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Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

looking-glass.io

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Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#111

Post by gnif »

unholythree wrote: post #99
gnif wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games work just fine, just a few odd ones that decided to block VMs don't such as Tarkov. Known to work without issue are titles such as * PUBG * Battlefield 1/3/4/5 * Titanfall 1&2 * Arma 3 * 7 Days to Die * Ark * Fortnite * Apex * Halo: The Master Chief Collection * Star Wars Squadrons And many many more.

Really, is that why Tarkov drops me when I try to start a match? At least CS:GO told me their anti-cheat hated my setup (Windows 10 in a Xenserver VM) and I was able to get a refund.

CS:GO works fine in a libvirt/KVM VM last I checked. As for Tarkov, see: https://mobile.twitter.com/TheBattlEye/status/12890276721867...

Note that the game vendor selects what features they want to apply to their titles that are available. BattlEye allows you to stop people using VMs, if the game vendor opts in to this stupid feature.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#112

Post by egeozcan »

gnif wrote: post #87
cdata wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! That is more than I expected. FWIW I tried to install Valorant in a VM recently (because I'm tired of installing the root-kit anti-cheat on my main PC in order to play it). It simply fails to launch the anti-cheat, and so doesn't launch the game.

Yes, unfortunately Valorant is one that blocks VM usage... not that it has helped them any.

Anti-cheat measures end up blocking mostly the well-meaning players.

I know it's sometimes too costly, but game studios should invest more on server-side security measures and mostly distrust the clients.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#113

Post by zaptheimpaler »

genewitch wrote: post #91
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #57

I run a VFIO setup with a single GPU - the linux host is headless, and Windows runs on top with the GPU. Its pretty awesome. Windows runs at native performance - no problem gaming or running other heavy workloads. The linux host acts as a devbox and runs a few other homeserver style services. It's difficult to set up right but it taught me a lot about VMs and hardware. Once you get it setup well enough, its relativel…

I do the vfio thing as well, do you happen to remember the registry editing you had to do to stop stuttering in games? There's a program that can set and unset all the stuff you need but evidently I deleted it. It's the only thing I am missing to build another one or rebuild the one I have. I wish I had believed it was going to work perfectly when I started and wrote everything down.

I don’t recall doing any registry edits. Most of the perf work i remember doing was on the VM side - getting the little tweaks in libvirt settings, matching vCPU topology to physical, keeping VM cores from running linux system processes with GRUB flags, using a dedicated USB controller and sound card. i think i set the MSI stuff gnif mentioned as well though it wasn’t critical for me. Generally stuttering will be resolved by making sure time critical events (like interrupts) are delivered quickly to the guest.

+1 on the writing stuff down :D I did it twice and documented pretty thoroughly the second time around, notes before each change, testing performance delta, notes about if it worked. It really helps.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#114

Post by zaptheimpaler »

ghostly_s wrote: post #95
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #57

I run a VFIO setup with a single GPU - the linux host is headless, and Windows runs on top with the GPU. Its pretty awesome. Windows runs at native performance - no problem gaming or running other heavy workloads. The linux host acts as a devbox and runs a few other homeserver style services. It's difficult to set up right but it taught me a lot about VMs and hardware. Once you get it setup well enough, its relativel…

The host is headless? So you're streaming the display via VNC or something to another system, or do you mean the host has a head but it's just being passed thru directly to the guest?

The host PC has 1 graphics card, the host OS is running headless, and the windows OS is using the graphics card.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#115

Post by egeozcan »

gnif wrote: post #106
lostlogin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Better’? Why are VMs being blocked?

Because some cheats use a VM environment to hide from detection as they can act on the VM from outside of it. The solution though is not to ban VMs, but to push vendors like AMD and Intel to enable access to, and enforce usage of technologies like SEV if running inside a VM. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.6/virt/kvm/amd-memory-enc...

I wrote this another comment, but instead of getting too much into an arms race, studios should invest more on server-side anti-cheat mechanisms.

You could correlate community feedback and some machine learning, while also picking easy-to-catch impossible actions.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#116

Post by zaptheimpaler »

gigatexal wrote: post #70
gnif wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games work just fine, just a few odd ones that decided to block VMs don't such as Tarkov. Known to work without issue are titles such as * PUBG * Battlefield 1/3/4/5 * Titanfall 1&2 * Arma 3 * 7 Days to Die * Ark * Fortnite * Apex * Halo: The Master Chief Collection * Star Wars Squadrons And many many more.

The only games I play are Doom Eternal and Starcraft 2 — by chance do you know if those work or if there’s a list somewhere?

I recently finished the single player campaign on Doom Eternal - that worked perfect, though i havent tried multiplayer.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#117

Post by gnif »

josteink wrote: post #110
gnif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF

Thanks. So if I’m already UEFI booting my VMs with dedicated volumes, the key difference is how GPU pass-through is done?

Pretty much, lots of factors that are hardware dependent, such as how your motherboard assigns IOMMU groups come into play.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#118

Post by egeozcan »

gnif wrote: post #56
CamperBob2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the gnif from EEVBlog?

Yes, I am :)

Also thanks for opening an account outside your community (here) just to help people.

Also, didn't know that any 4 letter usernames were available here on HN anymore :)

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#119

Post by qalmakka »

thejosh wrote: post #4

It performs really well. I love qemu/libvirt - the crazy thing is if you have two disks and use one to boot Windows, you can mount the disk then boot into that when using Linux and have that running off another video card (I have two in my PC, one AMD and and nVidia).

It's QEMU and the kernel that do the magic - libvirt is actually kinda annoying and ill suited for these things, you have to edit lots of unnecessary XML just to change launch options for QEMU.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#120

Post by solarkraft »

77pt77 wrote: post #84
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #6

One thing that isn't clear from the website is that it requires two GPUs, one for the host and one for the VM.

What about machines with dual graphics cards, like one intel on board and another nvidia? Would that be OK? I ask because many laptops used to have similar setups.

In theory yes, but I concluded my attempts on a Dell 9570 with “forget it”.
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