Virtualization Daily

VMWare has released the second beta of Fusion for Mac OS X. The most notable feature of this new release is limited games support, basically meaning they’re accelerating 3D video in a virtual machine. Support is currently limited to a small set of DirectX 8.1 based games, but it’s an interesting start.

One of the biggest feature requests we received from the many thousands of customers we spoke with at Macworld Expo was the ability to play games in a virtual machine. Well, I am happy to tell you that with Fusion Beta 2 you can play select DirectX 8.1 games in Windows XP virtual machines! Play Tony Hawk 3, Grand Theft Auto III, and other DirectX 8.1 games without restarting your Mac. See the release notes for a list of DirectX 8.1 games that we have tested and work well.

However, what’s far more interesting, to me anyway, is that they’re now supporting snapshots. I wasn’t expecting to see this in Fusion so it’s a VERY nice surprise.

I am really excited about VMware Fusion’s new snapshot feature and I believe it will be a lifesaver for many customers! Have you ever had your computer working just the way you wanted only to install a new application or system update that made your computer completely unusable? This has happened to me many times, but with VMware Fusion, just take a snapshot of your virtual machine once you get it set up and working just the way you like, and if your virtual machine ever becomes unresponsive, you can roll it back to your perfect state in an instant.

This release also looks to fix the issues that prevented bridged networking from working when using an Airport wireless connection.

Read more on the VMWare blog and in the release notes.

Overall sounds like some very promising progress.