Fusion Tech Preview 2018

The VMware Fusion team is very excited to announce the VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018 release!  We would love to hear your feedback about the exciting new features we have been working on.

Cut to the chase and download the latest bits from our Tech Preview Community:
VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018.

Or from MyVMware directly:

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/get-download?downloadGroup=FUS-TP-2018

What’s New

DirectX 10.1 – We are excited to introduce DirectX 10.1 support with Fusion 2018 Tech Preview. Using Apple’s Metal technology to render 3D accelerated graphics, support for DirectX 10.1 in Guest VMs introduces several subtle differences over 10.0

DirectX 10.1 delivers the following graphics improvements:

• Full MSAA (Multisample anti-aliasing) support
• Shader Model 4.1 support
• Cubemap array support

This enhancement allows users to run games that require DirectX 10.1, and improves performance for DX10.0 games and apps. Test it out and let us know how what you think about the graphics quality and performance.

DirectX 10.1 requires macOS 10.13.0 or above.

macOS Mojave Beta Experimental Support – Fusion Tech Preview 2018 can run on latest macOS 10.14 Mojave beta as Host and a guest OS. Users can run Fusion on a Mac with 10.14 Beta installed, or test out 10.14 by running it in a virtual machine. We currently only support installing using the .app from the Mac App Store. We do not currently support upgrading existing macOS VMs, nor do we support creating a new VM from a 10.14 recovery partition. We know there is some work to be done to support Apple’s latest and greatest, so please share your feedback with us in the Community.

ESXi Host/cluster view when connecting to vCenter – We’ve add a new Hosts and Clusters view when using Workstation to connect to a vCenter Server from Workstation. Users now have visibility to navigate to non-VM objects (ESXi hosts, Resource Pool and vApp) and their respective relationship hierarchy (i.e. Datacenter > Cluster > Resource Pool > vApp). Users can also switch back to the ‘flat’ VM view with a single click.

New Application Menu – This tech preview showcases a new Application Menu that we’ve been testing. This App Menu uses our own REST API to create a whole new experience. The new app menu aims to do what the existing Library Window does. Beyond quickly launching applications within guest, the new Menu Bar App supports:

• New VM creation
• Virtual Machine Power Operations
• Switching from different Views (Unity, Full Screen, Windowed)
• New contextual search feature for VMs and Windows Apps
• Display IP, MAC and VM resource allocation (CPU, RAM)
• Taking Snapshots
• Opening VM settings

Customizable Touch Bar Support – Users can now customize the Mac Touch Bar (on supported hardware) to tweak what to appears on your Touch Bar Display. Touch Bar is customizable with new controls for following scenarios:

• Library Window
• VM Window

SSH login to Linux VM – Users can now SSH login to Linux VM with a single click. The SSH user/password can be securely remembered so you can easily SSH to the VM without entering password, or configure it to forget and require a password each time.

Resolved Issues:

Bluetooth devices on Mac host get disconnected when you quit Fusion

When you quit Fusion, Bluetooth devices like keyboard, mouse may temporary get disconnected from Mac host.

This issue is resolved.

High battery consumption on Windows 8 and Windows 10 VM

For Window 8 and Window 10 VM, when you toggle following display options:  “Use High Performance Graphics” and “Always use High Performance Graphics”, battery consumption is unexpectedly high.

This issue is resolved.

VM does not work with NAT after High Sierra 10.13.x Update

macOS High Sierra 10.13 may cause VM network connection issues under NAT networking mode.

This issue is resolved.

Known Issues:

Unable to use App Store to upgrade macOS 10.13 or 10.14 VM

Attempting to upgrade macOS to 10.13 or 10.14 via the App Store may fail.

We are working on fix for this issue. Workaround is to manually download latest macOS 10.13 or 10.14 installer .app on the Host, transfer to the VM and upgrade using the image.

We really appreciate your help testing this software. Please share your feedback in our VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018 community.  We will try to answer any questions that you may have, and we’ll investigate any issues that are raised. We also encourage users to also share other thoughts about how we can improve or enhancements that you would like to see in future releases.

Thank you!

The VMware Fusion Team