# Virtual PC



## danri (Feb 22, 2005)

recently installed Virtual PC in hopes of playin Need for Speed 2 on my mac. new to being a mac user and not to familiar with everything. i know it is emulating the videocar and such so was jus wondering does anybody might know why i am having problems trying to start the program to play.


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## JetwingX (Feb 22, 2005)

even if you did get it to run, you aren't going to be able to play it as emulating a x86 processor isn't going to be fast enough.

my suggestion, rent the game and barrow a friends playstation (unless you have one your self)


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## ex2bot (Feb 22, 2005)

Yup, NFS 2 was totally cool. Are you using Windows XP in VirtualPC? XP breaks lots of games. 

** Try DOSBox, a free program that emulates MS-DOS, along with an excellent front-end called Radnor. I got Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within to run at full speed on my G5! Awesome.

Doug


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## Zammy-Sam (Feb 23, 2005)

I don't think DosBox can deal with 3d games. I was using it for heretic, a very old 3d game à la doom. It's not really fast but sorta playable.
However, it amazes me how ppl pay almost 100bucks more just to "test" their fav games. Why not get a cheap pc and do a lot more with it? VPC is only for ppl that have to use a x86 emulator on the road.


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## Pengu (Feb 23, 2005)

Trust me. VPC is not a viable option for much these days. Software demands are greater and greater, and VPC is going nowhere. On my G5 (see below) it emulates a 450Mhz 386. So it thinks it has the instruction set of a 15+ year old computer, running at 5 year old speeds. for the cost of VPC it'd be better bang for buck to buy either: xbox, ps2 or cheapo PC.


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## guilly (Mar 6, 2005)

dktrickey said:
			
		

> ** Try DOSBox, a free program that emulates MS-DOS, along with an excellent front-end called Radnor. I got Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within to run at full speed on my G5! Awesome.



I would recommend using Petit dosbox http://web.jet.es/guilly/slouc/, it is more complete than Radnor. Anyhow, I believe that you will need a veeeery fast computer to run NFS emulated.


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## salbeik@fys.ku. (Mar 6, 2005)

VPC sucks - I can barely play final fantasy 7 (the game requires a 300 mhz processor) on it. It's playable on my 1 Ghz ibook, 
but it simply runs faster on my 800 mhz duron. I was hoping that win98 would run faster than win Xp on VPC, but it didn't. Only thing you can use VPC is for playing windows card games - everything else runs extremely slow.


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## ex2bot (Mar 6, 2005)

I forgot to ask danri what kind of Mac were talking about.

Was NFS 2 a 3d game? I thought it was 2d. The one I'm thinking of is an old old game. A DOS game. Fun.

Hmm. . . Let me check the Underdogs.

Doug

P.S. Ford Racing is coming out for OS X. Looks good. Just a thought.


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## padishahemperor (Mar 7, 2005)

I don't mean to be rude, because I'm not, but why are people even _trying_ to run PC games on VPC? It's intended for the odd _application_ where no Mac equivalent exists. Why not just buy a console for playing games?


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## Zammy-Sam (Mar 7, 2005)

I completely agree with you, padishahemperor. VPC is not for gaming. For that price ppl can buy an old pc and play their games. However, for most other things VPC is a great app. And it is slightly making me angry to see ppl like salbeik@fys.ku. bash such programs.


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## padishahemperor (Mar 7, 2005)

And I agree with you ;-)

I'm about to switch BACK to Mac after some years of hellish PCs and I will be getting VPC with it. I used VPC 2.0.1 on a PowerMac 5500 back then and was very happy with the product, I could test the odd app and play a bit with Linux, I guess it's even better now. I certainly wouldn't 'bash' a useful tool which extends the abilities of the Mac.


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## AdmiralAK (Mar 7, 2005)

Personally I dont want to clutter up my space with an added PC box. I would really prefer one of those PCI solutions like orangePC used to have many many moons ago. I would love to have a Pentium, RAM, parallel & serial port on a nice little PCI card that could handle all of it. This way I could run all my windows and non mac OS apps on one little convenient space within my Mac


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## Zammy-Sam (Mar 8, 2005)

Actually I consider VirtualPC as a solution when I am on the road. If I need some x86 support at home then there is no alternative to a cheap old pc. And of course: the smaller the pc box the less wasted space in my flat.


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## padishahemperor (Mar 8, 2005)

Fortunately I don't have that worry, I've been a solid Linux/Solaris user and I doubt there will be any PC apps I'll actually need, gimp, mplayer etc are available native for the Mac anyway. But my partner will be using it for running some accounts software.  I may dabble in Linux from time to time... that aside, I'll be glad to see the back of these PCs.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 25, 2005)

back to the original post, the reason nfs doesn't run well in vpc is because it is a 3d game.  and being a advid gamer, have to own and thus deal with a wintel box (well amd because it is sooooooooooooooo much better then the pentuim).  apple os and mircosoft os handle 3d games differently.  apple uses opengl for 3d, while windows uses directx.  vpc cannot run directx, it just doesn't translate to the ppc code from x86 code, therefore has to try to translate every thing into opengl, which makes for some really laging gameplay, or can't play at all (ie. HalfLife 2, the only real reason i own a computer that runs win xp, and boy was it worth it)


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## nixgeek (Mar 25, 2005)

AdmiralAK said:
			
		

> Personally I dont want to clutter up my space with an added PC box. I would really prefer one of those PCI solutions like orangePC used to have many many moons ago. I would love to have a Pentium, RAM, parallel & serial port on a nice little PCI card that could handle all of it. This way I could run all my windows and non mac OS apps on one little convenient space within my Mac



IF you could actually get one suported under OS X.  Most of those PC cards aren't supported anymore.  If you really want to play PC games, you might want to look at some of those small-form-factor gaming systems.  They won't take up too much space and pretty much come with almost everything you need.  You can even find barebones systems and add whatever extra hardware you might have laying around.


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## ex2bot (Mar 25, 2005)

VirtualPC won't play 3d games because it doesn't emulate a card with 3d capabilities. I believe it emulates an old Trident card, 2d only. I used to have a Trident back in the old days in my 120 MHz Pentium.

Doug


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