Parallels 3.0 and game compatibility...

Well DDO didnt work under the following:


MacBook Pro CD 2.16Ghz
2GB RAM

Using Windows Vista I get the following error:

"The Game encountered a fatal Windows API issue when attempting to start. Try rebooting your machine and starting again"


I will try on XP and let ya all know what I find!
 
VTMac said:
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.
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Maybe they should have thought against making a retail version that makes a claim about offering 3D support for the most popular games and software.

VTMac said:
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...)
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This is where i disagree with you about having unrealistic expecations. If a retail version claims to support the hottest most popular games that should lead the reader to have these kind of expectations. I agree that they are wild expectations if the advertisement said that it had limited 3D support. I think Parallels needs to change its advertising for now to state that the support for 3D is limited.


VTMac said:
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.)
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I agree with you for the most part and am simply trying to add to the conversation.
 
Falconfire said:
FFXI = glitching before even getting out of POL (as in you cant see anything period in the login screen, though its there as it makes the sounds as if it where displaying properly)

without DirectX it will show up, but then you cant log to FFXI from POL.

Going to set autologin for my POL account and see if it changes once you get into POL.

considering that its usually glitched when its not running in Direct X, and its not even showing up when it is I dont hold much hope for it working. Too bad too, glad I am using the trial.


Edit: no go, auto logs in fine, but its never displays a window anywhere, back to bootcamp for me until Parallels team can fix this.
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If you run POL Viewer in fullscreen instead of Windowed it runs fine. My problems started when FFXI loaded, everything was shifted up into the top, left-hand corner.
 
moseph said:
Maybe they should have thought against making a retail version that makes a claim about offering 3D support for the most popular games and software.

This is where i disagree with you about having unrealistic expecations. If a retail version claims to support the hottest most popular games that should lead the reader to have these kind of expectations. I agree that they are wild expectations if the advertisement said that it had limited 3D support. I think Parallels needs to change its advertising for now to state that the support for 3D is limited.
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As I said originally (I'm agreeing with you) Parallels contributed to this by both their silence on questions asked by various posters about capabilities as well as their marketing. (Which if the technology could live up to would be pretty good btw.)
 
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Eve Online - Works

Eve Online works remarkably well, with only some graphical corruption on status bars (i.e., loading progress.) Otherwise, it's completely playable and renders normally on my first-gen Macbook Pro 2ghz/2gb - the in-game experience seems identical to playing on a PC.
 
lanceweber said:
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.
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HAHAHAH!!!! I get farther than you! I get to hit the play now button and watch as the screen goes blank and listen to leonard Nimoy drone on and on about lava flows and intelligent life finally hatching....then.... NOTHING.

I don't know which is worse...being disappointed right away or having a glimmer of hope dashed on the rocks 20 minutes later...

I too am a little annoyed at the response from Parallels support. Copy protection? come on. THis isn't a copy protection issue, its a performance issue.

Its very disappointing that they post beautiful screenshots of 3d games running on parallels 3.0 yet except for half life 2, it doesn't sound like ANYONE has gotten ANYTHING to run in 3d on this software...

...usually software should pass the giggle test before releasing it...even if you ARE trying to beat others to "release". Thank god I paid $40 bucks for this upgrade....

:-(
 
Parallels excels in engineering, but loses a lot of points from marketing and tech support. Not that this is anything new...

Oh, and KartRider (Korean online racing game) works, although the texture colours become a bit weird after your car gets 'attacked' and stays that way until you finish the race. Performance isn't quite satisfactory yet with Intel Mac mini's integrated graphics.
 
lanceweber said:
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.
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I hesitate to ask, since it's come up frequently in this thread already, but have you enabled DirectX support in the VM video configuration? You didn't mention it in your post.

This symptom was reported by at least one Civ4 user who had not enabled DirectX. After doing so he reported that Civ4 loaded and ran, though not at a playable speed.
 
Gtr2

I installed GTR2 and when I run it it says "original disc cannot be found or authenticated." ... have double checked and the correct disc is in the computer and connected to parallels ... in fact the autorun even executes
 
Well DDO didnt work under the following:


MacBook Pro CD 2.16Ghz
2GB RAM

Using Windows XP or Vista I get the following error:

"The Game encountered a fatal Windows API issue when attempting to start. Try rebooting your machine and starting again"


So DDO: Stormreach as of now is a no go unless there is some suggestions on how to fix the error...
 
I've tried the games delivered with Windows Vista. Solitare, Hold Em, Hearts etc.

None of them work. Varying degrees of issues from immediate shut down of the game to immediately shut down of the VM.

I won't try any other games if the Vista delivered games don't even work. I am thoroughly unimpressed.
 
Do I need to install ATI drivers or should it just use the parallels ones? Someone got eve online to work but it's just a slideshow for me on a mac pro 2.66 with X1900XT 3 gigs RAM
 
AlanH said:
That's not a problem for the Parallels advertising copy writer, it's a problem of VMWare's making.
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Good job missing the point of the whole passage (that Parallels is selling the kind of support that another company is giving away free BECAUSE they know its not ready for prime time)
 
I have exactly the opposite problem to a lot of people...

This may not be relevant to most, but my wife loves old adventure/puzzle type games - not very CPU intensive, but a lot of the later ones are 3D. I just tried out Faust-Seven Games of the Soul (DirectX 6), and it works beautifully (next up, Gabriel Knight 3...). The only problem is the frame rate is too high (331 frames/second) - if I move the mouse off center, I spin around. Is there an easy way to throttle the speed of an old app that runs too fast on new hardware?

Blaise
 
Dear Parallels Team

This release wasn't worth paying for. This release should have been a minor update to 2.x.

I would have been more than happy to experience this disappointment for free and pay for a stable solution later.

How many tens of thousands of users will pay for the upgrade only to have 15 or 20 games or so even remotely capable of working?
 
Diablo II: no joy

I was really hoping Diablo II would run under 3.0, but it doesn't. Fresh installs of Diablo II and D2: Lord of Destruction pass the video test now, but just peg the CPU at 100% when launched and do nothing further.

I know it's on the old side for a game, but that's all the more reason it should hopefully run IMO, as the system reqs are modest. I enabled 3D and upped the video RAM to 64mb (max).

If a future patch fixes whatever's wrong, I'll be very pleased and a lot less productive.
 
dan537 said:
If you run POL Viewer in fullscreen instead of Windowed it runs fine. My problems started when FFXI loaded, everything was shifted up into the top, left-hand corner.
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You must have had DirectX turned off, because even running it in fullscreen like you say it's just a black screen with music and sound.

If there's another fix, please let us know!
 
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