Unity in Fusion 3 runs a bit like a joke for me

[Nixta]

I can only imagine that not everyone sees this kind of shonky performance out of Unity. The way it runs for me really is kind of a joke.

See this video here (none of the artifacts are because of the video recording software - Camtasia - in fact I was surprised it recorded everything I saw):

http://www.screencast.com/t/FiI2TKGhIi

I'd be interested to know whether there are people who do not see this happening, or whether VMWare are aware of this and intend to fix it.

I am running on a late 2007 2.2Ghz MBP with 4Gb RAM and a 320Gb 7200rpm drive. I have dual displays (laptop@1440x900 + DELL S2409W@1920x1080).

[Mikero]

What video hardware is on your mac?

[dsmtoday]

Unity on a PC running Workstation 7.0 does the exact same thing, even on recent modern video cards.

[miceblue425]

I had similar experiences in Unity mode. Unity mode in general seems to be really unpolished.

[Nixta]

What video hardware is on your mac?

Here's the output from System Profiler's Hardware->Graphics/Display section:

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT:

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 128 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0407

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: 3175

Displays:

Color LCD:

Resolution: 1440 x 900

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Built-In: Yes

DELL S2409W:

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

And here, just for the hell of it, is the Hardware Overview:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 4 GB

Bus Speed: 800 MHz

Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07

SMC Version (system): 1.16f11

Serial Number (system): W872240KX91

Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-001B6391B3C7

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

[GabrielM]

Same here - I would also like to add that keyboard typing is also slow. I use VMware to program with Visual Studio and other apps, and the lack of responsiveness made me stop using Unity and use windowed or full screen mode.

I would love to use Unity mode... however the redrawing and poor performance makes it hard to use for me!

[clindloff]

Sadly Parallels Cohesion mode is better and faster. Also I use classic mode for Unity/Cohesion and in Advanced settings>>>>Performance I choose maximize for performance will turn off all animations, shadows etc, which helps both Unity and Cohesion modes. With those settings Cohesion mode is like native performance.

[Nixta]

Good points on turning off the fancy effects.

And like you say, Cohesion (and actually, now, Crystal though it has some glitches itself) is much much better than Unity.

With Parallels 4 and Fusion 2, I preferred Fusion because it worked properly with non-standard dual-screen arrangements in Unity whereas Cohesion cut off the desktop.

But Parallels 5 now works properly with oddly arranged dual screens so I think I might settle for that, though it's a shame because I really like the Fusion start menu.

sigh

[clindloff]

If you have your Parallels icon in your dock, in Cohesion it will act like a Windows start button. More Windows like if you ask me, coming from the bottom. I have mine on the left side of the dock.

[ct099]

Completely agree, in my case it is not very slow but CPU utilization of vmware-vmx process triples.

I never used unity in v2 but in 3 it is basically useless...

Regards,

[Texasbob]

I have been having the exact same problem. Unity in Fusion 2 worked way better and thats why I think I must be doing something wrong rather than the program. Has anyone been in contact with VMware about it? Even with all of the fancy graphics turned off Unity still looks pitiful on my new Macbook Pro.

[Nixta]

I don't know if VMWare are aware of the issue. It's so obviously a problem I can't imagine they're not. They do seem to monitor these forums pretty well, so I'm surprised they haven't pitched in here.

Well, I couldn't take it any more so I switched to Parallels 5 which works really well now that they've fixed their dual display issues. I doubt I'll be coming back to VMWare any time soon. The whole release was a bit of a disaster. I knew something was amiss when I read their tweet congratulating the team on the release and to get some sleep