[3D acceleration] Elasto Mania (video game) virtualization slowness

[twipley]

Host: Ubuntu; guest: XP.

Experimental 3D-acceleration drivers have been installed, and then set to "enabled" in the VirtualBox machine video settings. The game (demo version, from ​http://www.elastomania.com/elma.exe) has been installed on a fresh system install.

As is the case with native XP machines, there is some frame choppiness present. In other words, things are not as smooth as they should be, and some frames are (as a rule) dropped here and there. Virtualization, therefore, is representative of the original experience in this regard.

The problem lies in the experience produced using the "unsmoothness" fix, which works wonders in native XPs. This fix (links are provided in the next paragraph) can be applied by running the ElmaXP exefile from the game folder. It works, the author said (although he said no more than that), by "tuning the system timer on game start, then tuning it back to its normal state on game-process close."

​http://nh.gorodok.net/ElmaXP.zip (elmaxp file inside); ​http://zworqy.com/elmaguide/files/ElmaXP.zip (elmaxp file inside); ​http://kopasite.net/up/0/ElmaXP.exe.txt (remove the .txt extension).

The problem is this: using the fix (so the game can run smoothly on post-98 systems), makes it run in slow motion (the speed of the timer, for example, is more than halved).

To recapitulate, without ElmaXP.exe under virtualization, there is choppiness (therefore, same behavior as before). However, with ElmaXP.exe under virtualization, the game is significantly slowed down (unexpected behavior).

How come? (I am curious.)

Notes:

I have tried various vboxmanage commands, such as: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" 1 (did not change anything); VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 200 (sped up elma.exe, as expected, although did not change much of the slowness of the good [smooth] version, being elmaxp.exe); VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" (did not change anything either).

Disabling vertical synchronization did not solve the issue (nor did it change anything).

[twipley]

The right log file is the second one.

[twipley]

The issue is present either (host-side) using the default xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, or the nvidia-319-recommended, driver (and restarting the host after the change, as it is needed to take effect).

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.