Feature Poll - Your wishlist for Fusion 1.x

[aanhorn]

RC1 may be considered "feature complete", but there are still features many of us are hoping can be implemented -

my wishlist -

OpenGL support[/b] (pretty pretty please)

multiple snapshots with snapshot manager

ability to automatically remount boot camp partition after use

\-----

What's on your wishlist?

[surfous]

There's really only one additional thing I'd like to see working, and yes, it's a comparison to how parallels handles the same thing. I'm running Ubuntu 7.04, in case it's actually a side-effect of VMWare tools on this platform.

I use Virtue Desktops to get multiple virtual desktops similar to what Spaces will provide in Leopard. If I have a VM full screened in Parallels Desktop, and I page to another desktop, my VM remains full screen on the desktop where I left it. If I page back to that desktop, my vm will still be there full screen.

If I try the same operation under Fusion RC1, after I've paged away from the desktop with the full screen VM, after a couple seconds the VM will go back to single-window mode, "follow" me to the desktop I'm currently on, and then resize itself to some size other than that which it was before I made it full screen. I think that the act of changing virtual desktops should not cause Fusion to break out of full screen mode.

I doubt that SWSoft/Parallels did anything special for Virtue Desktops since it's a third-party freeware add-on. I don't know how either Fusion or Parallels Desktop behaves in this situation under Leopard/Spaces.

There's definitely a benefit to being able to have a VM running full screen on one desktop and being able to page back and forth to a Mac desktop in the split second it takes to change virtual desktops.

[performa]

There's definitely a benefit to being able to have a

VM running full screen on one desktop and being able

to page back and forth to a Mac desktop in the split

second it takes to change virtual desktops.

I just hope it'll work with Leopard's spaces just as you described (i.e., with Fusion taking up a whole "Space")

[Pat_Lee]

I doubt that SWSoft/Parallels did anything special

for Virtue Desktops since it's a third-party freeware

add-on. I don't know how either Fusion or Parallels

Desktop behaves in this situation under

Leopard/Spaces.

There's definitely a benefit to being able to have a

VM running full screen on one desktop and being able

to page back and forth to a Mac desktop in the split

second it takes to change virtual desktops.

So, I have used Command Tab and Exposé to switch out of VMware Fusion when I am in full screen mode and we stay in full screen mode in this case with no problems.

Ben looked into this and it looks to be a Virtue Desktops issue. For some reason, Virtue Desktops is the moving the VMware Fusion window when changing desktops, so we detect that is it moved and exit full-screen. This is because when unplugging a physical monitor, our window can be moved between displays, and if it is, we exit full-screen.

In fact, Apple's DVD Player and iPhoto exhibit the same fullscreen behavior as VMware Fusion with Virtue Desktops -- they all exit fullscreen when you switch away from them using Virtue Desktops.

So, this looks to be an issue with Virtual Desktops.

Hope that makes this issues clearer.

Pat

[surfous]

I just hope it'll work with Leopard's spaces just as

you described (i.e., with Fusion taking up a whole

"Space")

Ditto. I did some more searching and it seems that this behavior has been tested and found to be due to the way Virtue Desktops handles the full screen window on desktop change. Apparently it triggers similar behavior with some other Apple apps in full screen - DVD player and iPhoto.

I found the discussion here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=689809&#689809

[d_ethier]

Very very minor request. When booting off a bootcamp partition it would be really nice if there was an auto-focus on the auth dialog when accessing the partition.

Like I said, very very minor but helpful!

Message was edited by:

d_ethier

[dp_fusion]

Is collapsing it to the dock a bad option for you, Steve? That can be done with Command M but it has to be the selected window, and of course by using the orange ball in the top left corner does the same thing. The problem with the Mac Hide feature is that it hides all windows of the selected application rather than the currently selected window, hence the Command M option.

[IrishMike]

Minor features for operational consideration.

1) Allow me to open, (i.e. "File" -> "Open") a VM without starting it automatically.

2) As previously mentioned, copy an existing VM and change it's identity and name completely.

3) Ability to delete from the Library List a VM and also delete the files with it.

4) Remember the last VM I created instead of always starting with the "Microsoft Windows" entry.

5) Missing from VMWare that I'm used to. Flashing icons for disk, CD-ROM, Floppy, etc usage.

6) If you're going to show me a "Library list" as you do, would it be hard to put next to each one, the status, (off, running, susupended, "broken"?) and the last used date?

[mystere]

Hi etung,

Yep - see your point. I was just hoping to be able to transition fully over to my Mac and lose the dependancy on Windows. If the level of Fusion ability could just be upped a bit - then I'm sure many people would just swap totally - me included

Looks like the Windows partition is here to stay ...

Cheers

[lenroth]

One small thing. I only use 1 VM. It would be nice to have an option for the Virtual Machine Library window to disappear after The VM is booted so as to reduce screen clutter.

[getwired]

One small thing. I only use 1 VM. It would be nice to

have an option for the Virtual Machine Library window

to disappear after The VM is booted so as to reduce

screen clutter.

Agreed. I do the same. In fact, there should be a pref that is off by default to start the VM and close the library if this is the scenario.

[somersf]

I'd really appreciate having the Custom Networking capabilities, as per VMware GSX. After having a quick look over the application support scripts, it seems it can't be too far away from being supportable. I don't need a fancy GUI, but I do need the ability to configure multiple host-only networks!

Oh, and I'd also like the Shared Disk support as per VMware GSX - I haven't tried to set this up yet, so maybe it is actually supported...?

[zumpy]

Well personally I'm pretty satisfied with the fundamentals of the fusion program's abilities.

Everything does seem reasonably stable and consistent. I like it's ease of installation and user friendliness.

Unity appears to permit cross platform running of apps as well as I'd hoped.

Where I see an opportunity for improvement is in the area of accelerated graphics performance in the guest, as was mentioned by "performa" in an earlier post.

Now this being said I am a bit of a novice in this area, but while running vista 64bit, I am not even able to play a decent game of solitaire! This seems a bit of a shame since I am running the macbook pro with the

Nvidia 8600 256mb graphics. The minute I enable accelerated graphics I cannot see the cards, yet if I turn off the accelerated option, I get a rough looking game.

As I mentioned, user limitations may be the cause for this, but I think having the option in there would indicate that there is at least a hope that sometime soon I will be able to enable the accelerated graphics option and see a considerable improvement in my guest os graphics.

As stated I am pleased with what fusion is capable of thus far. I am not looking for a lot of bells and whistles, but I would like to see an ability to take full advantage of the hardware under the hood .

I chose vmware because of what I read, I choose to stay with it because of how it performs.

zumpy

[DougBaer]

I would like to see a snapshot manager a la Workstation 6, in addition to IrishMike's #1-6

I suppose the main goal of Fusion 1.0 is not to create VMware Workstation for Mac OS, but to allow seamless integration of Windows apps with the OS X desktop.

Those of us who regularly use Workstation on the Windows/Linux side probably use it for different reasons than the target audience for Fusion 1.0. On the flipside, having Unity functionality on my Windows or Linux box woudl be nice, too... running an old Windows app in an NT 4 VM on an XP workstation w/o worrying about DLL conflicts. Or running a Windows app in a VM on a SLED desktop (or the other way around) w/o the user needing to know. The migration possibilities would be impressive.

[iandol]

"ability to automatically remount boot camp partition after use"

This has a very annoying side-effect - when parallels remounts the bootcamp partition, spotlight decides to do a full reindex each time. That takes considerable CPU and disk resources. I'd rather choose when to remount...

[TheLoneVM]

OpenGL support (pretty pretty please)

Just curious, what OpenGL apps are you (or anyone else) looking to run? A lot of OpenGL games (Quake/Doom, Never Winter Nights, UT2003) have been ported to native OS, and most other apps/games can switch between OpenGL/Direct3D and Software rendering modes. Just curious if there are any OpenGL specific apps people are looking to run, or if this is more of a "wow, cool!" factor?

[PeteGingaNinja]

There's definitely a benefit to being able to have

a

VM running full screen on one desktop and being

able

to page back and forth to a Mac desktop in the

split

second it takes to change virtual desktops.

I just hope it'll work with Leopard's spaces just as

you described (i.e., with Fusion taking up a whole

"Space")

It works sweet with Spaces in Leopard, you can even move single applications to there own space!

[PeteGingaNinja]

Devices Menu to connect CD-ROM Images / Disconnect CD Drive, USB Devices, etc. Make it a menu so it can be used within Unity.

Auto-start VM Machines in Unity mode.

Eject button ejects CD-ROM if CD Drive is attached.

If in Unity mode and displaying the Taskbar, When you click off the Start Menu to the Finder Desktop, the Start Menu does not disappear as it should.

Stability, especially on a freshly installed VM.

[Pat_Lee]

Thanks for your feedback. Just so you know, the devices one is already implemented.

Devices Menu to connect CD-ROM Images / Disconnect CD

Drive, USB Devices, etc. Make it a menu so it can be

used within Unity.

If you go to the VMware Fusion Virtual Machine menu, you can connect/disconnect CD images and USB devices today when in Unity mode. The devices are the last items in the Virtual Machines menu.

Pat

[Bob_Zimmerman]

4. Growl notifications!!!

Actually, that could make a decent way of getting Windows tray notifications while in Unity mode. I'm sure it would require even more hackery than is already used to strip Windows' windows from its desktop and map them onto separate views in Mac OS, but that might be worth looking into. Plus, having the option of VMware itself post notifications for lengthier operations would be nice.

[rhind]

I do software development and some of the apps I work on do 3D imaging and use OpenGL directly and/or libraries that are based on OpenGL (VTK being a prime example, www.vtk.org)

These run fairly well under software emulation as we aren't pushing the graphics hardware very hard, but running them under Parallels 3 with its OpenGL acceleration, you can't tell the difference between that and booted natively in to XP via a Boot Camp partition.

So would definitely benefit from OpenGL acceleration.

Cheers

Russell