Sun VirtualBox

[PuB_Evo]

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/PuB_Evo/06.jpg


Been trying to run the game client on Sun VirtualBox(OS: XP Home) and that error message popped up. It was also telling me that the game is running on 32bits resolution and that i should change from 16bits to 32bits for better performance.
Clicked and tired everything, the client runs but at a very very slow speed. So slow that it sort of would never go on... Need advise on this. Thanks!

[Killa_Ape]

Is this the same issue as the thread you started in the games section? If so I assume the same will happen.

[OvRiDe]

Did you enable 3D acceleration in Virtualbox?

And did you update Direct X in the Virual host?

Also.. what is the host OS that is running Virtual box.

An OS in Virtualbox will run slower then a native OS.

[PuB_Evo]

Is this the same issue as the thread you started in the games section? If so I assume the same will happen.

This post and the post in games section has got nothing to do with each other. The software and programs i used on and ask on this thread are all legal.


Did you enable 3D acceleration in Virtualbox?

And did you update Direct X in the Virual host?

Also.. what is the host OS that is running Virtual box.

An OS in Virtualbox will run slower then a native OS.

1) Can you tell me more on how i would do that?

2) Do u have the direct link of which Direct X i should run?

3) The OS which is running on the VirtualBox is Windows XP Home Edition SP2.

4) Okie, if its that way and i cant do anything about it.

Thanks for the answer in advance.:bunny:

*OvRiDe: Very sorry about the thread in games section. Its a promise that will not happen again.:dead:

[OvRiDe]

Here is a step by step on enabling 3D acceleration in Virtualbox.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/virtualbox-3-directx.html

Give that a shot and let us know if that solved it.

[PuB_Evo]

Here is a step by step on enabling 3D acceleration in Virtualbox.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/virtualbox-3-directx.html

Give that a shot and let us know if that solved it.

Gone through all the steps till i came to rebooting the VirtualBox OS. After the system coming up normally, i checked if the 3D acceleration is enabled by running dxdiag. Here is what i get...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/PuB_Evo/DirectX.jpg

Need advise to fix 3D acceleration so i can go on. Thank you so much!

[OvRiDe]

I'm not sure what the problem is. If you followed all the steps, it should work. What video card is currently in the machine. And what is the host OS. Does the host OS have the proper drivers loaded?

This is as far as I can take you, maybe check out the Virtualbox forums. http://forums.virtualbox.org/

[PuB_Evo]

Profile info on my system is updated. Sapphire HD5870 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5 is my current video card on the system.
Host OS refers to the OS used by the program VirtualBox? If so its XP Home Edition.
Do i also have to load and update the drivers once again for the VirtualBox host OS(XP) too?

[OvRiDe]

Im not sure.. I believe that the Virtualbox only needs the Guest driver.

I guess the part I am confused is .. why are you running an XP virtualbox on an XP machine. Why don't you just load the game directly on the machine?

[PuB_Evo]

why are you running an XP virtualbox on an XP machine. Why don't you just load the game directly on the machine?

I am running Windows7 Home Prem 64bits. Which is on my system specs.
Only the VirtualBox OS is on Windows XP Home.

[OvRiDe]

Ok.. that makes more sense. From what it sounded like at first was you were running XP on top of XP. :D

Doesn't Win7 have a XP compatibility mode that uses Virtualization to create an XP environment? You might check into that as well.

[PuB_Evo]

Direct3D is now enabled. The issue is on when i run the game client it wasnt a problem, the problem comes up only after i pick my charater and loads in-world. The client just crashes each time i do that.
Updating the downloaded DirectX or the graphic card's driver disk would both remove the Direct3D option.

Any ideas what do i do next? Need advise.

[Kayin]

I've had a lot of trouble with gaming in VirtualBox-so much that I simply use it for testing if it will work in Linux without rebooting. The hooks for 3d are so low, oftentimes it can't really get to them-either it emulates using the CPU or it just kinda bodges the job.

I love VirtualBox, but it is what it is, and free virtualization software is still free virtualization software.

[PuB_Evo]

Any other suggestions of software i can do the same?

[Drum Thumper]

Why not dual boot your system?

[x88x]

Make sure that you're running the latest version of VirtualBox, the DirectX support only became officially supported as of 3.0. Also, what version of DirectX are you running in the VM? Only DX9 and earlier are supported.

You do not need to install the drivers for your host GPU on the guest VM. All hardware is managed by VirtualBox, so as long as you have the 'guest add-ons', or whatever they're called, installed, you don't have anything more to worry about drivers-wise.

When you say the client crashes, are you referring to the game client or the VirtualBox client?


The hooks for 3d are so low, oftentimes it can't really get to them-either it emulates using the CPU or it just kinda bodges the job.
This is really the biggest problem; since there is no standard system-level graphics interface across all hardware, they're always emulated by CPU in virtualization software, so you're never gonna get great performance. Even if you have a great CPU, you'll still have the problem of translating the instructions to CPU instructions, running them on a radically different back end than the program is expecting, and then converting everything back.

I gotta ask, why are you wanting to run the game in a VM? If it was giving you trouble in 7, I would think it would be better to get it working correctly there instead of trying to run it in a VM.


I love VirtualBox, but it is what it is, and free virtualization software is still free virtualization software.
I could be wrong, but to my knowledge there is no virtualization software that actually gives the guest access to the host's GPU. IMO, VirtualBox is actually superior to its competitors in most ways (especially since 3.1, hurray for multi-branched snapshots!).

@OvRiDe: 7 Home Premium doesn't have XP mode, that's only in Pro and Ultimate (and possibly Enterprise...not sure about that, tbh). Also, from what I've heard, XP mode pretty much sucks anyways. It's just an XP guest in MS Virtual PC, which...pretty much sucks.... there's a reason why MS isn't a major player in desktop virtualization.

[Kayin]

You may be right, I'm no virtualization expert yet.

Stay tuned though...

At any rate, this looks like a job for a dual-boot (though if it's to play an old game, look at Steam-new old stuff gets added all the time and the bonus is that it works with anything!)

[simon275]

Yes I wouldn't virtualizing anything that needs 3g acceleration support on a single pc. Run the OS off the hardware so it can access the GPU directly and not through a hyper visor.

[x88x]

Yes I wouldn't virtualizing anything that needs 3g acceleration support on a single pc. Run the OS off the hardware so it can access the GPU directly and not through a hyper visor.

Actually in this case it's even more than that, since VirtualBox runs on top of the host OS, there's 2 layers of abstraction between the hardware and guest OS instead of 1 layer in the case of a hypervisor.

[PuB_Evo]

Why not dual boot your system?

Ummm, sorry still learning and have no idea what you mean...


Make sure that you're running the latest version of VirtualBox, the DirectX support only became officially supported as of 3.0. Also, what version of DirectX are you running in the VM? Only DX9 and earlier are supported.

Yes im on the latest version of VB. I cannot install a DX if not its gonna disable the 3D Acceleration. :(

[x88x]

Dual-booting is when you have two operating systems installed on your computer at the same time. This lets you have access to multiple operating systems with full hardware access for each. You will only be able to boot into one at a time though, so it's not perfect.

Make sure that you have 3D acceleration enabled in the video settings tab:
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/x13931x/Screenshot-Win7-Settings.png
Also, go ahead and crank up the video RAM that it's giving it.

Looking at VirtualBox's descriptions of what these options do, it looks like they might actually pass directly to the physical card. Hmm, I'm gonna have to play around with that later...

[XcOM]

i would recommend looking into WIndows CP mode, i play 2 games which won't run on Windows7 X64 but will run under XP mode, i also have a few little apps that i use under the XP mode, its very easy to setup and it gives the app access to the true hardware, ie 3D support is true 3D support bing rendered by your GFX card not your CPU

[x88x]

WIndows CP mode

For clarification, for anyone who's not familiar with it (took me a second), he's talking about 'compatibility mode', which was added in Vista. They have options for I believe 98 through the previous version (ie, in Vista it goes through XP, in 7 it goes through Vista).

[PuB_Evo]

i would recommend looking into WIndows CP mode, i play 2 games which won't run on Windows7 X64 but will run under XP mode, i also have a few little apps that i use under the XP mode, its very easy to setup and it gives the app access to the true hardware, ie 3D support is true 3D support bing rendered by your GFX card not your CPU


For clarification, for anyone who's not familiar with it (took me a second), he's talking about 'compatibility mode', which was added in Vista. They have options for I believe 98 through the previous version (ie, in Vista it goes through XP, in 7 it goes through Vista).

Yeah my VirtualBox is running on a Windows XP and the 'compatibility mode' has got options like Win95, Win98, WinNT and Win2000. Tried all but nothing is working out. The game client runs but i have a black screen. :neutral:

[x88x]

Yeah my VirtualBox is running on a Windows XP and the 'compatibility mode' has got options like Win95, Win98, WinNT and Win2000. Tried all but nothing is working out. The game client runs but i have a black screen. :neutral:

What he meant was to run it in compatibility mode in the host OS.

[XcOM]

acctually it was a typo, what i ment was XP mode,

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

its the best comp mode i've ever used

[Kayin]

However, even if your processor supports it, XP mode will not virtualize 3D hardware.

Check and see if your game is on Steam. All 5 of the X-COM series were, and I got them all for a tenner.

[x88x]

its the best comp mode i've ever used

That's because it's not really a compatibility mode. It's just a Windows XP VM running in VirtualPC 2008, which is why everything except for graphical stuff runs near perfectly in it. The only real benefit to using that instead of a VM you made yourself with another virtualization solution is that 'XP mode' includes a valid XP license. Unfortunately though, 'XP mode' is not available for 7 Home Premium, which the OP runs.

[XcOM]

ahh, ok,

and i've never played the X-COM game series, my nickname was derived from when i ,,,,,ahem,,,,,,gained access the the school servers showing an exploit, at the request of the system administrator, i used a small program i wrote and called it X becuase it used a DLL file x,,,something or other to gain access to a machine when it was connected to a network via a COM port,

very smart for the day,

[Kayin]

One of the bat's uses will be to run VMs for cross-platform testing, so I'm learning virtualization quite fast.

[x88x]

One thing you might want to look into if your doing a lot of virtualization is vmware's ESXi hypervisor (http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/). It's free, runs on a lot of new hardware, and is really an extremely nice product if the system is only being used for virtualization (since it's a hypervisor there's no real usable host OS).

[Kayin]

It's not virtualization only, but I use it to test code for my game.