Here are some videos of these successes, and a list of other OpenGL applications that work well with Parallels Desktop 13. In particular, the OpenGL work included in Parallels Desktop 13 resulted in some new applications running quite well in Parallels Desktop. The hard work of the Parallels engineering team has resulted in a number of successes with Windows applications using OpenGL 3.2.
Parallels Desktop can enable your Mac to run most Windows applications, some games, and some CAD/CAM applications.
I wish I could tell you that Parallels Desktop can magically turn your four-year-old MacBook Air® into a high-end PC gaming rig with a $3,000 liquid-cooled graphics card, but that is never going to happen. Windows applications that use OpenGL include Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Autodesk AutoCAD, Google SketchUp, and so many games that they can’t be listed here. OpenGL is used “extensively in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video games.” The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.” “ Open Graphics Library ( OpenGL) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. In this blog post, I will focus on OpenGL. In almost every major release of Parallels Desktop, we try to improve the support for these two libraries. Many Windows CAD/CAM applications and Windows games use DirectX or OpenGL.
There are many factors that contribute to the overall speed of a Windows application running in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine: the speed of the processor in your Mac®, the speed of the hard disk or SSD in your Mac, the macOS® you’re running Parallels Desktop in, the Windows OS installed in your VM, the amount of RAM you have allocated to the running VM*, and many more.įor a Windows application that does lots of complex or 3D graphics, we can add two other factors: the performance of the graphics card in your Mac, and the Windows graphics library that the application uses-DirectX or OpenGL.
Every Parallels Desktop® for Mac user wants their Windows applications to run as fast as possible.