Which virtual machine player has better 3D support, VirtualBox or VMplayer?

[DrM]

VirtualBox which is shipped within Linux Mint has some 3D capabilities which are still in an experimental stage, even within the latest version of VirtualBox. They can only be installed when the Windows guest has been booted into safe mode. On the Virtual Box manager you must switch on 3D acceleration on the screen tab.

VMware offers the free VMplayer program. Which of the two has better 3D support for Windows guests? Good 3D support is very important when running CAD programs and games.

[bartszu]

hard to say what you want

if you want CAD there is

http://www.openscad.org/

if you want games to play there is

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/

about VMware Player and VBox

IMHO VBox is way better and I use it often for visualisation, but some ppl prefer Player.
Run it as root to get all features.

[DrM]

hard to say what you want

if you want CAD there is

http://www.openscad.org/

if you want games to play there is

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/

about VMware Player and VBox

IMHO VBox is way better and I use it often for visualisation, but some ppl prefer Player.
Run it as root to get all features.

But playing Windows games and running Windows apps isn't always successful with PlayOnLinux frontend for Wine. Running apps and games for Windows is often problematic in Wine.

[bartszu]

I keep VBox just for one app Paltalk, runs great.
Playonlinux as far as I see on YT runs ok, for most of games.
I dont know I don’t have this problem, I don’t play games any more.
But on YT i see ppl playing almost all on LINUX, and not on MINT, so it cant be so hard.

[powerhouse]

Sorry for the late reply - just saw the thread.

If you need real 3D performance for games or similar, there is only one way so far: VGA passthrough using either VMware (commercial), KVM, or Xen. I can't say much about VMware, but I've written how-tos on how to do that under Xen and KVM. The later is the more recent one, and perhaps the easier to achieve (you find a sticky in this forum).

In any case, to accomplish that you need specific hardware and a dedicated graphics card for Windows. The benefits are that you can run Windows with very little performance loss, if at all. Given the right hardware and enough graphics cards, you can build a gaming rig for 2-3 gamers who all play simultaneously on the same PC. It's all been done.

If you run Windows as a virtual machine using VGA passthrough, you can kiss dual-boot goodbye .