VirtualBox 7.0 Released - Full VM Encryption Support, Direct3D Acceleration Using DXVK

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VirtualBox 7.0 Released - Full VM Encryption Support, Direct3D Acceleration Using DXVK

It's been a long time since last having anything significant to report on for Oracle's VM VirtualBox software: VirtualBox 6.0 debuted in 2018 and VirtualBox 6.1 in 2019, but since has been rather quiet... But out today is now VirtualBox 7.0 with big features like support for full virtual machine encryption and a new Direct3D 11 based graphics stack, which for Linux use is now going through DXVK...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/VirtualBox-7.0-Released

[dragorth]

All right, so why did they switch to vorbis from opus? My understanding is Opus is the newer and better codec from the same group.

[Danny3]

How about open sourcing and upstreaming whatever is needed for Virtualbox to get into Debian's repository and to have more features work without the extension pack?
I assume that the GPU passthrough is still not working like in QEMU.

[SquidHM3]

I'll give this a spin to see if it'll run Windows games on my linux box - well those pesky ones that are harder to mod anyhow. It'll be more of an experiment, in case I can't get the same games to run nicely in this fresh install of Garuda I'm on. As for switching to vorbis, maybe support for older devices? I don't get that one either..

[JPFSanders]

What does using DXVK mean exactly? We can run DirectX 9/10/11 programs almost at bare metal speed like with Proton in VirtualBox now?

[Quackdoc]

I was almost excited about the new 3d things, then I downloaded it on windows, to give it a good chance, made a new VM, clicked the settings, and vram is still limited to 256MB? maybe it's a dynamic thing, so I go ahead and install windows, install the guest additions, open dxdiag and dx11.1 with 2gb vram + 2gb shared. not bad? load up valley and it's unusable pretty much, 2 fps. guess ill pirate some actual games and see how the wind blows.. but.... not promising

[JPFSanders]

I was almost excited about the new 3d things, then I downloaded it on windows, to give it a good chance,

According to the changelog DXVK is used in the Linux version, not on Windows, on Windows they use their own DX engine.

[SteamPunker]

Just when I had all but given up on seeing some exciting new development happening with VirtualBox, there is this major release. Good job, VirtualBox developers.

Devices: The EHCI and XHCI USB controller devices are now part of the open source base package

Okay, that's genuinely nice to see. It would have been nice if they had open-sourced the NVMe emulation feature as well, but since VirtualBox already has support for virtio-scsi in it's Open Source Edition, that's okay. (I really hope they finally fixed Windows guest support for virtio-scsi in this release, though.)

[gbcox]

All right, so why did they switch to vorbis from opus? My understanding is Opus is the newer and better codec from the same group.

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. My understanding also is that in the lossy world opus is superior to vorbis, so why the switch?

According directly from xiph:

Does Opus make all those other lossy codecs obsolete?

Yes.

From a technical point of view (loss, delay, bitrates, ...) Opus renders Speex obsolete and should also replace Vorbis and the common proprietary codecs too (e.g. AAC, MP3, ...).

Since February 2013,^[27] Xiph.Org has stated that the use of Vorbis should be deprecated in favor of the Opus codec, which is also a Xiph.Org Foundation project and also free and open-source. Compared to Vorbis, Opus can simultaneously achieve higher compression efficiency—per both Xiph.Org itself and third-party listening tests^[28][29]—and lower encode/decode latency (in most cases, low enough for real-time applications such as internet telephony or live singing, rarely possible with Vorbis).^[30]

[ryao]

How does this use DXVK? It is meant as a replacement for the Windows userland libraries, not a driver behind the Windows userland libraries.

If they adapted it to implement the driver side bits, then Intel could repurpose it to avoid needing to work on D3D11 on Windows.