My goal is to be able to turn a pc on, run a VMware type software that restricts access to only the virtualized state and utilizes as much of the computers power as possible since the pc will be used for gaming. Offering 171 fg to anyone that can explain detailed why or why not this is possible. Will offer 671 if you can do it with freeware.

I want to emphasize that the goal is to create one virtualization and if possible completely restrict the users access to that virtualization only.

Can I expect any additional lag vs not running virtualized?
Can I reach 100% of the full hardware capabilities?
Is there anything else you think I'm not mentioning that I would want to know about?

If my fg offer isn't enough let me know and I can increase it, I appreciate everyone's time in advance.

It will never be quite as good as the "real deal" but you might be able to get close
see above, also if you have good video card you will not be able to use much of it.
what is the host OS, and the guest OS?

I'm hoping to run 6970 on the gpu

Windows 7 and windows 7.

The ideal goal is to have a computer that the user can do whatever on and whenever I want to I can easily go back to its 'default' state . It's for a LAN center. Maybe I'm looking at sanboxing?

Don't use vmware for a lan center

care to explain why?

If you are expecting the users to want to play games that require dedicated video cards, I don't think VM's are a good solution. Some things that might work better:

Sandboxie (like you suggested)

Configuring the machines the way you want them, then creating an image of them so you can quickly put it back into this state.

Network booting might be an interesting solution as well, although I'm not sure if it would cause game performance problems from the data transfer delays. (I've never done anything with network booting other than just imaging machines).




Network booting might offer the interesting prospect of allowing your returning users to "pick up where they left off".

This post was edited by Azrad on Sep 5 2013 09:24am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Freeze_(software)

Might be what you're after?

Ofc, you can edit the setup by disabling deepfreeze and re-enabling it, if you're looking to manage a large number of PC's deepfreeze alongside some kind of imaging solution(pick one, there's dozens) to easily distribute a build (so you don't have to manually install bf3 everywhere for example) would pretty much solve your issues.

To keep up with driver installs and adding new games/software to the pc's you would have to alter one of the clients, re-enable deepfreeze, make an image and distribute it to all the other pc's. It's a bit of a hassle but the upside is this scales incredibly well so it's the same amount of work with 5~ or 500~ clients, just broadcast an image using PXE and all pc's will receive the image at same time because its a network-wide broadcast. So you don't have to spend 10+ hours transferring the image to each pc individually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Deployment_Services

I could probably go into a bit more detail but there's a good chance you won't use any of this so I'll wait for a response first

This post was edited by Civill on Sep 5 2013 10:14am

The only reason you would is for the cloning of machines, but the performance is insanely slow with video games. That and there are little to no good free vm solutions

correction on my post its a multicast not a broadcast**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multicast

Might make a separate thread asking about sandboxie, I can setup and image my stuff no problem it's the actual sanboxing part I was worried about. Joe Schmo comes in to play at 2pm and leaves at 5. Then Ratchet Ann comes in at 5:30 to 9. I want them to have fresh playgrounds to work with. I've dabbled with sandboxie before and it's not as user friendly as I would like. I would prefer if my customer didn't know they were in an altered environment an have to do extra things to install their games.