Software DirectX Acceleration for VMware Windows 98

[Shaina11]

Is there any software available that will accelerate DirectX graphics in Windows 98 on VMware? I know VMware allows acceleration of DirectX 8 and above on Windows 2000 and above, however no acceleration is available for Windows ME or below.

I already know of DOSBox and I use it. These are games that are not DOS-based, and ergo cannot run in DOSBox.

 

[gamerk316]

*Most* stuff from the Win98 era should run native on even the latest version of Windows. Only a handful of titles I know of have issues. That being said, I don't think you are ever going to get HW accelerated DX from the pre-XP era, simply because of how the old driver stack used to work.

 

[Shaina11]

Thanks for the response gamerk316. I have heard about SwiftShader before. Do you know if it's any good, and if it could work for my purposes? It's a software shader, so I assume I would install it in Windows 98 on VMware and hopefully it could use the CPU to possibly help with DirectX-based games?

 

[Supernova1138]

Thanks for the response gamerk316. I have heard about SwiftShader before. Do you know if it's any good, and if it could work for my purposes? It's a software shader, so I assume I would install it in Windows 98 on VMware and hopefully it could use the CPU to possibly help with DirectX-based games?

There is no point in using Swiftshader, performance will be terrible, and you might as well just use Software Rendering for your old games and give up on 3D Acceleration, at least if you feel you must run the game in a Windows 98 VM.

If the game in question is not one that absolutely will not launch under any circumstances under modern OSes, you do have other options for getting 3D Acceleration to work. There are wrapper programs like dgvoodoo that will handle translation of the draw calls to older versions of DirectX that are no longer natively supported on current graphics drivers.

 

[Shaina11]

There is no point in using Swiftshader, performance will be terrible, and you might as well just use Software Rendering for your old games and give up on 3D Acceleration, at least if you feel you must run the game in a Windows 98 VM.

If the game in question is not one that absolutely will not launch under any circumstances under modern OSes, you do have other options for getting 3D Acceleration to work. There are wrapper programs like dgvoodoo that will handle translation of the draw calls to older versions of DirectX that are no longer natively supported on current graphics drivers.

Thanks for the response. How would I go about setting up software rendering in WIndows 98 under VMware? From what I hear, some games have errors due to VMware's lack 3D support. It would be nice to still play these games in their proper OS, instead of basically using hacks to work on modern Windows.

From what I've gathered, what you're saying is to try DirectX wrapper software such as the one you mentioned, and then it could possibly work on more modern versions of Windows? Also, how would I get around the 16-bit installers, and the installers that have static OS requirements that cannot be installed on any other OS?

 

[Supernova1138]

Installer problems are a pain, for that you have two options, either look for a fan made 32 bit installer for the game, or look for directions to manually install the game. Usually you can manually extract the archive files on the disc and manually write the registry entries if you really have to. Check out the PCGaming Wiki and look up the game you want to run, it will point you to instructions to getting around installer issues with old games.

Software rendering is available for most games from the late 90s, just don't enable the 3D Acceleration option in the game and it will default to Software Rendering. There are some exceptions though, eg. games ported from the Nintendo 64 like Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D or Turok that have no software renderer and must have 3D Acceleration, for those games you're best off trying to run them natively rather than in VMWare.