Does Fusion (VMware) support 2D graphics hardware acceleration for Yosemite guest OS?

I am disappointed to learn that the Parallels 10 (and earlier) does not support hardware accelerated 2D (nor 3D) graphics when Mac OS X is the guest OS.

This means Yosemite inside Parallels runs noticeably slowly in its screen rendering. Menus are delayed when dropping down. Highlighting menu items cannot keep up with the mouse movement. The Dock magnification appears chunky and delayed as you move the mouse across app icons. Windows in the Finder jump an inch or two at a time while dragging to move them. Generally it feels sluggishly delayed similar to screen-sharing over a very slow DSL internet connection.

In contrast, Mountain Lion performs so well in Parallels 9 and 10 that I forget I am using a virtual machine. Really! I set the Dock to the opposite side of the screen to remind myself that I'm using a VM. Apparently the difference is due to a "software emulation of 2D/3D acceleration officially supported by Apple" (per the tech note linked above). Apparently that emulation in provided in Mountain Lion as well, but not Yosemite.

Can anyone verify if Fusion by VMware (standard edition?, Pro edition?), or VirtualBox by Oracle, or any other solution can run Yosemite well as a guest OS on a host Mac including peppy graphics? Documenting their support for graphics acceleration would be ideal.

I'm not talking about gaming or running CAD/CAM systems. I asking about normal daily work usage such as email, word processors, text editors, programmers’ IDEs (IntelliJ, NetBeans), OmniGroup apps, LibreOffice, Apple Keynote/Pages/Numbers.

Solution 1:

Using the latest version of VMware Fusion 7.1.1 (Professional) and running OS X 10.10.2 on a early 2013 MBPr 16GB giving the VM 2 GB or 4 GB, graphics are slow in comparison to running OS X 10.8.5 in a VM. The performance with OS X 10.10 in a VM is IMO bad enough it's not worth using in a VM for production purposes.

Solution 2:

I can confirm that the following significantly improves the graphics rendering speed of OSX 10.10.5 on VMware 8 under 10.9.5 as host.

The idea is to disable screen refresh syncing, which is incorrect when virtualised.

You may either compile the utility application yourself, or download a compiled (beamoff.app.zip) version of it, and follow Step 0.

Step 0. Save the app into your Applications folder, and add it to Login Items in System Preferences.

If you wish to compile it yourself then follow:

1. Download Xcode for free on the Mac App Store.
2. Download the project as ZIP at JasF's beamoff, and expand the zip archive.

3. Open beamoff.xcodeproj with Xcode.

   1. Choose Archive from the Product menu item, and then click on the Export button.
   2. Select Export as Mac Application and export.
   3. Finally, follow Step 0.