virtualbox.org

You've heard me say before there are mouse lag issues in the new versions of the Virtualbox, but I've never been able to track it down. Here is an update.

Host 27" iMac running 10.8.5

When running VB 4.3.10 games such as Terraria look nice but the mouse lag of a 1-2 second delay make the game unusable. I checked as to why it works fine on my other mac 21" and it was running 4.2.18 and we decided to put 4.2.18 on the 27" iMac and now it runs fine with Terraria with absolutely no lag. I have the same issues with Age of Empires II but I haven't finalized the testing on it.
Is this a graphics issue or an input issue or something else?

thanks!
Bryce

VMs are not good for video games. Lags are to be expected.

brycesteiner wrote: Is this a graphics issue or an input issue or something else?

thanks!
Bryce

There have been many changes between 4.2.18 and 4.3.10 in order to make VirtualBox compatible with newer guests. An educated guess on my part is, those changes have slowed your experience with those particular games. So you have three choices...

• 1. Stay with 4.2.18 and enjoy your games
  2. Ignore the lag in 4.3.10 and try to play the games
  3. Don't play those games using 4.3.10

mpack wrote:VMs are not good for video games. Lags are to be expected.

Unfortunately that's not helpful with this issue. Games play very well on Virtual Machines or at least they used to. Perhaps its better if I use Windows 7 instead of XP.

I appreciate that you'd prefer another answer, but it's an inescapable fact that graphics based video games never run in a VM anything like they do natively. Either live with it, or use dual boot.

mpack wrote:I appreciate that you'd prefer another answer, but it's an inescapable fact that graphics based video games never run in a VM anything like they do natively. Either live with it, or use dual boot.

I don't think you read what I wrote. It worked fine in previous versions. In fact it ran better than my PC ever did. It's just in recent versions it lags.