Revealing Windows XP Mode for Windows 7

[Shintai]

why is it obvious? other virtualization environments are able to handle it as well. i mean, it's not that i would expect e.g. crysis with dx9c + sm3 to run decent in a vm, it's more like older games which don't care if the cpu is a quadcore with 3,2ghz or a singlecore with 1,5ghz, or if the gpu has 15000 3dmarks in 3dmark06 or 1000...

on the other hand, a friend of mine is playing age of empires 3 on his macbook pro with parallels. and it runs great.
it's about time ms does smth similar.

AoE3 is 4 years old...plus its not exactly a FPS game to begin with.

It doesnt matter if you run it on a Mac or Windows. So no, other virtualization environments aint able to do it. The best Parallels can do is to dedicate an entire GFX card to the VM if you got 2. The host will ofcourse be unable to use it. In your friends case a Geforce 9400M and 9600M GT.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/graphics.html

Needing 2 GFX cards. One for the host, one for the guest kinda kills the idea of virtualization.