FSX in a Virtual Machine

[Dennis B]

Hey everybody,

does, by incindent, somebody use FSX in a Virtual Machine? I am using VirtualBox for Apps like PFPX and TOPCAT, but running FSX (or even installing SP2) fails due to missing capabilities of the virtual graphics card. The error messages say that the g/c is not supporting Shader Model 1.1. A quick check using OpenGL Extensions viewer says that the virtual g/c seems to be able to support Shader Model up to 3.0 ... can I trick FSX (or, more important before that, the FSX SP2 setup) into believing that there's a more powerful graphics card installed?

[robwell]

No. I guess that will not work very well. Because FSX need a lot of CPU und Graphic device Power.

[robwell]

More clear:

Problem is, that in a virtual maschin your hardware is "emulated". That finally means you will lose the power. Apps like flight simulator will work, that for sure, but I guess to slow (low FPS). I think a minimum of 30 FPS is required to by available todo a good start or landing on FSX or P3D, and I don't belive that this is possible under a virtual maschin.

[Markus Vitzethum]

There is indeed some guidance elsewhere on the internet:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1776772/virtual-run-games.html (hints [among other hints] use  Xen or KVM; perfomance not an isse)

or  more specific to DirectX with VirtualBox
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/virtualbox-3-directx.html

But I am missing point of running FSX in a virtual machine, except possibly for having Unix (Linux/Mac) as the native operating system (which is running the VM)?

Markus

[Dennis B]

Thanks a lot, Robert and Markus! I was aiming to connect PSX to VATSIM primarily, with visuals just being of secondary interest (I share Roberts opinion that at least 30-40 fps are needed to have a satisfying "vlight" experience). After spending a few thoughts I decided to try to install Windows and use FSX with vPilot and VisualPSX to connect to VATSIM.

I have a spare computer which acts as a Linux DMS server, but I would give it a try and install Windows on it, too. There are much better VATSIM clients for Windows than for Linux, and VisualPSX is outstanding for connecting PSX to FSX, additionally there are better VATSIM clients out there for FSX than for X-Plane ...

[robwell]

My experiences with FSX on virtual maschin was not so good. So I finally buyed a real windows maschin with a lot of power. I love mac much more ... but windows games power you can't get with it. (My experiences)

[Balt]

That's definitely something worth trying, rather than just accepting the blanket "no" answers you're getting! For example, I'm running PSX in a windows virtual machine for testing my plugins at quite decent framerates (20-30fps) - on a laptop! VMware for example has come a long way playing nice with hardware accelerated graphics under the hood, and, for those who don't know, the majority of the actual hardware running your OS of choice is, in fact, running virtualised already. So if it's fast it's not necessarily bare metal coding... Look at PSX, entirely written in Java! Who'd have though you can do that (I certainly didn't!).

Give it a go, and let us know how well it works. If FSX/P3D wasn't such a large install I'd try it myself.

Cheers

- Balt

[Markus Vitzethum]

> That's definitely something worth trying, rather than just accepting
> the blanket "no" answers you're getting!

Exactly... since apparently there is hardware acceleration in VMs these days.

> Give it a go, and let us know how well it works. If FSX/P3D wasn't
> such a large install I'd try it myself.

just out of curiosity ... "large" in terms of disk size or "large" meaning time required to have every other add-on installed?

Markus

[Balt]

no, large in terms of time required to install.. :-) I'm in the middle of finalising the release of my RealShear plugin, allowing "big simulator" windshear simulation in PSX... watch this space on the weekend... :-)

[Markus Vitzethum]

Just to "bump" this up ... out of curiosity, I installed my FSX into a virtual machine running Windows 10 build 10162 yesterday evening. (Mainly checking whether FSX would run under Win10.)

The host program was VMware Player 6.0.7 with 3D acceleration support switched on in the virtual machine properties.

FSX installed and started without any problems, the performance however was rather on the poor side, that is 2 frames/s instead of >30 frames/s for the host computer (i5 with GTX670).

Markus