Only DOSBox supports 3dfx Voodoo Graphics via an experimental Glide patch (and in special SVN builds), but Dosbox doesn't support Windows 9x. You're on your own for the trial and errors of running.an unsupported operating system.

Early Virtual PCs (~2.01, 1998) for MacOS 8.x support 3dfx iirc, I recall it being advertised for supporting the voodoo hardware. This isn't in the Microsoft version.

VirtualBox and VMWare can pipe Direct3D through (Vbox can also do OpenGL, and its d3d support is a wrapper), but only supports it through 2000/XP guest OS as minimum.

at most, a virtualization software will only use the host CPU (hardware virtualization), and/or the host HDD (direct disk access)... the latter means it will access your host's file system directly... it is not commonly used nor recommended as it is insecure and the guest can clobber the host's files! Most new CPUs supports hardware virtualization, which means the guest talks directly to the CPU for processing, whereas with older CPUs this is not supported and a software emulation is used... the virtualization software will emulate the 386 CPU functions completely and thus this is very slow

there is no direct access to the GPU, and all graphics in the guests are emulated.... so you can forget about playing almost all games.... using virtualization is useful for running apps only

confused? you really need to read the wikipedia article about virtualization... it'll explain this more clearly than I ever could

If you want to game then there is only dosbox. All virtualizer abandoned DOS years ago and never had the level of graphics and sound emulation dosbox has. Not to mention ease of use.

Thanks for all of the answers. So a virtual machine is more or less useless for running old games, that explains why there's so little information on the subject available on Vogons.

One other thing I was wondering about; I think DOSBox currently doesn't make use of multiple CPU cores (of the real, host CPU, I mean), will this likely change in the future, or are multiple cores unlikely to benefit DOSBox?

There is better information on the multi core issue when you search but afaik, dosbox wouldn't be able to use it efficently mostly because it is harder to keep everything in sync when doing multicore. But look it up here .

Kerr Avon wrote:

fake hard drives (i.e. set d:\games\dosgames as c:\ to the virtual machine)

It's possible to map a folder, such that the "guest" OS running the virtual machine will see it as a network share, but usually at least for booting you have to use a hard disk image, much like DOSBox requires when running Win9x.

Kerr Avon wrote:

Thanks for all of the answers. So a virtual machine is more or less useless for running old games, that explains why there's so little information on the subject available on Vogons.

Virtual machines aren't entirely useless; there's just not really that much to say about them. They either work or they don't.

One other thing I was wondering about; I think DOSBox currently doesn't make use of multiple CPU cores (of the real, host CPU, I mean), will this likely change in the future, or are multiple cores unlikely to benefit DOSBox?

Do you think DOSBox is too slow or something?

As Dominus says, there have been other threads about this before.

VMware Player 5.0 / Workstation 9.0 just came out... they now advertise DirectX 9.0c support for XP and newer OS's, they even say you should be able to play many games
I haven't tried this and I don't expect much

Well you should DX8+ support on Windows 2000+ guests has been excellent with Workstation 8.

Occasionally there will be a graphics glitch but it's MUCH better nowadays than in earlier versions of Vmware.
(All these tests have been on my laptop using my Intel HD 4000 so you can imagine how much better it would be with a real chipset)

Also from benchmarks performed by Phoronix they've shown that Vmware has the fastest graphics acceleration compared to other VM software.

If I need the WinXp and DX9 - I just install WinXp 32-bit as the second OS.
Seriously, WinXp is undead. Currently only NVidia GF 600 series don't have the official drivers for Xp 32-bit. 11 years of the glory. 😀

DosFreak wrote:

Well you should DX8+ support on Windows 2000+ guests has been excellent with Workstation 8. […]
Show full quote

Well you should DX8+ support on Windows 2000+ guests has been excellent with Workstation 8.

Occasionally there will be a graphics glitch but it's MUCH better nowadays than in earlier versions of Vmware.
(All these tests have been on my laptop using my Intel HD 4000 so you can imagine how much better it would be with a real chipset)

Also from benchmarks performed by Phoronix they've shown that Vmware has the fastest graphics acceleration compared to other VM software.

That's one reason why I use VMware 😀
I don't know why so many people out there like to pass on the idea that VirtualBox is the only free desktop hypervisor out there and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread 😒

I think it's because Vmware doesn't really market Vmware Player very well and you have to register to access it (If you download it from their site).

Also there's alot of old information out there about how it cannot create vmdk files (old versions couldn't do that) that scare people off.

You no longer have to login to download Player 5.0.... did it last night without logging in!
Player 1.0 & 2.0 could have the vmx and vmdk files created from their website

Hooray for the end of logins!

The only odd thing is that attempting to upgrade from within the VMware Player 4 application itself only seems to produce offers to download Workstation 9 – but the end of logins more than makes up for this inconvenience. Maybe they'll add quick and easy patching next, too!

TheMAN wrote:

Player 1.0 & 2.0 could have the vmx and vmdk files created from their website

If you're referring to http://www.easyvmx.com/, I think that's a third-party hack, actually (albeit a wholly servicable one).

Yeah, it wants you to buy Workstation 9, but if you go to vmware's website and download Player 5, you don't have to login!

TheMAN wrote:

they now advertise DirectX 9.0c support for XP and newer OS's, they even say you should be able to play many games
I haven't tried this and I don't expect much

Phooey, Lemmings Revolution runs even worse than it did in Player 4! I was hoping that would have been fixed.

did you try upgrading the hardware version first?
the new player can run any of the older guest hardware (hardware versions follow workstation version #s), but without migrating to the newest guest hardware, you won't see the full benefits

I think the easiest way to do it is to just create a new guest then just clone the vmdk over to the new one using the vmware converter tool

or you can try the brute force way.... edit the vmx file with notepad then change the version # shown in it... don't say I didn't warn you if bad shit happens! 🤣

I guess that's something I'm going to have to try. Didn't it once insist on doing such conversions the first time you tried to run a VM created with an older system?

no, I don't think so.... but it did complain if the hardware version was too old, it'll refuse to run.... I ran into that issue before and I just ended up hacking the vmx file and bumping the version number up... worked without a hitch

what sucks is, player 5 doesn't have an easy way to upgrade the hardware, you'll have to pay for workstation 9 which has a feature where you can upgrade/downgrade the hardware version painlessly through a wizard

I tried running my old virtual machine through the VMware Converter 5.0 (which still requires a login in order to download, sigh), thus converting it from a Workstation 6.x machine to a Workstation 8.x machine. Windows updated the drivers for the PCI-to-PCI Bridge the next time I restarted, but alas, no change in Revolutions.

Perhaps a new version of the Converter supporting the 5.x version will be released.