VirtualBox and 3D games

disi · Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:13 am Post subject: VirtualBox and 3D games

Can someone post his experience with VirtualBox and gaming?
At the moment I have dualboot and I am really sick of it.

If you want to do some learning or work on something, I use Linux since most of the tools I use are not available in Windows and more workspaces etc.
Then I think about quickly play some game to relax and need to reboot to play it -.-

So the question:
Windows uses crappy DRM and I have only installed it once so far with my key. If I put it into a VM I would need to register it against the new hardware. I know that's crap but there is not much we can do against M$ and it's slaves(the gaming industry).

Also I mostly play RPG games and usually installing it includes like 10GB of patching.

Before I go through all this trouble, has anyone experience in playing games within a VM?
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disi · Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:29 pm Post subject:

OK, I setup Win7 32bit in a VM
installed guest additions with 3D support in safe mode

Torchlight with software rendering:
http://ompldr.org/vNzhpZw

Torchlight with hw rendering:
http://ompldr.org/vNzhpaA

Oblivion crashes the VM and the X server after the intro movie

This was tested with ATI HD4770 and the open source raedon driver
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bobspencer123 · Guru Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 544

you might have better luck with wine and the games then using them in a vm. But, truly there is no replacement for a true windows install for games. I basically stopped playing (new)games because I hate dual booting and figuring out games with wine is a pita.
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disi · Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:41 am Post subject:

Well, at least software rendering is working...
DirectX installed fine

Torchlight is actual playable and I'll see if I can get others to run. I guess the main problem is my graphics card, ATI cards do not run properly in wine or any other emulation software I met so far...

//edit: there is definitely progress. I blame my graphics card since most games do not work in wine either

The graphics are quick but crap...
WoW with Direct3D, characters not rendered (this was also a known bug in wine with ATI and EQ2 or Eve)
http://ompldr.org/vNzh6eQ
WoW ingame:
http://ompldr.org/vNzkwMA
WoW won't start with opengl "unable to start 3D acceleration"
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Raptor85 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 208

Curious as to why you're going that route, especially for WOW and torchlight (they're both PLATINUM apps in wine)

virtualbox passthrough for 3d frankly sucks, it gets the job done but I wouldn't game in it. (not really what it's meant for anyways).

I'm a gamer and I kicked windows out completely 5 years ago, and before that dual booted very rarely (few new games, generally due to some copy protection). WINE is AMAZING compared to how it was even back then, and if it's a big enough game it's supported very quickly.

Some games require a bit of tinkering to work correctly but that's what WINEHQ is there for, and if something doesn't work correctly report it and vote up the applications you use!
http://appdb.winehq.org/index.php

disi · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 10:34 am Post subject:

I am like 95% sure that if I would use an Nvidia card I wouldn't have problems in wine or VirtualBox

That thread went for a year and with new models came the same problems:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?10104-AMD-ATI-Linux-WINE-FAIL...-all-around./page8
From 2010:
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=9233&sid=faad55b5f88f4636eb3cfc3b4402f4db
My own post:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-843336-highlight-eve.html

Since I'll get new hardware anyway, I wanted to test how hard it is to get 3D support on Windows guests or if anyone with an nvidia card could show his results...

It doesn't make sense to me, using ATI hardware with binary drivers. The only reason to get another ATI card would be open source drivers.
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Dark Shoyu · n00b Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 39

I've recently tried to play Ragnarok in Wine and VirtualBox, but the client I download for bRO doesn't really work, either due to GameGuard issues (Wine) or due to graphic card issues (VirtualBox). This is a too specific situation, tho.

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 6609

Here's a gaming in virtualbox thread, for info.

disi · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:46 am Post subject: