How can I virtualize an operating system/application that requires intr. /w

[RikTelner]

Eh... I lost recently laptop to Windows, Microsoft made me cost about 700$, and that all in just 2 weeks. And even though I start hating it, I cannot deny the fact that many applications and certain games I rely on are runable only on Windows.

Graphics card aren't really utilized in virtual machines. They are partially, but programs that require intense calculation/rendering (like Unity3D or League of Legends; I tried, both end up with "Unknown Driver Error"), it won't work. Graphic card can just render basics, not real dynamic 3D models.

So I kind of need Windows 7 for other tasks. But I don't want it to be able to screw my computer again. Can I just give it it's own partition (and make other invisible to it) and then just regular hardware without any permissions to change any settings?

Or maybe, you know some kind of tool or specific program that could do this? Something alike to a Virtual Machine? I tried already VMware Player, Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox, but all of them, even when I had them installed all the latest official plugins and additions provided by their creators, to make virtual machines being able to use GPU more. It keeps failing.

I know it's not impossible, I believe I've seen someone playing a game I mentioned above in virtual machine, but if he can, why I can't? It's not like video is out of date and it's not supported anymore, it would be kind of nonsense that useful feature has been taken down for no reson while it worked just great before.

I hope you could shine somewhat more light on it.

@edit - What these virtual machines have is their own graphic drivers, "Generic PnP" I believe. They probably can't utilize graphic card in it's full potential (regardless of how low this potential is).

[mike_2000_17]

I know that VirtualBox has "guest additions" that will provide 3D graphics (or "3D acceleration" in old-school terminology). It's all documented here. Pay attention to the warning that says that you need to be in "Safe Mode" in your Windows guest when you're installing the graphics guest additions.

Obviously, I wouldn't expect that you'll get the full power of the graphics card inside the virtual machine, because the translation layer will have overhead and will probably be reduced capacity (not supporting every graphics extension available on the actual graphics card). That would be especially true if it has to translate between Direct3D (which most games would use under Windows) and OpenGL. If you can configure your game (through the graphics options) to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D, it would probably help with performance.

Finally, if you want to run any Windows application under Linux, including computer graphics games, I suggest that you first try to see if it works with Wine (a Windows compatibility layer, basically the reverse of Cygwin). For example, the database seems to indicate that League of Legends works perfectly fine in Wine. Wine is different from a virtual machine because all it does is provide a thin layer to translate most Windows calls (like Win32 API, DirectX/3D, etc.) into Linux calls (like POSIX API, OpenGL, etc.), and a few other things to fool the application into thinking that it is running in Windows when it is actually running in Linux. This means that it will be a lot faster, but there is an increased chance of glitchy behavior (when the translation is not perfect or complete). But this is worth a try, and from what I've heard, Wine is pretty good now (it took a while, since it's obviously a pretty monumental task to replicate all Windows APIs entirely and perfectly).

[RikTelner]

Pay attention to the warning that says that you need to be in "Safe Mode" in your Windows guest when you're installing the graphics guest additions.

o_O, wait... I thought I just install, reboot, and done. I'll do it and check what happens.

Obviously, I wouldn't expect that you'll get the full power of the graphics card inside the virtual machine

Me neither, but I can handle dropping game from 320FPS to 60FPS.

If you can configure your game (through the graphics options) to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D, it would probably help with performance.

I looked it up (on Windows real machine), could it be by any chances x3d_platform=0 that I should change to x3d_platform=1 ? First hand it has "x3d" in it which kinda makes me think it's still DirectX, but people on internet tell that it makes the game use OpenGL. I'll ask it on game forum(s).

Nevermind, OpenGL is not supported, only DirectX 9 apparently.

Finally, if you want to run any Windows application under Linux, including computer graphics games, I suggest that you first try to see if it works with Wine (a Windows compatibility layer, basically the reverse of Cygwin).

Yes, I attempted this, it worked about 6 months ago (for game), but not so long time ago I met an error, also asked for help.