Parallels 3.0 and game compatibility...

If you edit the UserPreferences.ini to let it start in Windowed-mode, the error does not appear anymore. But, the screen just goes white and nothing more seems to happen...

 

Frets on Fire

Hi all,
I own a MBP C2D 2,33GHz, 2GB of RAM with ATI X1600 (256MB of VRAM) and I've been trying to run Frets on Fire, so far with no luck (coherence, full screen and windowed mode). Here's the log:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "FretsOnFire.py", line 64, in ?

  File "GameEngine.pyo", line 155, in __init__

  File "Video.pyo", line 68, in setMode

pygame.error: Unable to reset window for OpenGL context

 

I eventually got Total Annihilation running fine (Win98 compatibility mode), but the colors are awful

 

My system information in signature. I installed Windows XP fresh after upgrading to Parallels 3.0 to avoid conflicts with previously-installed software.


Half-Life 2

• Settings: All graphics options to their lowest levels, resolution to lowest value with normal (non-widescreen) aspect ratio.
• Areas tested: Didn't have much time, but will test more later. Installed through Steam, loaded it up, and short run through the game. Got to where Barney brings Gordon into the interrogation room and calls up Dr. Kleiner on the communications screen.
• Reaction: Game runs okay; considering that I have one of the first MBPs to roll off of the assembly line, the game seems responsive enough to be worth a look in Parallels virtualization. Framerate is quite sluggish even at the lowest settings. I will be testing more tonight, but my impression is that more game "action" will cause the game to grind down to an unplayable state.
• Quirks: If the game is run in Coherence, portions of the game screen will be blank white, but you can see enough to tell that something is happening back there somewhere. Also, if the game is run with a widescreen aspect ratio, the in-game menus go about 100px up the screen from where they should be. Mouse input, however, still thinks the menu controls are where they "should" be, so you have to "click" on elements by finding the right spot on the screen about 100px away.

If anyone here knows of any tricks to try to improve performance, even at the cost of quality, I am all ears.

While it is not the same fluid gameplay I am used to with a pure Windows box I used to own long ago, this is an extremely promising leap for Mac switchers and gamers. Much praise to the Parallels team for doing this up right, and I am eager to see future updates.

 

3D Games that don't work in Mac Desktop 3.0

Microsoft's Flight Simulator X SP1 does not work and its MS certified. The start screen loads but when you hit fly it crashes.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 loads the start screen but the window that shows the aircraft that you have chosen is blacked out and when you start the game all you see is black.

Lock On Flaming Cliffs 1.12b starts up but it crashes when you hit fly.

However I am able to use some developer tools which use DirectX. I didn't expect the games to work but it would have been nice. It doesn't speak to great for version 3.0 and the claim it makes in the advertisement.
"New! Run today’s most popular PC games on a Mac with support for 3D graphics"

I would recommend getting the trial first before paying for it if DirectX support is one of the main purposes for getting Parallels 3.0. It certainly is not worth the cost to upgrade at this point since it has limited 3D support.

If anyone has any suggestion on what to try feel free to post them.

 

Mac Desktop 3.0 a flop, do not offer to customers still beta

You have Half-life 2 in the advertising and that would lead one to believe that the support is pretty solid.

I am pretty sure most of the people in this forum figured that out especially if they figured out how to do the upgrade with little instruction.

Most popular games have copy protection. Your advertisement said it would work with the hottest popular games. There is no fine print stating that the 3D support is very limited at the moment. http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

Please excuse us if we advise our customers to avoid purchasing Parallels due to lack of compatibilty and support. Your post is appreciated however the BS isn't. And I certainly don't think it's professional for you to be advising people to go around copy protection because your software is incompatible with the most popular games.

 

SimCity 4 complains that it can't initialize DirectDraw.

The Movies complains that it can't initialize DirectX.

Half Life works great.

 

I tried eve online, EQ2 and WoW. Eve launched but I didn't even click on my character to fully log in since the background was like a slideshow. EQ2 I logged in but the screen never fully came up. It was all black then sometimes I'd see some names pop up and the screen would turn white/blue. WoW seemed to work but a little choppy. I had it at 800x600 though.

I also get this error:


This happens every now and then.

 

Ragnarok Online (korean) is pretty playable though buildings are invisible. Now testing Ragnarok Online 2

 

on a low-end MBP C2D w/ 2GB RAM in XP


* Sam & Max:
runs fine, pushing the fan a little harder than usual and no antialiasing

* Anno 1602
runs fine, but starts out in 16 colors, had to alt-tab into Display Properties in-game to change to 32bit.

* Master of Orion 2
runs fine, ditto 16 colors

* Typing of the Dead
runs fine

 

Sid Meier's Pirates : Crashes

Sid Meier's Pirates

Crashes following main menu of game, when clicking on 'Start Game'

Direct X enabled in Parallels
Patched-up Win XP SP2
Latest Parallels b4124
MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo, 2GB RAM
OS X 10.4.9 patched-up

 

On my MacBook Pro 17 its about the same: FS 98 runs only in 540x480 window, FS 3004 shows only black screen. Tiger Woods PGA 2006 installs but does not load...

 

Can someone please test Pro Evolution Soccer 6?


Thanks

 

That's a shame, though not really unexpected. Civ4 has always been excessively demanding on graphics hardware considering it's a turn-based strategy game. So the fact that Aero won't run in Parallels 3.0 was a pretty strong clue that Civ4 wouldn't, either.

I have Civ4 and Warlords for Mac OS, but I wonder if Parallels' promised Aero-capable update will get the DirectX support level up high enough to allow me to use it for Beyond the Sword, and cut out the porting delays/bugs/incompatibilities.

 

I find it offensive that they claim to be the first 3D capable virtualization sw when both VMWare and Crossover beat them to market with equally (in)capable virtualizers. Nobody has a good solution yet, but Parallels' is as bad or worse as the already-available competition. This is a blatant example of false (if not fraudulent) advertising and it is unacceptable.

 

They claim the first *released* product with 3D support. Fusion is still beta. Dunno about Crossover's release status, but it isn't virtualization, it's OS API simulation.

 

Unfortunately, this type of disappointed was bound to happen. Virtualizing GPU is exceedingly difficult and rather than set expectations appropriately, Parallels have remained largely silent about what would or would not be possible during the beta period.

The vast majority of posters on this thread have wildly unrealistic expectations of what is possible with current state of the art (PC level) technology in terms of GPU virtualization.
(In fact, what seems to have been done is layering APIs, not virutalizing, but that's another story...)

It will likely be 1-2 before things "just work" at a level consistent with that typical business apps displayed today for a broad spectrum of games & applications.

(And to be clear by "just work", I mean not only functionally but also acceptable performance. ie 75-80% of native.)

 

The problem with this is VMWare could claim they are a "Release" product too. They dont because they know there are a lot of bugs and thus have not tried to sell the product. Parallels 3.0 is about at the same level as VMWare Fusion 4 is at right now, but charges 70 bucks to use it, and money to even upgrade to 3.0 (despite the fact that IMHO ANYONE who bought 2.0 should have access to 3.0 as there are huge bug fixes and support improvements that should have been in the program before release)

I understand SWSoft is not a company of the size VMWare is, but still it's in their best interest to be more upfront about the actual implementations of things, and to continue to support the previous userbase who spent money for only a half finished program.

As it is I have a assistant superintendent and a tech coordinator who are flipping furious they are being made to spend more money just to get features that should have been in the released product.

 

RC flight simulator doesn't work either

I tried to play RealFlight R/C Flight Simulator G3.5 and it doesn't work.

I get the same error message that I got before I upgraded to Parallels 3-

3D rendering is not supported by your 3D graphics card

I have a MacBook Pro Core2Duo with 3GB RAM and all software is updated. Games native to Macs with graphics intensive programs run great.

The RealFlight software runs great on a very basic 2 year old PC laptop which has an older graphics card and only 512 MB of RAM.

What gives? Since this isn't a popular title, will it likely not work for a long time. That is the only reason I upgraded Parallels.

Oh well...

 

Civ4 - No Joy after extensive tweaking

Hey guys, I tried for about two hours to get Civ4 up on Par3 last night. I patched it to 1.61, overrode every graphics related setting in the .ini file - starting with the one to skip the minimum hardware check and branching out from there to things like fullscreen, bink, nomovie, etc.

The end result is the same everytime; Civ4 will get to the main menu, try to animate the second frame of clouds on the background and crash. I saved the full debug .DMP file, but at this point I'm thinking there needs to be a dialogue between the Firaxis and Parallels teams.

I run both the PC and Mac versions of the game, and I would love to be able to run Civ4 under Parallels because, frankly, relying on Aspyr for Mac compatible versions of Civ has been painfully frustrating at best.