It is possible via Oracle VM in Windows 2000+, but is there a possibility to get Windows 98 emulated with access to the real graphics card?

So far I tried Oracle VM and Microsoft Virtual PC, both are disappointing when it comes to Windows 98.

No, only Windows 2000 and up, and only in Oracle VirtualBox with the Guest Additions.

Enable 2D and 3D acceleration, and install VirtualBox's Guest Additions while you're in safe mode in Windows 98.

Dunno if it will work 100%, but you can try.

No, it emulates S3 cards(think it is the Virge). If you are wanting to run games from that era it should be fine though as the S3 cards could do OpenGL and D3D. Remember having one as my first ever graphics card and could run System Shock 2 and Nocturne etc on it using D3D, could also run Blade Runner in Direct Draw on it.

Why don't you buy yourself a PCI Voodoo3 and install Win98 as a second OS. THAT is fun :-)

Strange, THPS2 doesn't want to run properly (can not see the menu) because it has no 3D. Is there anything I need to install? I have DirectX 7 installed and Windows has automatically installed that S3 driver. It only gives me the ability to use DirectDraw, but not Direct3D

EDIT: Got it running in software mode but now the window doesn't scale.

EDIT2: After more searching, Virtual PC 2007 had the drivers I need but the new one not anymore since there is no more Windows 98 support. And all external download links are spam that want me to either send e-mail address or register (even ZDnet). So where do I get VM Additions S3 Trio32/64?

You can get Virtual PC 2007 directly from Microsoft.

Emulation = no way to access to real hardware of the PC (ie the hardware is "emulated" in full, with different degrees of accuracy), the only solution for proper retrogaming.

Virtualization = controlled access to real hardware of the PC, just plain useless for retrogaming needs.

You could try the HP Pavillion (desktop machine from that era that had a dedicated S3 VGA card). Not sure if it will work though on a VM. Download available from CNET :

http://download.cnet.com/HP-Pavilion-S3-Trio-64-32-Video-Driver/3000-2108_4-10005659.html

Not sure if installing a driver will work on a VM but worth giving a shot, you may have to extract files to a folder from the download then go to the device manager and manually update driver pointing to your extracted folder.

This is pretty much the crux. I wouldn't say virtualisation is useless for retrogaming - stuff that doesn't require D3D acceleration should be OK under Win 98 if you run it under the VBEMP drivers.

Nor would I say that emulation does not necessarily have access to the actual hardware. There are patches for DOSBox. for example, that provide passthrough support for 3D acceleration by providing a Glide wrapper with access to D3D calls.

The trade-off in this is that every piece of real hardware you give the emulator access to reduces your compatibility.

No, it is not.

Two, or maybe three, things I'm still waiting for related to PC retrogaming:

- Successfully virtualized Win98SE environment, with emulated Direct3D support. For those few problematic games which seem to have issues in newer Windows releases (usually they fail already in WinXP) and/or new graphics drivers. Then I could finally give my Win98 machines a rest.

- Better Roland MT-32/CM-32L/LAPC-1 sound emulation in e.g. DOSBox. The current one (unofficial) is pretty crappy, or at least when I last tried it. Then I could finally give my Roland CM-32L a rest.

- Better Roland Sound Canvas (SCC-1) emulation. There was some pretty good software synth from Roland itself, but I recall it took quite a lot of CPU power, and I think it was discontinued a long time ago, I don't know what is the latest Windows release where it would still work anyway. Then I could give my Roland SCC-1 a rest.

The last one is not a biggie though, usually General MIDI through DOSBox (using default Windows GMIDI softsynth) is good enough for "SCC-1" games.

Have you tried latest version of MUNT (from X'2011)? I don't know how REAL MT sounded but I tried this version of MUNT on WC1, Red Baron, SQ and there was NO comparision to FM music/sound effect.

Yes it is, because it's just capable of using real "new" hardware features, so no compatibility with retrogames that need real or emulated "old" hardware features to work properly....