Parallels Desktop 7 w. Lion / Microsoft Flight Simulator

[K1PC]

Hi,

I recently upgraded to Parallels 7 on my MacPro, running Lion. Since the upgrade, I cannot seem to get Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) to run smoothly. The virtual machine is running Windows XP. The system appears to be bogged down when displaying graphics.

Here's what I know and/or have tried:

* It worked very nice in Parallels 4, 5, & 6.

* It doesn't matter what the screen update rate is set to in FSX. It's always slow.

* On my system, I have the Satiek yoke and rudder controls, mapped to the Windows Virtual Machine.

* When buttons are pressed, on the controls, there is no guarantee FSX will respond. Keyboard presses seem to always work.

* If nothing gets displayed, the response is perfect. I know that sounds weird, but I had a case where the display was black and I can tell by selecting different options on the Satiek controls and hear how fast the program is responding.

* When I look at the process monitor, in Windows, 100% of one of the CPU's is being consumed.

* I've backed FSX down to the very basic settings, no difference.

* I jacked the FSX settings to the highest feature set, where performance should dog out, no difference.

* I went through the parallels website and followed the recommended video settings (256Mb for video, etc.)

* I uninstalled the driver (in XP), and re-installed, no difference.

* I made sure all software was up to date (I know, I know it's XP not Windows 7)

Thanks in advanced,

Paul

 

[Viperjock]

I have the exact same issues as K1PC, I wish someone from Parallels would provide some feedback, it's a shame we can't get any support. Bootcamp runs FSX perfectly, but I purchased Parallels 7 because nothing led me to believe it would not run FSX, in fact I was misled to believe it would run without a hitch.

 

[K1PC]

Hi Viperjock, I ended up reporting the problem straight to tech support. They were nice, but didn't really able to help. They wanted me to create a new VM, which meant reloading Windows, MS FSX, etc. Since I was using XP, I thought it was a good reason to go out and purchase Windows 7. So I did, and instead of using Parallels, I opted to do it all in Bootcamp. Since I'm really dual booting Windows, it worked well. When I tried it with Bootcamp under Parallels, it worked there too. My only issue is licensing MS FSX. Essentially, I have three licenses and it doesn't like it - even though they're all on the same machine - one for the XP Parallels VM, one for running under Windows 7, and one for running under Bootcamp in Parallels.

So at this point, since MS FSX is the really the only thing I use in Parallels, I don't have to do any further upgrades. I get much better performance when I boot into Windows ... and, I have better use of my monitors.

Thanks for the feedback,

Paul