Location Aware Browser Not Working in Fusion

[ALD2355]

I am using web pages in Fusion and the location objects do not yield a correct lat/long location.  The web pages work fine in OSX but not when running the Fusion emulation.  I am talking about Bing/Here maps where I am getting locations NW of the correct location.

Is the navigator javascript object suposed to work in Fusion?  Is there a setting I need to update?  Has anybody else had the same experience?

Ref: http://www.bing.com/maps/ or http://www.bing.com/maps/

My own site www.sysmaps.com uses the same methodology and the browser maps work fine on a normal windows or OSX machine.

Thanks

[amzhang]

Hi, welcome to the Community!

Could you please provide your Fusion version, Guest OS info (like 10.10.x or 10.9.x? ) and browser info? Thanks.

Best Regards,

amzhang

[ALD2355]

See also: HTML5 Demo: geolocation which is a demo site for geolocation

This gives a different answer in OSX and VMWare/Windows.  The error changes each day.

Using Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE, Maxthon

Using VMWare 7.1.1 (2498930), OSX 10.10.2, Windows 8.1

[dariusd]

To the best of my knowledge, the location-awareness depends on either (1) access to the list of current Wi-Fi SSIDs/MACs and strengths, which allow triangulation against a database of known access points; or (2) the use of a public IP address which is mapped to a known location.  (1) is inherently more accurate, but will not work in a virtual machine because the guest cannot see the Wi-Fi hardware – it only sees the virtual (wired) Ethernet device.  (2) will be more widely available – an online service would be able to see which IP address from which your location request originated, even in the presence of Network Address Translation (NAT) – but will not necessarily be as accurate... it might only be able to locate a nearby piece of ISP hardware or telephone exchange, for instance.

If my understanding is correct, it would be expected that the host's geolocation would be more accurate than the guest's.

Hope this is useful information, even if it doesn't directly solve your problem.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[ALD2355]

Thanks for the reply.  I have tried different network settings but it remains a problem.  Location works in OSX Safari but not in any of the browsers in VMware.

You can try this using my mapping site at www.sysmaps.com.  All of the maps are location aware.

[dariusd]

Right... Safari on your Mac OS X host has access to the OS X Location Services, which can use the Wi-Fi information to determine a precise location.

Your guest operating systems running inside Fusion do not have access to the host's Wi-Fi hardware, so those operating systems will not be able to determine a precise location... the best they will be able to do is a very rough location based upon your public IP address.

I'm not immediately aware of any way to address this.

--

Darius