Comments on: By the Numbers: Running Windows-Based MMOs On the Mac

By: Hands On: Gaming With Parallels Desktop 6

Hands On: Gaming With Parallels Desktop 6 — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:01:59 +0000

[...] this year, I wrote a lengthy evaluation of gaming on virtual machines. I thought I’d run the same games through Parallels 6 to see how its claims work out in the [...]

By: Tammy

Tammy — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:40:23 +0000

I wonder if you can help me. I want to play EQ2 on my mac book pro. 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. After a failed attempt with Crossover Games, I purchased Windows 7 Home and loaded a trial of Parallels Desktop 5. The game loaded okay, and I get to the character select screen, however, during the process of entering the game, I receive an error: "Critical Error - Application ran out of memory when requesting 262176 bytes (limit: 575MB, current: 575MB)". Suggestions? Any help you can provide would be much appreciated!

By: Kristopher Lloyd

Kristopher Lloyd — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:15:15 +0000

Can some please guide me exactly how to load LOTRO with crossover. I have tried many different this like the Pylotro (its not working) and I even bought the game discs from the video game store for 5 bucks and tried that. It loads but when its done it crahses and I can’t get into the game.

Anyone able to help me?

By: steven Graham

steven Graham — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:09:52 +0000

Mark, I am not sure if you still follow this blog post, but i want to play LORTO on my mac book, so i am debating weather to get parallels or use boot camp.
Parallels seems more convenient especially since i am in school and need my OSX more often.

Would you suggest one over the other?
(i am not too worried about graphics or FPS since WOW runs fine on my 07 Macbook)

Also i have heard that Wine no longer supports LOTRO, is this true? I am hesitant to use this software since i am pretty computer illiterate.

By: Mark Crump

Mark Crump — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:52:25 +0000

yeah, that’s what I’m doing. It probably wasn’t made clear.

By: isulzer

isulzer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:18:29 +0000

With crossover you should just use full screen mode, but window the x11 window. You can do this by going to Configure->Control Panel->winecfg->Graphics
-check Allow DirectX apps to stop the mouse…
-unckeck the middle two. This is more efficient use of screen space
-check Emulate a virtual desktop and select the size. I use 1024×768, but you need to remove the window bar with the other setting for this to fit in a 1280×800 screen.

You can manage the settings for each individual app, but this is a bit tricky, as you need to pick the correct executable.

Different games have different problems, so using these settings can actually work out better or worse. Some games dont run in full screen, but do run in the emulated desktop. Im not sure why though…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:14:20 +0000

I’m sorry but this is just a big pet peeve of mine. Wine (and Crossover in turn) is NOT an emulator. That’s where its name even came from: [W]ine [I]s [N]ot an [E]mulator. See http://www.winehq.org/myths#slow

Wine is a recreation of the core Windows libraries that talks to your real hardware, so any slowness vs running it in native Windows is due to certain wine libraries being incomplete or not optimized as their Microsoft version — whereas slowness in Parallels comes from having an extra layer of translation (virtual hardware talking to real hardware).

In Crossover: Game -> Wine -> Real Hardware
In Parallels: Game -> Windows -> Virtual Hardware -> Real Hardware

See the difference?

By: Kyahx

Kyahx — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:12:42 +0000

I’m sorry, but this is just a big pet peeve of mine. Wine (and Crossover in turn) is NOT an emulator. That’s where its name even came from: [W]ine [I]s [N]ot an [E]mulator. See http://www.winehq.org/myths#slow

In Crossover: Game -> Wine -> Real Hardware
In Parallels: Game -> Windows -> Virtual Hardware -> Real Hardware

See the difference?

By: macxcited

macxcited — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:58:42 +0000

I am wondering why you didn’t try VirtualBox, an alternative to Parallels and VMware Fusion, freeware from Sun?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:46:38 +0000

I’m still waiting for Parallels or VMWare to add VT-d support. Parallels showed it off at WWDC 09, but it didn’t make it into version 5.

Basically it’s a hardware virtualization extension to allow the VM direct access to hardware. I’m not sure if both guest and host OS could share one GPU, but it could possibly mean Mac Pro owners can slap in 2 GPUs and have full acceleration in Windows when running as a VM, and possibly allow both the 9400 and 9600 in the MacBook Pros to be used.