Parallels Desktop 3.0 plans 3D graphics support
Parallels has been one of the most-preferred solutions for running Windows on your Mac for some time now, but with today’s announcement of the release candidate for Parallels Desktop 3.0, it looks like it’s going to get a whole lot better. The big new feature is, of course, 3D graphics support. Parallels 3 will soon support both DirectX and OpenGL games in the virtual machine, so you can get your gaming fix in without having to reboot into Windows. Ars Orbiting HQ testing of the private beta on a Core 2 Duo iMac has revealed that the 3D support offers decent speed for Counter-Strike; however, there were a few texturing issues here and there. That said, the news is still good for all the Mac gamers out there, and we expect there to be vast improvements to the software by the time the first public beta comes out.
No word on Vista Aero support yet, a question asked by at least one commenter at Ben Rudolph’s blog entry detailing hands-on time with the beta. Also, Rudolph verifies Quake 4 runs, but makes amibiguous reference to how well. He says it works “full-speed,” which could really mean anything, and the screen capture (see above) shows the game in a low-res window; I imagine things slow considerably if you’re going all out full-screen sans interpolation. The Parallels team is promising 50+ features in the new release, along with 100+ new fixes. Speaking of release, Parallels 3.0 won’t be out for public consumption for another few weeks. However, the release candidate is ready as of today, so we know it’s coming soon. If you’re just too excited to wait, you can buy the upgrade for $40 until June 6th. After that, it’ll $50 to upgrade from previous versions. It’s a worthy software buy if you use Windows a lot. Or like 3D games.
Source: PCWorld, ArsTechnica
Comments(7)
If you really want to play games on a mac (or linux for that matter), use Cider. Getting a full-blown windows system on top of OSX is just insane as you can work with a completely stripped 40mb mini build of win98 or win2k on Cider.
For the rest I love parallels especially since now your images are easily movable to linux or windoze since it is supported now as well.
Quake 4 looks a lot Half-life 2.
hum this 3d support is going to be nice altought i prefer atm virtualbox, i got both installed but VB is just faster
Sorry if I’m asking a noob question, but is there some kind of virtual machine program to run Mac in Windows?
To be honest, the only thing preventing me from getting a mac computer is gaming. Just not enough games I like. I’m not much familiar with 3rd party apps for directx/openGL games on mac (such as this Parallels 3D), but it sounds good if it’s going to fully support those games. Some comments suggest there are other options to play DirectX & OpenGL games on mac? I don’t know much, so this might sound noob-like, but how about games using DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 (like Crysis), how’s that reflected here, using Parallel 3D? Does it use the full potential of the game, or, it just doesn’t even apply? I’ve seen X1900 Mac Edition for almost $400. A bit high, but that’s the only gfx card I’ve seen for Macs…ever.
@ merlijn: How exactly do you use Cider to run Windows games? Got any tutorial?
As I’ve understood it Cider is a framework for porting Windows games to Mac, used by the game developer.
Yeah I think the comments about Cider are a bogie, as another user stated… it’s for developers, and a cider-based game will just look like an OS X app, check out http://www.transgaming.com for more info.
Maybe he meant Crossover, which is still far from perfect. I think Parallels will have better compatibility as it runs the entire OS.