topic Re: VMware Fusion 3.0 in Collaboration with other software

VMware Fusion 3.0

Ben Cohen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:07:52 GMT

For those of you wondering how ArchiCAD runs under Fusion 3.0, the news is good, very good. I have had patchy performance from Fusion 2.0, some times just selecting a folder can take 20 - 30 secs, often requiring a restart of the virtual machine. But this issue has disappeared

I am running a Macbook Pro @ 2.5 GHz with 4 gig of ram and Snow Leopard.

1. The installation was a breeze, my virtual machine (which was created from my old HP laptop) remained completely intact, and the Mac didnt even need to be restarted. Although windows did once I booted and updated Vmware.

2. Startup seems slightly quicker.

3. ArchiCAD 12 and 13 are both running really well. Fusion now supports OpenGL 2.1 and the 3d window is very responsive. Surprisingly 2d redraw is noticeably faster. Panning and zooming are now instant. The virtual machine with XP is now running ArchiCAD as well as a cheap PC box.

4. VBE is now working under Fusion. Previously VBE would not even start. It will now run, albeit slowly and there seams to be a few material mapping problems. But as this is 3.0 I would expect this to get better.

So all round performance has improved, with Fusion minimizing, pausing and generally running much quicker. At the upgrade price of US $39 its well worth it. 3.0 has made bootcamp redundant - for me at least. Now all I need is for Apple to release a Core i7 laptop!

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:38:23 GMT

Why do you run AC under Fusion when you could install it as a native Mac app?

I've been using Fusion 3.0 for other things tho and i agree it's fantastic! i particularly like the unity mode.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Ben Cohen — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:48:29 GMT

I use ArchiCAD on the Mac side 95% of the time but all the users at my work (25+) are on PC, therefore, for final template creation, addon development and library testing I need to run ArchiCAD under the windows environment.
Actually Fusion has been gettting slower since this post, so I am not as happy as I was originally. I have found that I need to restart the virtual machine sometimes as it grinds to a absolute halt.
Still for 5% of the time its acceptable.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:39:58 GMT

Ben,

Have you tried VBE under Fusion to see if the global illumination mode works? (Demo file download if you don't have a license, but I imagine you do.)

Parallels 5.0 has added a number of new features ... but its OpenGL support still does not permit GI navigation in VBE; all other modes work though.

Thanks,
Karl

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Ben Cohen — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:39:17 GMT

Hi Karl

Global illumination works, but it seems to be in grey scale, or most of the colour is washed out. The other modes work fine, cartoon etc. Now we have a Mac VBE its not really that important I guess, but an interesting exercise.
Once these Virtual Machines get a bit better, I can see you could have a load of computers running linux and VMware, all from the same windows license, it must be against the Microsoft EULA - but I think it would work.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:19:55 GMT

Thanks, Ben. Yup, since the Mac version of VBE(g) arrived, I have not needed to run under Parallels, but found it a useful test to see if the Parallels 5 graphics had been improved. At least you see grayscale in Fusion ... you see only sky under Parallels in GI mode ... but everything else works nicely.

(Parallels 5 improved graphics somehow in that Aero now works in a Windows 7 VM, which was not possible with Parallels 4.)

Thanks again,
Karl

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:18:31 GMT

Good news! Thanks!

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

David Larrew — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:37:07 GMT

Hey guys,

Relating to this thread...

I've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.

I just want to know what the AC users think...

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Karl Ottenstein — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:17:18 GMT

David wrote:
I've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.

Now that Autodesk officially recommends Parallels for running their full product line on Macs, I feel like I should switch to Fusion.

Seriously, you might search to see why Autodesk made this recommendation over Fusion - I have not run into anything (without searching) to suggest why they feel Parallels is superior...

I have no real complaints about Parallels other than the VBEG thing below. It has a nice look-and-feel.

Cheers,
Karl

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Ralph Wessel — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:14:45 GMT

David wrote:
've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.
I just want to know what the AC users think...

I think it's simply a case where both products work, and if you've bought one there's no point exploring the other. Consequently, anyone having an opinion on this subject will be able to tell you about one product but not the other. I use Parallels and it works fine for all my requirements. I've never used VMware Fusion, but I hear good things about it. My overall impression is that Parallels tends to advance faster as a product, but VMware Fusion has much better technical support if you run into problems.

I'd be interested to hear from someone who has tried VirtualBox with ArchiCAD. It's free, but doesn't appear to be as far ahead as the commercial products (and I think it's slower). However, Sun seems to be developing it at a terrific pace now.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:00:05 GMT

Virtualbox suppots poorly both OpenGL and Direct3D technologies... So this is not suitable for AC.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:09:59 GMT

I have used both and my experience is that Parallels is typically faster and Fusion more stable. Parallels once corrupted my Bootcamp partition so I have been very cautious about using it since. Both have improved considerably since I last did side by side comparisons so I can't be sure my experience still applies, and I haven't upgraded to the latest Parallels yet either.

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Ben Cohen — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:07:48 GMT

FYI the recent update to 3.01 has help with the VM Performance degradation I previously posted about. It seems to be back to normal
I have Parallels 2.0 on my Mac Pro 8 core and it's performance has been great (currently not working since I upgraded to snow leopard). Some testing in v12 showed ArchiCAD to actually performed better in Parallels than in bootcamp with native windows. I then got a Mac laptop and the performance was not good, so I gave VM Fusion a try and at the time it seemed to be a bit faster.
I would love to see some comparisons of the latest VM and latest Parallels running ArchiCAD on the same machine.... but who would be running both?

Re: VMware Fusion 3.0

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:11:05 GMT

Ben wrote:
I would love to see some comparisons of the latest VM and latest Parallels running ArchiCAD on the same machine.... but who would be running both?

I would be delighted to do it but am feeling a bit cash strapped by the holidays etc. and am putting off the Parallels upgrade for now.

I had a similar experience when I tested about a year ago with some things running faster in Parallels than in Boot Camp (and Fusion). At the time Boot Camp on the new Mac Pros was benchmarking better than the comparable Dell so this seemed no small achievement.