# Problems with games and VMware Fusion



## Gordon Bombay (Dec 24, 2007)

So I recently got VMware Fusion and installed steam along with counter strike source and half life 2. Everything was going great until I started to try and run the games. I had the demo of parallels and the games ran VERY poorly although my macbook pro meets the requirements of the games. So I got the VMware Fusion demo. Steam installed fine and so did the games. However when I click them to run I get the message saying "Preparing to launch Counter Strike:Source (or Half Life 2 when I try that one)" and the message dissapears and the hour glass appears. Now when I ran it on my pc as soon as you would see that hour glass the screen would go black and the game would begin to run. However in fusion the hourglass just goes back to the regular arrow and nothing happens. I hit ctrl+alt+del and it doesn't even say the applications or games are running. Anyone have any idea what's going on?


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## chevy (Dec 24, 2007)

For 3D gaming on your Mac, you need to use BootCamp.

VMWare Fusion (and Parallels) only support games with limited hardware acceleration.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Dec 24, 2007)

chevy's right -- while Parallels and VMWare Fusion are excellent at running most Windows programs in a virtualized environment, it's still not the same as running under Windows natively.

Parallels has limited DirectX and 3D support, and I don't know if VMWare's Fusion has any at all.  Any kind of 3D games or 3D software will not run all that great under these virtualized environments -- for that, as chevy said, you'll probably want to boot into Windows natively via BootCamp, since the graphics drivers for Windows are much better that way.


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## Gordon Bombay (Dec 24, 2007)

Damn, I thought I had read that vmware supported 3d gaming. Oh well, thanks for the help guys. I guess I'll just have to wait until apple starts selling bootcamp to tiger users or until i have enough spare change to go to leopard.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Dec 24, 2007)

I wouldn't hold your breath on Apple re-instating BootCamp into Tiger.  In order to reap the benefits of BootCamp, pretty much your only option is to upgrade to Leopard.


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## chevy (Dec 24, 2007)

ElDiabloConCaca said:


> chevy's right -- while Parallels and VMWare Fusion are excellent at running most Windows programs in a virtualized environment, it's still not the same as running under Windows natively.
> 
> Parallels has limited DirectX and 3D support, and I don't know if VMWare's Fusion has any at all.  Any kind of 3D games or 3D software will not run all that great under these virtualized environments -- for that, as chevy said, you'll probably want to boot into Windows natively via BootCamp, since the graphics drivers for Windows are much better that way.



Yes Fusion has some 3D support, check VMware web site for supported games. But high-end games will need to run in native mode.


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## Mr.Reese (Jul 4, 2009)

There is this program called CrossOver Games.  I use it on my macbook pro and play css great, i just run it on low settings to pwn face.  But it does work great.


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