Colin Davidson wrote:
>
> The simplest way to support all new graphics cards, advances (???) in
> DirectX, hardware acceleration and all those good things, as well as get
> Windoze up and running (graphically, at least) is to double-head. The more I
<SNIP>
I think this is a really bad idea. It will severely limit the number of
people who can use plex86 due to hardware requirements.
The great thing about VMware is that the virtual PC is always the same -
i.e. it's a tightly controlled environment and always 'just works'. In
many ways it's advantageous that the real hardware is hidden from the
guest OS. E.g. the guest OS is protected from outside influences such as
hardware upgrades, and you can swap hard drive images between machines
and they still work perfectly.
Just think of all the hassle you'd have if Plex86 had to support all
sorts of graphics cards. It would be such a pain to test on all
combinations of hardware.
I think a plain VGA-only emulation is all that's required, and then
provide a special driver for the guest OS to enable the use of higher
resolutions and provide greater speed. (Just like VMware in fact).
I think all this talk of 2D/3D acceleration is a bit silly also. Does
anyone really want to play graphically intensive games in a virtual
machine? Gamers are usually concerned with every last FPS.
Jeff
