Virtual PC Guy's Blog

-- Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager

Talking about core virtualization at Microsoft (Hyper-V, Virtual PC and Virtual Server).
Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

It has been too long since I posted about gaming on Virtual PC.  And there is a lot to talk about!  Windows Virtual PC makes some things better for gaming, some things worse, and opens up new possibilities.  But for now, I want to start with something light and fun.

Four years (and 23 days) ago I posted about running Quake II under Virtual PC 2004.  Well, Windows Virtual PC can also run Quake II – but it can do it seamlessly:

Quake2onWinVPC

As you can see, I have Quake II running on Windows XP mode with no problems.  Good times!

(Of course – Quake II also runs just fine directly in Windows 7 – but that is no fun!).

Cheers,
Ben

Published Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:01 AM by Virtual PC Guy

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS

Comments

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Why not skip the operating system all together and get it perfected in Silverlight. The demo copies so far are pretty impressive! :)

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 8:01 AM by ESP

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Are there any specific settings you have to enable for this?  I have moved one of my VMs over from VPC 2007, and that VM has Diablo 2 installed.  This software worked great under VPC 2007, but I cannot get it to run under Windows Virtual PC.

Thanks,

Horsie

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:55 AM by Horsie

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

ESP -

Neat!  Unfortunately it is not playable today.

Horsie -

Yes, I need to do a number of posts about this.  For Diablo II you will need to disable integrated mode:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/06/19/disabling-integrated-mode-in-windows-virtual-pc.aspx

Cheers,

Ben

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 2:30 PM by Virtual PC Guy

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

May a D3D game come to be possible in WVPC in the future?

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 3:48 PM by 24

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

But not Quake. Not Direct3D. Not Windows Aero.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:55 PM by anonymous

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Direct 3D is not supported in Windows Virtual PC.  But Quake works as well - as does Windows Aero.

Cheers,

Ben

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:03 PM by Virtual PC Guy

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

12:45am? You should have been in bed, not playing games!

Thursday, October 01, 2009 5:02 AM by Nelviticus

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

That is plain (=ugly) software rendering mode, no big deal. Show me OpenGL HW accelereated Quake2 :)

Thursday, October 01, 2009 6:18 AM by soldier

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Can't seem to get a USB joypad to work in WVP - although it doesn't show up in the host's devmgmt.msc (W7 64-bit) I can see and calibrate it through Start -> Game Controllers (ie joy.cpl).

Doesn't appear as an attachable USB device in the virtual machine, though.

Is this possible?  I like to use the d-pad instead of keyboard shortcuts.

Thursday, October 01, 2009 2:17 PM by john kelly

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Nelviticus -

I am trying to figure out if you are my Mother or my Wife :-)

soldier -

I installed Quake 2 on a system where I could get GL acceleration the other day and was surprised by how bad it looked compared to modern games.  This expecially came as a surprise for me as Quake 2 was the game that made me go out and buy my first 3D graphics card.

John kelly -

Do you have integration components installed?

Cheers,

Ben

Friday, October 02, 2009 3:34 AM by Virtual PC Guy

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Virtual PC Guy:

the screenshot at the beginning of this post is from a software-rendered scenario: no colored lightning, and no bilinear filtering (that is way it looks so jagged squares)

Tuesday, October 06, 2009 7:55 AM by soldier

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Hi Guy

Yes they are.  The joypad is am old MS SideWinder Game Pad Pro.  In W7, although it does *not* appear in the Device Manager, it does appear in the game controllers cpl.

There were no drivers for it under Vista (natively supported) so I guess there won't be for W7.

I've read that the drivers must be installed in W7 before a USB device can be used in XP Mode but that is not my experience so far:

I have a USB recording device which is not supported in a 64-bit environment, however, when I plug it in W7 complains a bit but the device is then attachable in XP ("Unknown Device") where I can install 32-bit drivers and get full functionality.

Any ideas what I should try next?

Thanks

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 11:19 AM by john kelly

# re: Quake II under Windows Virtual PC

Software mode, yuck ;). I think that real challenge is to make music (CD audio) play during game (although I suppose it's hardware issue - no one connects CD/DVD/BR to sound card with audio cable anymore).

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 12:49 AM by Matthew

Leave a Comment

(required) 
required 
(required) 

  
Enter Code Here: Required
 
Page view tracker