VMware Workstation and Trainz12

[edgewing]

Hi All,

I can't seem to find the answer here in the forums so I hope I'm posting to the right place, I run Linux but have VMware Workstation installed. From what I see about Trainz 12 running under Wine, this seems to be a problem.

Is anybody using VMware workstation? If so, are there any gotchas that I need to be aware of before I pony up and get a copy? I have a VM with WinXP SP3 but can get hold of Win 7 if necessary.

I have 4cpu @ 3.2Ghz/8Gb RAM, Nvidia GT240 with 1Gb of Video RAM. I've looked at the specs and it seems it should go fast enough.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
David

 

[Ghost42]

Dual-boot with Win7, if you use it for TS2012 only you should have a setup better than most.
Rog
Win7 + Ubuntu

 

[clam1952]

Graphics in a VM are only emulated and last time I checked limited to something like 128MB so it won't work, do as suggested and run dual boot, I do and run Win7 for games and stuff for which there isn't a Linux equivalent. Running a VM will take up as much disk space as a proper install so you are not really saving a lot other than time rebooting into Windows which these days is minimal.
VM's are ok for basic office type applications but not modern games.

 

[johnwhelan]

Be aware that VMware offers up a core as a cpu so you'll see a performance hit from this as well.

VMWare basically emulates hardware but its a dated version of the hardware so software running under it doesn't get to see the latest controllers etc.

It works for somethings but not others. When I last looked at it there was a maximum memory that a program was allowed to access and it wasn't very high.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

You might want to look at Parallels Workstation Extreme.

http://www.parallels.com/products/extreme/

This is a VM environment that also handles graphics and multiple graphics applications at that. I don't know what kind of hardware you have, but I would imagine that the underlying hardware would have to be substantial to be able to handle this environment.

John

 

[dgallina]

I have TS 12 for Windows running in a Parallels VM under MacOS X 10.7. It works well enough for development and testing, but I wouldn't recommend trying to play it that way.

As others have said, you want to dual-boot to a native environment for play-time (in my case TS Mac).

Diego

 

[cjlear]

I have TS12 successfully working.

Host system CentOS 6.2. I had to install the kmod nvidia drivers to suit my 550ti:

rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm
yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror
yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=elrepo install kmod-nvidia nvidia-x11-drv

I checked that the sound subsystem was working by playing a couple of the .wav files in /usr/share/sounds/alsa

VMWare Workstation 8 was installed as root. To suppress a security warning on startup when logged in as me, I had to log in as root again, click on properties on the VMWare Workstation launcher, go to the Permissions tab and check the "allow executing file as program" box.

I created a Win 7 Pro 64 virtual machine with 4 cores and 8GB RAM on a 60GB vmdk.

I installed TS12 and patches from an images directory on the SAN. No joy. Crashed every time with a failure to communicate with video device. I also noticed I had no sound in the Win7 VM.

To get the sound and video going:

From the VMWare Workstation Edit / Preferences panel:
Display - Full Screen - Stretch Guest (No Resolution Change)
Display - Menu and Toolbar - Check "Show toolbar edge when unpinned in full screen"

Highlight the VM you are running Trainz in, and click VM / Settings
Hardware - Sound Card - check "connect at power on"
Hardware - Display - check "accelerate 3D graphics"
Hardware - Display - select "use host settings for monitors"
Options - Guest Isolation - check "enable VMCI"

Start the VM. Change to full screen mode. Wait for it to fully boot.

When it has booted, move the mouse to the VMWare toolbar at the top of the screen.

Click on the View dropdown menu and check the "Exclusive Mode" box. (To get the toolbar back, ctrl-alt)

Run the TS12 launcher.

Options - Display Settings
Check Direct3D - do not use OpenGL
I chose 1366x768 resolution (too choppy at 1920x1080)
32 bit
Full screen
Autodetect
Antialias 4

Quit, run the launcher again, run Trainz. Et voila it damn well works!

Performance wise, its quite choppy with the extended draw distance and lots of assets, but no worse than my previous install with a dual core 2.8GHz processor, 3GB Win XP and 8600GT video card. Switching to cab view got rid of any stutters.

In terms of running multiple installs of TS12 so that I can isolate different projects, it'll do absolutely everything I'm wanting it to.

I'd still say if you're wanting a main install to run for pleasure, then yes the best advice is to set up grub and choose to boot Win7 native, and use the VMs just for development.

Cheers
Charlie