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VMware refreshes its Fusion and Workstation desktop hypervisors

In colossal surprise, Windows 10 and better graphics come to the virtualised desktop

As predicted by El Reg, VMware will have new desktop hypervisors to show off at VMworld next week (although we did get our guess about new names wrong).

The headline items in both Fusion 8 and Workstation 12 is support for Windows 10, DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3.

Supporting the former is a no-brainer so VMware's gone and got it done so you can hear Cortana chirp or surf on the Edge from your Mac or non-Windows-10 PC. Mac owners also get an offer to cross-grade from Parallels at a discount.

DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 support is all about making sure those who wish to deploy graphics-intensive applications in virtual machines can do so.

Both new releases are better at working across multiple monitors and screens with today's lovely high resolutions.

Virtzilla's done a teensy bit of brand tweaking that's seen Workstation emerge as “Workstation 12 Pro” and Player emerge as Workstation 12 Player. Both still have the same functions: Workstation Pro can create VMs and drive vCloud Air. Player can run and create VMs. VMware's happy to shunt VMs in its direction with Horizon FLEX, its control freak for VM distribution and management used in desktop hypervisors.

The pro versions of Fusion and Workstation each come with a wee bonus in the form of US$600 of credit with VMware's vCloud Air service. Virtzilla's desktop hypervisor team tell us they hustled the cloud team hard to get them to that figure. We suspect the cloud team didn't need much arm-twisting: desktop hypervisors are a common developer tool and the more developers get a sniff of vCloud Air, the better for VMware.

News of the new desktop hypervisors means VMware has made news with two of its core products (see last week's NSX news for the other). What does that leave for next week's VMworld?

We'll be there in force to find out. ®

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