Fusion 3 arrives, putting Aero on Mac screens

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 05:55

IT Industry - Development

Graphics improvements - including the ability to display Windows' Aero user interface - are among the changes delivered by Fusion 3, VMware's latest virtualisation product for Mac OS X.

When VMware announced Fusion 3 earlier this month, officials said the latest version of its virtualisation software for Mac OS X would ship on October 27 - and the company delivered.

Among the most important changes are support for Windows Aero and Flip 3D (claimed by VMware as a virtualisation first), and Snow Leopard optimisation including a new 64-bit core engine.

In addition to the WDDM driver for Windows 7 and Vista that allows the use of Aero, Fusion 3 also supports DirectX 9.0 (and OpenGL 2.1 for Windows XP) to permit the use of a wider range of 3D graphics programs, including games.

Windows applications can be displayed on as many as eight displays, and there's full support for 4-way SMP.

Mac integration has been improved in several areas, notably the ability to open Windows applications directly (automatically launching Fusion if it isn't already running), and mapping command-Q to the Exit command in Windows applications.

The Unity mode (which runs Windows applications in Mac windows as an alternative to a single Mac window containing the Windows desktop) has been  enhanced to handle 3D games and 1080p video playback, and to provide access to Windows taskbar items via the menu bar.

Tweaks to full screen mode include a new menu bar that can be positioned on any side of the screen to accommodate the layout of the guest OS, plus a smooth transition into and out of the full screen view.

Another improvement is the inclusion of an automatic update mechanism that checks for, downloads and installs any updates for the product.

Fusion 3 also includes a migration assistant to move an existing Windows installation on another computer into a virtual machine via a network or a direct Ethernet connection. This process involves installing a program on the Windows PC, and it uses Bonjour to allow Fusion to discover the other computer.

Please read on for more about Fusion 3.