Parallels 4 and VMWare Fusion 2 vs The Sims 2
The Mac version of the Sims 2 has a control problem that drives me nuts. I don't know if it happens for everyone but most people don't notice or care, or if it's somehow unique to the two Mac's I've tried it on, but for me, the pie menus don't work right.
I thought I'd blogged about this but now I can't find it. The gist of it is that on Windows, you can use pie menus as intended: click-move-click. The move-click isn't processed until the pie menu is visible.
On the Mac, click-move-click doesn't work. You have to click-wait-move-click. Not a big deal, but after playing so much Sims on Windows, it's just frustrating. I tried contacting Aspyr (the guys who do the Mac port) but they couldn't see the problem, so I doubt any fix is coming.
So I want to play the Windows version of the Sims on my Mac.
I can do that through Boot Camp, but I don't want to essentially turn off my Mac to play the Sims. VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop to the rescue, right?
Almost, but not quite. The game installs and runs fine, the frame rate is good, but on both VMWare Fusion 2 and Parallels 4, the walls are red. Solid red. Here's a screenshot:
I'm a little surprised that both Parallels and VMWare mess up the same detail; there must be something unusual in how the Sims does the texturing or lighting for the walls.