Recently Sun announced the availability of VirtualBox 3, the latest version of their open source virtualization solution. The new version introduces experimental 3D graphics support and the ability to expose multiple CPUs to guest operating systems.
VirtualBox was originally developed by InnoTek, which was acquired by Sun last year. InnoTek launched an open source edition of VirtualBox in 2007, releasing most of the program’s code under the GPL. Alongside the open source version, the company has continued to sell a commercial version that has additional features, such as a built-in RDP server and full USB support. VirtualBox is cross-platform compatible and is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
The VirtualBox developers have gradually been adding support for accelerated 3D graphics. VirtualBox 3 has relatively solid support for OpenGL on Windows and Linux guests. It also has gained experimental support for Direct3D 8 and 9 on Windows. These advancements could make VirtualBox a viable solution for 3D gaming. I’ve been testing VirtualBox’s 3D graphics support with Linux guests since the 2.2.4 release in May. The Compiz compositing window manager will now work out of the box in Ubuntu guest environments, complete with wobbly windows and 3D cube action.
In addition to support for SMP and 3D graphics, VirtualBox 3 also resolves a host of bugs, including fixes for suspend/resume on Solaris hosts, fixes for PAE on Mac OS X, and fixes for shared X11 clipboards in Linux guests.
