FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

[Rai]

Has anyone tried running FFXI on a MacBook Pro booting into Windows via Bootcamp?

I am a Mac guy who built an AMD PC just to play FFXI. My aging Powerbook is looking and feeling a little slow. So I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro the idea of playing FFXI on it is very appealing.

[Mrfrodo]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Try running a Google search on it, I've seen a few people have set it up on the intel iMac as well as the regular MacBook, I'd imagine MB Pro would be even sweeter, and I really really really wish I could afford to try it out myself. ;_;

While you're looking, look at Parallels software, still in devlopment, but it's pretty impressive in some of the videos I've seen on YouTube. People using fast user switching to change from OS X, to XP, to Redhat, etc., running concurrently. o.O

[Rai]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Only problem with Parallels and VMWare is no direct control of the GPU in virtualized enviroments. Meaning the virtualized enviroment uses a generic emulated virtual video card that pipes the graphics through the CPU.

[kuu]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Works fine.

Decent speed etc etc etc. The display is a little weird, unless you set it right (stupid LCD native resolution)

VM will almost never be able to do GPU/3D. Maybe with Vista, or something super good at hacking ideas.

The reason you can't virtualize 2d/3d is because it run's under "Guest" mode in windows. This means no direct HW interface. It's will take a very bright mind to think of a way to make it work.

But realistically speaking, not with core duo, or any other chip on the market. Maybe when Intel furthers their virtualation technology seen in Core Duo

[Mrfrodo]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Well phooey, I'd thought some of the vids I'd seen were of games being run in Parallels. But doing some more researching, I see you guys are right about the lack of HW3D DX support, and a rather crappy emulated vid card at this point. Maybe someday they will find a way for it to work more effectively, meanwhile, it's still a nice solution for people that need access to some Windows software w/out rebooting, just not for us game addicts. ><

Guess my big concern about running FFXI on a new Mac, would be, that I'd never be booting it into OS X. The most relevant tips I've seen concerning running BootCamp and games, has been to put 2GB RAM in your Mac, and that BootCamp XP install utilizes the power of the GMA950 card, where OS X coddles it some to preserve battery life.

Looking for more info on MacBook Pro performance. hehe

[kuu]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Guess my big concern about running FFXI on a new Mac, would be, that I'd never be booting it into OS X. The most relevant tips I've seen concerning running BootCamp and games, has been to put 2GB RAM in your Mac, and that BootCamp XP install utilizes the power of the GMA950 card, where OS X coddles it some to preserve battery life.

Looking for more info on MacBook Pro performance. hehe

Don't lose hope for current Macbook pro's yet! There is one option and that is...

WINE/Caleaga/etc.

Both are not yet on Intel mac's but in the works, and nothing techically stoping it from running.

Bascially it's hooks the win32 api set from linux/unix world, that will allow you to run windows problems.

Games are a hit and miss, and they are constantly being updated to provide better compatiblity.

And yes, 2d/3d does work. You can play WoW under WINE for instance.

It does not yet work on FFxi, but it's getting closer. Currently they have gotten it to get into POL (which took a lot of work), and the final part is actually in game. Which is a little weird since ffxi isn't like most games (doesn't allow you to alt-tab).

The would need some work around, probably like windower, but they're getting there.

Nothing professional, so you may or may not ever have FFxi working on WINE, but it's a real possiblity, unlike VM.

One final note. There is a 4th, less satifying option. There is a program to "emulate" basic 3d code in CPU and will work for ffxi(Intergrated GPU Laptop people have been using it for years to play ffxi)

It's slower, but it's another option. I haven't tested it, but I may give it a whirl with all the VM products out there.

[Mrfrodo]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

I haven't messed with WINE in a very long time, I do remember seeing there were a few posts about getting POL to work, yet buggy. That would be a sweet deal if they managed to get it working, meanwhile I'll just use this old PC to play and look for other reasons to convince my wife a new Intel Mac would be a good investment.

Not finding much for BootCamp game videos on Mac Book Pro, YouTube does have a few demos of people playing other non FFXI games (they really do exist!) on even the low end Mac Book, performance looks pretty good. ^^

[kuu]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Not finding much for BootCamp game videos on Mac Book Pro, YouTube does have a few demos of people playing other non FFXI games (they really do exist!) on even the low end Mac Book, performance looks pretty good. ^^

I've played it personally on a 2ghz macbookpro.

Not bad, not stellar, but not bad. Make sure you know your LCD native rez or the picture will look crappy.

It's also a little hot on windows side because of lack of sufficent powermanagement (intel->microsoft fault).

Though it was a generation 1 macbook pro which didn't have 2 button mouse clicks yet.

The new ones (i'm not sure yet, macbooks have it) should have 2 button mouse-click-via two finger click. And scroll wheel is 1 finger press down, and 2nd finger scroll.

I find it easier then the non-creative Dell laptops. scroll on sides and 2 button physical.

[tdh]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Don't lose hope for current Macbook pro's yet! There is one option and that is...

WINE/Caleaga/etc.

Can anybody confirm that this has worked? Every time I try and search if somebody has tested this and rated it, I can't find anything for FFXI. Anybody here ACTUALLY using this kind of set up?

[Mhurron]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Can anybody confirm that this has worked? Every time I try and search if somebody has tested this and rated it, I can't find anything for FFXI. Anybody here ACTUALLY using this kind of set up?

No it doesn't. There's a higher chance of VMWare presenting a video card as a full 3d card then there is of FFXI ever working on either Wine or the commercial version.

[Lunaryn]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

I've seen some screenshots of POL Viewer running under X11/Wine. I'll see if I can find the link, I think it's on the app compatibility database? It's not stable by any means, but it runs, which is rather a big deal.

DirectX support has lagged in WINE for a long time, but there have been some recent advances in it that look promising.

Edit: Yes, it's in the AppDB, and moreover, it seems they have Tetra Master running usefully as well. http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=5342
Do note the howto at the bottom, as there are some extra actions that need to be taken after POL Viewer is installed/updated to make it useable.

[Mhurron]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

I've seen some screenshots of POL Viewer running under X11/Wine.

POL updates, FFXI does not run.

Final Fantasy XI: Rating: Garbage

[kuu]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

No it doesn't. There's a higher chance of VMWare presenting a video card as a full 3d card then there is of FFXI ever working on either Wine or the commercial version.

You have it backwards. You have a 90% higher chance of running 3d off WINE, then VM.

VM, there is litterally no chance. There is no way to access HW in a guest situation. In the future, Intel is working in new VM technologies, but current chips = not a fat chance.

What VM can do is try to trick it, like say rewrite the whole thing into an Opengl protocol, and shove video calls to an api through to the real thing. Which is very complicated stuff, and most likely not going to work, but hey, there have been some pretty crazy stuff done if you shove enough resources into it. Like xbox emulation on 360(abeit Microsoft owns their own sourcecode and can port DX itself).

WINE on the other hand can do 3d. Because it's not running as a guess os. It hooks win32 calls. Like a mini-windows code. You can play WoW on linux unix, etc.

WINE = WINE Is Not an Emulator.

Problem is FFxi isn't like your normal-run-of-the-mill win32 program. (Like alt-tab).

Getting to work is trivial, but lots of work, which may or may not come to fruit, but heck of a lot more feasible then VM.

Really, if the Windower people make a hook system for WINE that works for FFxi, it'll probably run. You just need to make sure all your t's are "crossed" so to say.

[Mhurron]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

You have it backwards. You have a 90% higher chance of running 3d off WINE, then VM.

VM, there is litterally no chance. There is no way to access HW in a guest situation. In the future, Intel is working in new VM technologies, but current chips = not a fat chance.

Core Duo and the latest from AMD both support full hardware virtualization.

Wine itself is not some amazing thing that will suddenly implement the full Win32 API on Linux. They have little more to go on then the publicly documented functions on Technet, which is not anywhere near all of them, and some fancy debugging but even in all the years they have been active, they haven't yet implemented close to what is the current full Win32.

So they cheat. What games are supported by Wine and the commercial variant are voted by users. They extend what they have of a reimplemented Win32 with dirty application specific hacks until it runs, and the definition of runs changes from developer to developer. WoW won the vote so the hacks were created, FFXI has never even been close to getting attention. This alone makes pigs flying more likely then FFXI running and usable on Wine or it's commercial variant.

VMWare, on the other hand, already has experimental DirectX support http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/do...mitations.html

Or you could just not be an idiot and run it on supported platforms.

What VM can do is try to trick it, like say rewrite the whole thing into an Opengl protocol, and shove video calls to an api through to the real thing. Which is very complicated stuff, and most likely not going to work

This is exactly how Wine works, it translates real Win32 calls into Linux system calls, then cleans the data when it passes it back to the application, get your information straight before spouting garbage.

The reason you can't virtualize 2d/3d is because it run's under "Guest" mode in windows

This however is completely wrong . Everything except the user console runs as a service, which is either granted System or Administrator privileges. The user console runs with the privileges of the user that launched it. If it only ran as guest, a user with less privileges then User, it would never run at all.

[kuu]

Re: FFXI on MacBook PRo with Bootcamp?

Core Duo and the latest from AMD both support full hardware virtualization.

Wine itself is not some amazing thing that will suddenly implement the full Win32 API on Linux. They have little more to go on then the publicly documented functions on Technet, which is not anywhere near all of them, and some fancy debugging but even in all the years they have been active, they haven't yet implemented close to what is the current full Win32.

So they cheat. What games are supported by Wine and the commercial variant are voted by users. They extend what they have of a reimplemented Win32 with dirty application specific hacks until it runs, and the definition of runs changes from developer to developer. WoW won the vote so the hacks were created, FFXI has never even been close to getting attention. This alone makes pigs flying more likely then FFXI running and usable on Wine or it's commercial variant.

VMWare, on the other hand, already has experimental DirectX support http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/do...mitations.html

Or you could just not be an idiot and run it on supported platforms.

This is exactly how Wine works, it translates real Win32 calls into Linux system calls, then cleans the data when it passes it back to the application, get your information straight before spouting garbage.

This however is completely wrong . Everything except the user console runs as a service, which is either granted System or Administrator privileges. The user console runs with the privileges of the user that launched it. If it only ran as guest, a user with less privileges then User, it would never run at all.

You got a lot of information, but the wrong technical points.

Intel VM is not HW I/O which is what is required to do GPU passing. It allows developers to only I/O from the CPU, i.e low overhead. You don't have to go on top of the system. I repeat this is not HW I/O.

You can't take over the GPU because it's being used!

DX experiemental from VM, isn't what you're thinking. It's passing api calls. The I/O is still not there. Bascially They're attempting to make a "generic GPU" then passing specific calls from DX. Again it's not I/O. It's a Big performance hit.

We've had this for a while. Reason I mentioned there is a program that lets you play FFxi on Intergrated graphics chipset- Laptop users.

It's a tough nut to crack, because you have to play both side of the fense to make this "video driver"

WINE/variation is not as simple as you think. It is bascially a reverse engineer of win 32 dlls, base on documentation, sounds similar to what you said, but different also.

D3D was largely ignored for WINE until resently. They are not "hacks" as you call it for the most part. They were just never really bothered.

The more exact dlls they can get, the better the compatiblity. Just because you don't care for WoW, it still benefits FFxi, because there is a certain amount of D3d reversed engineered.

What happens is some win32 that last documentation and bugs, are hard to replicate exactly, but once they got it pretty close, anyone that wants to use that dll benefits from it.

On the status of FFxi+WINE. Celega new version made great strides. previous version POL couldn't even be used. With the latest version you can actually use POL (it's very hard to have POL play nice, if you're a Vista-user).

So your "This alone makes pigs flying more likely then FFXI running and usable on Wine or it's commercial variant." is on genetic-splicing age.

And garbage is very useful these days. Really such defensivity.