virtualbox.org

I'm having issues trying to run an old PC game, Red Baron 3D, on my Virtualbox setup that's using Windows XP. It installs just fine, and everything is great until I actually get into the program. Once the game starts, the sound is all messed up and if I try to actually fly a mission, it crashes. During the game's installation, the .wav file sound test works, and when the program is run the opening cinematic is just fine, with no sound issues. I know there was an old issue with the sound in the game not working properly when using a USB joystick, but there was a fix created for that which I have installed. The game ran fine when I was using Windows XP Mode on Microsoft's Virtual PC, but it didn't have HID support, which is why I went with Virtualbox. Any idea as to what the issue might be?

One area that VMs are really not good at, is gaming. Games tend to push the physical hardware to their limit hence the strict requirements for the graphics card (GPU) specifications. Virtual machines will never be as powerful as the host, especially on the video side. They use after all a virtual graphics card, not your host's real graphics card. The virtual GPU itself is from around 1995-2000 in terms of capabilities. Applications that have high requirements on the GPU (drawing, 3D, games, video) are expected to not work as good as on the real hardware, if they work at all.