive enough to submit (memory/performance does not improve until I restart Windows).
I installed Steam/Fallen Enchantress, and the installation prompted an install of DirectX 9.0c. The game works fine (sometimes tiles are darker than they should be, but otherwise works well). The problem is that after 10 minutes of gameplay, my mac runs out of memory, and slows to a crawl.
MacMini Mid2011
OSX 10.8.2
8 GB Memory
Parallels 8
-Windows XP SP3
-DirectX 9.0c
-2GB memory allocated to Windows, 256K Video memory, 3D acceleration on, enable vertical synchronization
-Steam - Fallen Enchantress (up to date)
Ticket: 22940403 -> But I had to quit the game to get it responsive enough to submit (memory/performance does not improve until I restart Windows).
RolandLeth
Bit poster
Noone from the Parallels Team reads this forum anymore? Been two weeks now
Age of Empires ('97)
I haven't been able to upgrade from Parallels 7 to 8 yet (ugh), but curious if there's an obvious work-around for this... Get ready to chuckle: Microsoft Age of Empires ('97).
I don't play games (of any sort, frankly), other than this from time to time.
My family loves it, and it's sort of a tradition to get all the old PC's set up for a big family time w/ the kids - with Macs running Parallels slowly replacing all our PCs.
Launching AoE in Parallels (Win7), the game says its IP address is 10.211.55.5 (http :// screencast. com /t/TPehL4zlVKI )
In Win7, ipconfig shows the same, with a lot more info than I'm used to seeing on a native PC... (http :// screencast. com /t/J2R2rUEbxu )
All this is running on a Mac, which has an IP address of 192.168.0.105
When I launch the game on a networked PC (WinXP), and enter the host IP, it never finds/sees the server app. So it can't join the game.
On that 2nd computer, if I ping the Mac IP address, it gets a response.
...If I ping the Virtual machine IP address (10.211.55.5) it times out.
I turned off the Mac firewall.
I turned off the Windows Firewall.
The virtual machine (Win7) is running Security Essentials, but I don't see anything there that could be blocking it (it uses Windows Firewall).
The 2nd computer (WinXP) has no firewall running, either.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
btw - Windows7 is installed in Parallels as 64 bit, and AoE is of course 32 bit. But it runs fine in single-player, so I don't think that's related.
I haven't been able to upgrade from Parallels 7 to 8 yet (ugh), but curious if there's an obvious work-around for this... Get ready to chuckle: Microsoft Age of Empires ('97).
I don't play games (of any sort, frankly), other than this from time to time.
My family loves it, and it's sort of a tradition to get all the old PC's set up for a big family time w/ the kids - with Macs running Parallels slowly replacing all our PCs.
Launching AoE in Parallels (Win7), the game says its IP address is 10.211.55.5 (http :// screencast. com /t/TPehL4zlVKI )
In Win7, ipconfig shows the same, with a lot more info than I'm used to seeing on a native PC... (http :// screencast. com /t/J2R2rUEbxu )
All this is running on a Mac, which has an IP address of 192.168.0.105
When I launch the game on a networked PC (WinXP), and enter the host IP, it never finds/sees the server app. So it can't join the game.
On that 2nd computer, if I ping the Mac IP address, it gets a response.
...If I ping the Virtual machine IP address (10.211.55.5) it times out.
I turned off the Mac firewall.
I turned off the Windows Firewall.
The virtual machine (Win7) is running Security Essentials, but I don't see anything there that could be blocking it (it uses Windows Firewall).
The 2nd computer (WinXP) has no firewall running, either.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
btw - Windows7 is installed in Parallels as 64 bit, and AoE is of course 32 bit. But it runs fine in single-player, so I don't think that's related.
Last edited:
William Geck
Member
With the most recent Parallels 8 Build (8.0.18480), I have the same issue. Memory fills up completely, and the computer becomes extremely slow.
I did the following: allocated only 1 core, and 1GB of memory to Windows XP - this was so the Mac would have more CPU and RAM available. Ran Steam/Fallen Enchantress. "Show Resource Usage" says only a small fraction of the memory is being used within XP. This is with Coherence, and game set to full-screen.
Activity Monitor says 1.01 GB Real Mem, 1.09 GB Private Mem, and 1.21 GB Virtual Mem is being used by Parallels VM. "top" says (sorted by memory size)
The disk is pretty busy at this point, so I am assuming that the slowdown is due to virtual memory/paging. Pausing Windows XP does not help. Quitting the game does not help. Windows needs to be shutdown, or restarted clear this up.
I did the following: allocated only 1 core, and 1GB of memory to Windows XP - this was so the Mac would have more CPU and RAM available. Ran Steam/Fallen Enchantress. "Show Resource Usage" says only a small fraction of the memory is being used within XP. This is with Coherence, and game set to full-screen.
Activity Monitor says 1.01 GB Real Mem, 1.09 GB Private Mem, and 1.21 GB Virtual Mem is being used by Parallels VM. "top" says (sorted by memory size)
Code:
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #WQ #POR #MREG RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VPRVT VSIZE PGRP PPID STATE UID FAULTS COW MSGSENT MSGRECV
60367 prl_vm_app 4.3 07:27:50 63 1 293 8439 1119M 21M 1054M 1243M 14G 60037 60253 stuck 502 16541410+ 644 637429193+ 313920219+
0 kernel_task 2.5 02:24:32 81/6 0 2 505 34M 0B 754M+ 44M 7470M 0 0 running 0 45287 0 1482022721+ 1457648780+
56526 WebProcess 4.6 01:55:41 15 3 323 6924+ 318M+ 14M+ 336M+ 1050M+ 4620M+ 56524 56524 stuck 502 38875806+ 19623 28405686+ 12446395+
60041 prl_client_a 0.7 15:43.84 20 3 197 505 47M+ 37M 76M+ 240M+ 3157M 60037 1 sleeping 502 366473+ 4106+ 1864760 654831
56524 Safari 0.0 12:38.19 18 1 919 2095 48M 14M 62M 494M 3843M 56524 145 sleeping 502 3221783 51438 3193666 3427447
87 WindowServer 1.5 62:02.86 4 1 657 5210+ 11M+ 32M 55M+ 104M- 3076M+ 87 1 sleeping 88 45454778+ 433375 38997901+ 14095210+
35 mds 0.0 41:55.27 9 7 344 401 28M 5896K 29M 354M 3459M 35 1 sleeping 0 13335744 134461 1097621 679595The disk is pretty busy at this point, so I am assuming that the slowdown is due to virtual memory/paging. Pausing Windows XP does not help. Quitting the game does not help. Windows needs to be shutdown, or restarted clear this up.
xXR0CKETM4NXx
Bit poster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOfpA9ExAmk Heres a link to me playing Dead Space 3 if anyone is interested. I used 3 gigs ram/4 cpus with windows 8 on a 2010 15 inch macbook pro.
lezboseagull
Bit poster
Same for me, the bootflag fix above did not work for me unfortunately :[
Just closes randomly in game, seems like a memory issue, seems like not ram but video memory. at more "demanding" times
DirectX 11, but Feature Level is DirectX 9 !
Some additional information after Will63's message.
I'm running Parallel Desktop 7 + Windows 8 Pro in a virtual machine, and trying to launch Crysis 3. I get the same error as Will63.
DXDIAG says my system is DirectX11 capable, but the game software doesn't seem to share this opinion.
In the Crysis 3 logs, here is what is displayed:
So the problem might be that // desktop states it's DirectX 11 compliant but is not in terms of features.
Is there a workaround to this, or do // desktop 8 resolves this issue?
Thanks
Some additional information after Will63's message.
I'm running Parallel Desktop 7 + Windows 8 Pro in a virtual machine, and trying to launch Crysis 3. I get the same error as Will63.
DXDIAG says my system is DirectX11 capable, but the game software doesn't seem to share this opinion.
In the Crysis 3 logs, here is what is displayed:
So the problem might be that // desktop states it's DirectX 11 compliant but is not in terms of features.
Is there a workaround to this, or do // desktop 8 resolves this issue?
Thanks
Hi Everybody,
I'm on a MacPro with Radeon 5970/1Go, Parallels 8, VM 4 CPU (out of 8) and 4 Gb (out of 16).
Games like Dishonored or Call of Juarez (last one) works just fine in all directX modes.
Anno 2070s work fine IF parallels is working in DirectX9 mode.
Anno 2070 and Need For Speed most wanted are UNUSABLE in DirectX10 mode ! Framerate incredibly poor, like without graphic acceleration.
PD tools has been reinstalled, as well as games.
Do I miss something ? Any clue ?
Thank you so much.
Renaud
I'm on a MacPro with Radeon 5970/1Go, Parallels 8, VM 4 CPU (out of 8) and 4 Gb (out of 16).
Games like Dishonored or Call of Juarez (last one) works just fine in all directX modes.
Anno 2070s work fine IF parallels is working in DirectX9 mode.
Anno 2070 and Need For Speed most wanted are UNUSABLE in DirectX10 mode ! Framerate incredibly poor, like without graphic acceleration.
PD tools has been reinstalled, as well as games.
Do I miss something ? Any clue ?
Thank you so much.
Renaud
Hi,
I hope someone can help. I have recently purchased Company of Heroes 2 to run on the following machine
iMac 2.8 GHz i5
16 GB 1333MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB RAM
OS X 10.8.3
Parallels Desktop 8
Windows 8
The game loads and looks good, however the units with the game are invisible. All I can see is the terrain, but no army...
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
GM
I hope someone can help. I have recently purchased Company of Heroes 2 to run on the following machine
iMac 2.8 GHz i5
16 GB 1333MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB RAM
OS X 10.8.3
Parallels Desktop 8
Windows 8
The game loads and looks good, however the units with the game are invisible. All I can see is the terrain, but no army...
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
GM