Parallels 3.0 brings 3D PC games inside Mac OS X

[DP ServBot]

Filed under: Mac, PC

With Apple's transition to Intel hardware came the promise of playing PC games on your Mac. Some months later, with the introduction of Boot Camp, that promise became a reality. And now, with the launch of Parallels 3.0, you don't even need to leave Mac OS X and boot into Windows to play your Windows games. The popular virtualization app has just released version 3.0 (has it been that long already?) and the killer new feature is: 3D graphics (with OpenGL and DirectX) support.

Parallels 3.0 currently retails for $80 ($50 if you're upgrading), or you can register and receive a 15-day trial key. Peep Quake 4 played inside Mac OS after the break.

[Via TUAW]Continue reading Parallels 3.0 brings 3D PC games inside Mac OS X


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[norkusa]

Is Parallels worth trying out? I never tried it because I've got BootCamp with XP but I hate having to restart my Mac whenever I want to use it. I hear Parallels is not as fast though.

[GM80]

Parallels is darn fast, near-native on most tasks and respectable during heavy use, all things considered.

I'm disappointed the article didn't mention VMware's Fusion, Parallel's main competitor, which has had equivalent OpenGL/DirectX support since the previous beta release. Parallels is playing catch-up on this one, while leading the pack in other areas.

Fusion's free while still in beta, and Parallels has a 15-day trial period if you want to get a taste of the speed.

[davidbrit2]

Reception to the actual 3D performance has been pretty lukewarm on the Parallels forum. (http://forums.parallels.com) I haven't tested it myself, beyond running dxdiag. I'm more concerned with how well Office and Visual Studio run, and those run splendidly enough to have made it totally worth the money. You will need at least 1.5 GB RAM to get acceptable performance on both the Windows and OS X sides of things simultaneously, though, and 2 GB if you want a bit of breathing room left with 512 MB dedicated to the Windows VM.

My one gripe with Parallels is that it doesn't have SMP support yet, so if you've got a Core Duo, Windows is only going to utilize one core.

[cyberfluxor]

For a second there I thought this was a discussion about Parallax Software and some 3D project with resurrecting Descent, even though that company was dispatched and bought by THQ. No idea why I thought this was the case either but I with this software you could play the Descent series considering it runs with OpenGL and DirectX on the third game of the series.

This looks like spam but might actually be a decent topic to list some great 3D games for MAC users.

[icbrkr]

I'm going to have to update my Parallels install and check this out. I attempted to try VMWare's Fusion, but it doesn't appear to allow you to use a Boot Camp partition/HD (I've got a separate drive just for Windows). I could make a hard drive file but I'd prefer not to have 2 separate Windows installations for those rare times I need to boot into native Windows.