3D acceleration in an OS X guest ?

[magoo22]

I know that this topic has been around for a while in the forums and is also addressed in the Fusion 6.0 release notes.

And I also know that Fusion 5.x didn't offer 3D acceleration for OS X guests (no Quartz Extreme, no Core Image) and now Fusion 6.0 doesn't either.

In my eyes, an ideal solution to run older Mac software that requires Rosetta, would be using an OS X 10.6 Server guest for that purpose. But unfortunately OS X guests in Fusion don't support Quartz Extreme and other graphic acceleration (unlike their Windows counterparts), so that many applications (e.g. iLife, iWork) won't run.

Since VMWare seems to be making no progress on this font, may I put the question differently:

"Will we ever see 3D acceleration for OS X guests in the future, or is this something that is banned by Apple licensing policies and therefore out of question?"

Thanks.

[WoodyZ]

The SLA for legally virtualizable versions of OS X doesn't have any caveats regarding 3D Acceleration that I've seen in reading the SLA documents so I don't see that as the issue.  Also OS X Virtual Machine do not have other functionality that VMware Tools provide other supported OSes, e.g. drag-and-drop between host Mac and guest Mac, multiple displays and Unity Mode.  So it looks more like VMware Developers haven't figured out yet how to provide these features.

As to when (or if) we'll ever see 3D Acceleration and the other missing expected functionality, VMware Company Policy doesn't allow for their employees to provide timelines on subjects such as this.  They probably also cannot absolutely comment one way or the other whether or not we'll ever see this functionally.

[ColoradoMarmot]

It's not banned, but it's very very difficult to to technically because of limitations in how OSX handles graphics.  If we do see it, I would suspect it'd be for newer version of the OS, and not necessarily one that's out of support (though 10.6 might be an exception for the very use case you're talking about).

[outsider33]

I believe the problem is with Quartz Extreme and Core Image signed drivers. As far as I know Virtualbox doesn't offer the functionality either.

[mascondante]

I realize creating a custom driver to allow 3D acceleration is quite an undertaking but you would think by VMware Fusion 7 they would have finally gotten around to it.  Especially as much as VMware software costs.

The usual route to get developers to create something very difficult is to create a bounty.  Sadly nothing speaks louder than money.  Perhaps someone should hop over to insanelymac and create a bounty.  I know I personally would be willing to throw 100 bones at someone if they could get full 3D acceleration functional in Workstation and Fusion.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, workstation is a moot point, since you can't virtualize OSX non OSX platforms.  Fusion isn't exactly a huge revenue generator for VMWare - it's down in the noise level of earnings.

I talked with an engineer about this a while ago, and it's nowhere near as simple as just writing a driver.  I don't remember all the details, but the way OSX is structured, there's no real way to insert a virtual device - it'd have to be full emulation.