Compatibility solution?
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:18 pm
Hi, I'm not a games programmer, but it does seem that a big problem with successful games programming is the incompatibilities of hardware and variation of hardware.
If I'm right, I wonder if this suggestion would be useful. vmWare just announced a new virtualisation product (Player) it's essentially a Run Time version of Workstation. It allows you to run but not create VMs.
Virtualisation products work by simulating a common HW environment, so the VM always *thinks* it has the same HW available to it no matter what the real HW environment is.
I wonder if a stripped down / optimised VM could be created and run within vmWare Player that could act a common environment for games.
Surely, this would mean that all the incompatibility probs just disappear.
Obviously there's some performance and functionality tradeoff - though perhaps not as much as you might think...
Anyway - just a suggestion, I'm curious what the possibilities are for this new vmWare product are...
If I'm right, I wonder if this suggestion would be useful. vmWare just announced a new virtualisation product (Player) it's essentially a Run Time version of Workstation. It allows you to run but not create VMs.
Virtualisation products work by simulating a common HW environment, so the VM always *thinks* it has the same HW available to it no matter what the real HW environment is.
I wonder if a stripped down / optimised VM could be created and run within vmWare Player that could act a common environment for games.
Surely, this would mean that all the incompatibility probs just disappear.
Obviously there's some performance and functionality tradeoff - though perhaps not as much as you might think...
Anyway - just a suggestion, I'm curious what the possibilities are for this new vmWare product are...
