Torque 2D - Mac/Windows Virtual Machine

#1 Is your virtual machine capable of doing pass-through to your graphics card to work with OpenGL/DirectX correctly or is it using compatibility mode virtual drivers to do it? I've seen any number of graphical applications for OpenGL and DX die horribly or at least go wonky in dedicated graphics modes.

#2 I can't say for sure if 2D would work but
I had Torque3D run perfectly well on VMware Fusion yesterday for a test.

#3 I've had Torque 3D work and fail on both VMWare and VirtualBox (with 3D acceleration and passthrough turned on; basic lighting). So your mileage may vary with graphical applications, which has often been a weakness in terms of desktop virtualization. It has gotten a ton better in recent years.

#4 Thanks. I am not using anything really sophisticated (so I think). I'm using Parallels 5 for Mac and it has the configuration settings for 3d acceleration and vertical synchronization - both of which are selected.

It seems to take over the entire virtual environment and then I have a hard time opening a project.

Maybe I'll try to reinstall.

#5 @David:
How did your Torque 3D worked then failed?
How many instances of the Torque 3D did you run at the same time?
What OS did you use in the VMWare?
Did you load a heavy mission?
What are your other test scenarios and settings?

I am using a modified version of TGEA 1.8.2 on VMWare. OS is Windows 7 on VMWare.

I ran the following scenarios:
1. Run 2 dedicated servers in the VM.
-- OK
2. Run 1 client in the VM and joined the servers in VM
-- OK
3. Run 1 client in the Host machine and join servers in VM
-- Failed (can't see the servers in VM)
- Work Around: Had the IP of the VM hardcoded in the prefs as server favorites. Now can join the servers in the VM.
4. Run 1 client in another physical machine and join servers in VM.
-- OK

Our game has not much graphics inside the mission as of the moment as it is just for demo purposes.

Also the end result is that we will just run dedicated servers in the VM. We are also planning on porting to Torque 3D so I am a bit concerned about this. Though we got the Torque 3D license, but due to some licensing problems, we will need to wait 30 days to get the license for Torque 3D and test the above scenarios.

Please do me a favor. Please test the scenarios mentioned above and see if you still have problems with only running dedicated servers on VM. I would have done it myself if I had the license.

Thanks.

#6 As I recall (it was last late 2009 when I did the test, so it was fresh in my mind in January, but not so much now), it failed when initializing the display drivers, which is often where apps fail inside VM's if the hardware is not detected correctly and passthrough is not available.

Dedicated servers should be okay to run on a VM, but I wouldn't recommend running clients for the most part unless you are working on a virtualization solution for hosted apps.

#7 Thanks David for the quick response. We do plan on hosting multiple dedicated servers in a vm box. It would be great if we can run the dedicated servers in linux. Is this possible? how?

And if we are able to let each dedicated server handle more than 128 players (using stock Torque network code) without lag then we will be very happy :) Would this be possible? What would the reasonable/average number of players per dedicated servers be?

And one more thing. Is there any way that the different instance of the dedicated servers can pass data within them? lets say I have 2 dedicated servers of 128 players each. So when the 129th player joins the game, he will be joined to the 2nd dedicated server but the 129th player can still see the other 128 players in the 1st dedicated server. would this be possible "out of the box"?

Thank you very much