Virtual Squared

Since I have been talking before about the MS Flight Simulator and X-Plane it's not much of a secret anymore that I like to fly virtual airplanes. And as I've pointed out, the switch to a Mac as my home machine has robbed me of the one and only Microsoft application that I use with quite some enthusiasm - yes, it's true, I was missing Flight Simulator.

But now there is a solution for my problem: VMware Fusion for the Mac is one cool application. I've been using VMware products for years at work, but I knew that without DirectX support there is no way to play games on the PC. But Fusion comes in its latest version with "experimental" support for DirectX 9 and I just had to try...

Yes - Fusion ran the installer for FS9 without a problem on a fresh install of Win2k and once installed, Flight Simulator runs easily good enough on my Dual Core Mac Mini to fly. It took a little while to balance the main memory of the virtual machine with the scenery complexity, but I'm getting the 3D clouds, mid-range scenery settings and real-time weather and the flights are smooth.

Flying virtual airplanes on a virtual computer...