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Why would you think running anything through a VM would be faster is a real mystery to me.

Vista works fine. Don't be afraid of change.

Vista is terrible, but I can't see running FFXI through a VM as being better.

Upgrade to XP or the Windows 7 beta.

I have zero issues playiong FFXI in Vista.

Yeah really. Vista isn't that bad -_-. It handles the game just fine too.

I ran FFXI in vmware before it was able to work in Wine/Linux. It does work but you will need to get a program called 3dAnalyze which emulates a few features that FFXI requires of the graphics card (and vmware's emulated card doesnt have) in software. It worked ok, but you need to make sure you have a powerful computer with a lot of ram. As a side note,

Vista is a huge resource hog already and Vista + Virtual machine in vista = poor computer grinding to a halt. You would be better off installing FFXI in vista, or if you dislike vista, then install XP on the bare metal.

Currently I run FFXI in Linux/Wine, and it works as good as it did in Windows thanks to the newest patches to Wine.

Edited, Apr 23rd 2009 11:01pm by zergdoom

Thank you for your valued constructive input! is it bumpy on that bandwagon?

I run in Vista 64x bit and have done so for a while now. I used to run on XP. Considering I haven't reformatted back to XP, I couldn't tell you how bumpy the bandwagon is. I can tell you, however, that Vista blows.

Using my machine as a multimedia/rendering power rig in addition to a gaming one, I'll stick with XP/Linux.
(Pixar never bothered creating a version of Renderman for Vista anyway.)

But really, there's no way you can say that there aren't several bloated and wasteful sections of code and features in Vista, because Windows 7 uses the same sort of ram allocation, and it's considerably lighter in the resource usage department.

Again, as somebody alluded to above, 'with hardware meant for Vista' isn't really a good excuse, it's just letting more powerful hardware take up the slack in Vista's lackluster design. That doesn't make it good, that makes it the weakest link in the chain.

Another reason I dislike Vista, and I'm sure a lot of people who dislike Vista would agree, is that it's been designed for people who aren't especially computer-literate. EZ-windows. Full-automatic. 'User-friendly.'

Is this a bad thing, not necessarily.

Is it a headache most of the time for those who know what we're doing?
Well, yes.

Really, the only real draw I have for Vista would be DX10, and with W7 so close to the horizon I see no reason for most XPers to skip Vista entirely.

(Can't say I like the W7-dock though. Luckily I modified mine to be indistinguishable from the more traditional task bar with quick launches, with a few of the new perks. Hated the large icons without text. All too OSX-ish for my liking.)

We will have to agree to disagree. Vista may be the better choice for certain users, but most certainly not for me. I do appreciate you not rating anyone down.

And why would they make a Vista only version if their existing version ran fine on Vista? I doubt anything in Vista would offer new abilities to this type of software.



Two things to this:

1. You could say the exact same thing about Windows 2003 and Windows XP. They are functionally almost identical under the hood, just XP had a lot of pretty features and doo-dads added.
2. Just because there are bloated and wasteful section of code and features in Vista doesn't mean those bloated and wasteful sections can't be shutoff or at least put on low priority when the user is running other applications in the foreground. If you turn off the stupid desktop widget thing I think most people will not notice an impact in performance.



All I meant about 'with hardware meant for Vista' was - "with hardware with Vista drivers available for it".



Again, Windows XP was the user friendly version of Windows 2003. Maybe not to the same degree, but I see nothing wrong making a computer user friendly so long as the power users can still customize and streamline. If you're (not YOU, just the general you there, nothing personal) to lazy to customize and streamline your rig then that's your issue. Casual computer users shouldn't be upgrading their OS anyway, they will be buying new computers with more power so if they are not savvy enough to configure their machine to be more efficient that's ok.




Thanks for that.



If you know what your doing you can get around almost all the 'issues' you've listed with Vista.

The only real complaint I have with Vista is how they removed any usable interface in regards to customizing your file associations. The UAC is easy enough to disable, and actually serves a purpose for anyone who can't figure out how to turn it off (as in those people proably need to leave it on), and the other general security issues are barely more than something to be aware of if you know how the system works.

To be honest I am much more annoyed with the security changes they made in Internet Explorer than I am with Vista in general. Explorer's security features are so paranoid that the default settings make it almost unusable. Again, this can be configured though, so it's not a big deal (that and I prefer Firefox and I am actually liking Chrome even though I'm not switching to it yet).



Yes, I can agree it's not for everyone. I do very much disagree that the reason it's not for everyone is in anyway related to performance (unless your on an old computer without Vista compatable parts and your not willing to upgrade).

*Spelling, use of the wrong your/you're, and change of one comment that came out to hard changed.

Edited, Apr 24th 2009 7:50am by NoOneLeft

FF will run in VMWare as long as your existing hardware can support it and you have the proper drivers for the OS you decide to use (note I said will run and not will run fine).

I've tried different applications and the best is obviously one where you can dedicate all the machines resources to FF. A powerful server may run it fine, while an average gaming desktop may not.




I'm a little confused. Do you want to run Vista or XP? Why do you need VMware if you are already using either one of those Operating Systems. Just reinstall XP if that's what you prefer to use. Most people that look to running VMWare with FF on it when they are already using an unsupported Operating System. If you are looking to segregate the disk for security purposes (or for grins and giggles), you may want to consider creating another bootable partition where you can play FF and then boot to the other when you want to look at ****. :) lol

Edited, Apr 24th 2009 8:06am by sixgauge

*blink blink*

Wine can run FFXI? Seriously? *goes to check it out*

Wine can run FFXI. There are a few graphics glitches here and there. However some pre existing glitches in the windows version such as z-fighting and cracks between polygons don't appear when playing under Wine. Wine wraps d3d calls to Open-GL so that may have something to do with it.

The supersampling trick does not work in Wine, but it doesn't matter because FSAA does work.

You should also match the foreground and background resolution, so if you are running the game with the foreground set to 1360x768 you need to set the background resolution to that also. Mis matched foreground/background doesn't work well in Wine (and with working FSAA there's really no need for it anyway)