Parallels Virtual Card Limiting Graphics

[Maxx Steamer]

[Graphics Limitations on Second Life and Firestorm Viewers under Parallels 9 Running Windows 8.1]

I am unable to enable Ambient Occlusion, Advanced Lighting Model, and Shadows, etc. because I am running SL on Parallels on my Mac so that I may use it in the Windows 8.1 environment. Parallels creates a virtual card for use and the Second Life Viewer is not recognizing the capabilities of my card (NVIDIA GeForce 750M) even when settings are set to Ultra when I run it under Parallels-Windows 8.1.

Running the same settings under Max OS X runs without problems as the NVIDIA graphics card is recognized. What can I do so that Second Life either recognizes the capabilities of the card under the virtual machine or bypass the check so that it does not throttle which graphics settings I can enable?

[Ardy Lay]

Is there a "VMware Tools" for that?

[Maxx Steamer]

There are Parallels Tools which creates a virtual card, but since SL and TPV's recognize based off of a specific brand and models in the gpu_table.txt to facilitate ALM and Ambient Occlusion for Ultra settings, it reads the Parallels Virtual Driver as generic and does not allow it to use those graphics properties even though it can handle it.

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi Maxx,

Other than using Boot Camp to run WIndows natively, I think your only solution will be to edit "gputable.txt" to add a line that matches the reported GPU configuration under Parallels with settings that unlock the capability you want. I've no idea where to find that file in a Windows environment. Nalates Urriah describes the files format (somewhat) here...

http://blog.nalates.net/2013/08/26/gpu-table-performance/

Good luck!

[Ardy Lay]

Shake it up again now that Second Life Viewer no longer relies on a GPU table to define rendering capabilities.  Let us know how it goes, if you are so inclined.