The so-called "misleading" 3D gaming graphics

I've been using Parallels since last Fall and Fusion since the Beta came out, and been waiting patiently for 3D support (waiting for Aero support). While I'm not surprised about version 3.0's 3D support isn't fully developed, I felt I was always fully informed about its status and was quite surprised by the amount of vitriol about on this forum.

Mass refunds because it's still "beta"? "Misleading" advertisements? Angry support messages for games that should obviously NOT be included within the claimed support? Are you people capable of reading the material before buying something?

First, any lawyer should be able to point out that the "Play 3D games! Supports OpenGL & DirectX and some of the hottest PC games" (postcard) makes 3 specific claims: That 3D games can be played and supports OpenGL and DirectX. Well, that is literally true with version 3.0, so there is no fraud. Does Half-Life 2 not start? DOES IT MAKE A CLAIM AS TO WHICH DIRECTX IS SUPPORTED (more on that later)? As for "Run today’s most popular PC games on a Mac with support for 3D graphics", it should be pointed out "today's most popular PC games" is what's known as "puffery" in legal analysis and hardly a claim, and even less for a basis for a class action lawsuit.

But lets say you were reasonably under a mistake that Parallels supported the latest and greatest computer gaming. Well, that would mean Parallels would support DirectX 10, the one that came out with Vista, right?

Perhaps it's because I knew Fusion had limited DirectX support and wanted to see what Parallels was now one-upping their features list for, or that I always look at the technical claims before buying something, but I went out of my way to look up the specific DirectX support claim Parallels was making for 3.0 when it was out for preorder. A click on the 3D Graphics (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/3d/) portion of the feature list for 3.0 would tell you the following more specific claim:

"Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 supports DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL!"

Guess what? There are a lot of popular games that requires DirectX 9 or 10. Popular games that as a PC gamer I infact *knew* would obviously NOT work on Parallels.

Infact, what surprises me is that *some* of the very people complaining about lack of DX support are attempting to start games which I happen to know *requires* DX9 or DX10 -- and thus wouldn't possibly be supported. These include the following games, which I happen to regularly play:

Civilization IV
Supreme Commander
Oblivion
Company of Heroes

The very games users are complaining about not working should look at the minimum requirements for those games. I purchased 3.0 knowing it would not support those games at all.

This doesn't excuse the failure of some of the very old games from running - I'm thinking about the PC version of Diablo and other below DX 8.1 games. That's clearly a bug. But most of the complaints seem to be for games that frankly were never offered as a supported feature of 3.0.

 

Bad point. That page (which you linked to) was either not there or had no links to it in info on the upgrade until after 3.0 was released, and _that_ is what people are angry about. They got conned into buying the upgrade with misleading information, and when the real information was given, it was too late to pre-order for a discount.

 

You are completely missing the point.

If you have to use legal language and split hairs to justify your actions... while what you did might be legal doesn't mean it is ethical or a best business practice. It doesn't mean that it won't anger people.

 

Kudos, Qad! You said it better than I could have. I'm growing weary of the whiners here. They're clogging up the forums and preventing productive discussion of real issues. Anyone who's familiar with virtualization knows that 3D is a very complicated problem to solve. Those who aren't should stop believing in the Tooth Fairy, at least as it pertains to software. Sorry. I'm usually a lot nicer than this. I look forward to coming to these forums and they've really taken a nose dive over the past few days.

I propose that we all get back to business as usual and just ignore the trolls. There are still lots of people here who want to share ideas, get help with problems and help others to make better use of the product.