Testing DirectX applications in Virtual PC?

Virtual PC 2007

It seems that 3D acceleration is not supported by Virtual PC 2007 but I just found a blog's article where the author found a solution to enable 3D acceleration on Windows 7 client. The trick should work only with both host and client running Windows 7.

Here is the link. Hope it helps.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox, since version 3.0, provide support for 3D acceleration with DirectX 8/9.

Unfortunately it is not very stable and in addition Visual Studio crashes when developing WPF applications and 3D acceleration is enabled.

A ticket has been opened and it says that they are working on a fix

VMware Workstation

Also VMware Workstation provided experimental DirectX support since release 5.5. But reading through their forum topics it seems that WPF development works with 3D acceleration enabled only with VMare Workstation 7 and later.

I didn't try myself but it seems promising. On the product page you can see Aero 3D working on Windows 7 and a screen shows also Half-Life!

From this page:

VMware Workstation was the first to support 3D graphics in virtualized environments and is now the first to support Windows Aero in Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines. Run even more 3D applications with support for DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.13D graphics in Windows virtual machines.

Evaluate the trial and let us know...

Sorry, even latest Virtual PC doesn't support hardware DirectX redirection.

You can try VMWare Workstation 7.1. They claim to support DirectX up to 9.0c, which is enough to get you to tier 2.

VMWare 7.1.3 does support DirectX but only if you are using the 8 subset rather than a full 9.0c implementation. As a result, while the dxdiag will run properly, actually using a tool that requires a full 9.0 implementation is hit or miss - i.e., you have to run it to see if it works. I have tried various games and development tools which state the exact same requirements and run properly on a system with 9.0 installed, but under VMware - some of them work, and others die immediately - so it seems they are correct and only the 8 subset is working at present - so if you don't need 9.0 you're good to go, but if you do, you're DOA.

So the support isn't fully stable - but it's worth a try if you have no other option.