Well let me be the first to say this is a little “modern” compared to all of my prior stuff, but anyways I’ve been enjoying life under OS X the last few days (along with crunch time @ work.. .sigh). As part of my day job I do still have to maintain some MS-DOS & Windows stuff, so while I do run Qemu under OS X, I’ve also purchased a copy of VMWare Fusion 3.1 (available online, and as a 30 day eval!). Ok so it’s $89 with the one year support, pretty snazzy stuff.
Now one thing that I find very interesting, is that unlike all the other more expensive versions of VMWare, Fusion for the MAC allows for SOME 3d apps to run!
I’m still kind of amazed at the stuff that does run and how cleanly it does so.
So I’ve installed good old Windows XP in a VM, then tried Fallout 3. No go. For the hell of it I tried Sims 3, and surprisingly it worked.. Even though it’s silly as there is an OS X version available.
So for today (I think it may be over in a few hours….) Steam is selling Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic for $2.50 USD!
Now KOTOR has been kind of finicky about what machines it’ll run on, in the past, but I have to say, much to my surprise the emulated 3d hardware ran KOTOR out of the box, without any modifications or anything!
So here it is, KOTOR in a ‘window’ on Windows XP in a Window on OS X.
And it’s playable at 1024×786.. and 1280×960, although at higher resolutions I’ve had issues with the mouse tracking.. .perhaps something about hardware/software mice support?
Anyways, emulation has now come to the point where 3d stuff really does run!
yes, VMWare is good on OS X, and even VirtualBox isn't bad, i mean it runs most of the 3D stuff from 4-5 years ago.
on a side note, KOTOR is available for OS X from Aspire, IIRC.
Sadly I gave away my MAC KOTOR many moons ago, when I sold my iMac G5.. At the same point they want in excess of $40 USD for KOTOR right now for the mac..
It sounds silly, but since I needed VMWare Fusion, $2.50 is one heck of a deal, to run it under XP!
it isn't silly at all. it's totally logical and fun, too. 🙂
3D works pretty well on VMWare Workstation, too – I even ran some of farbraushch's demos without problems.