vmware Workstation 16 and Win 10 Pro x64 with underlying Intel iRISxe Graphics (works fine)

[BRaymarK]

I don't know who might be interested in this, but figured I'd share some comments on running LOTRO in a virtual machine since I just set up a new laptop.
Not previously having systems that seemed to work well with LOTRO in a virtual machine, I decided to try again since I had an unused
Windows 10 Pro x64 activation key and figured it was a worthwhile experiment for a number of reasons.

For reference, the laptop is:

Produce Name: HP Envy Laptop 17-ch0xxx
System Family: HP Envy
Processor Type: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80 GHz
Total Memory: 16GB
Graphics: Integrated Intel iRISxe

The VM has 8GB RAM, 2GB of graphics RAM, and 2 Cores. Naturally, 3D graphic support is enabled.

After Windows install (nothing added except vmware tools - essential), LOTRO was installed.
After the initial install "finished" it let me try to launch the game, but it crashed so had to be restarted.
At this point it offered to install additional software and to use DirectX 11 vs. DirectX 9. I accepted both.

Everything except the camera worked fine at this point. Using mouse buttons to walk / control the camera was a disaster.
I do have a Logitech Gaming Mouse and it runs through a KVM, so unsure what interactions were at play. The mouse
samples pretty high, but I don't have it set insanely fast, and, besides, the KVM does emulate keyboard/mouse so
doesn't necessarily pass-through the mouse as-is.

I'd read that for best graphics performance, I should run the VM full-screen, so I did do that (which makes sense anyway to lessen likelihood of mousing out of the VM).
To make things easier, the VM options were edited and set to go full screen automatically when the VM powers up.

To play at all, I had to set Options | Input | Mouse Look Sensitivity to 0.00. Even 0.01 was too twitchy!
I also ramped up Options | Input | Mouse Look Sensitivity to 0.50 or higher.

With these settings I was able to wander around and mostly play except that it was still too easy to get my view off. It was important to use the WASD keys more than the mouse.
Setting Camera Aligns to Slopes [x] helped a lot. I tried a few other things, but they didn't seem to improve the situation.
I could landscape relatively well, but there's no way I'd want to use this in a heated battle.

After digging around a bit, I stumbled across How to disable mouse integration in VMware Workstation Player?.
This answer was the golden ticket for me.

I edited the .vmx file and added a line (after another one that also started with "mks."):

mks.gamingMouse.policy = "gaming"

This fixed mouse misbehavior, and now LOTRO runs really well in the VM.

I don't know how helpful this might or might not be for others, but I figured it was worth posting the information just in case.

[OghranNasty]

Out of curiosilty: why did you opt for vmware rather than hyper-v?

[BRaymarK]

Out of curiosilty: why did you opt for vmware rather than hyper-v?

I'm a Linux user wherever possible/reasonable (and have run LOTRO in Linux since I started playing in 2016). VMware Workstation/Player installs both on Windows and Linux and I prefer tools that don't lock me into high-cost operating environments. (I have quite a few computers at home). My work uses vmware. For work, I have stuff that works in vmware that doesn't work in Hyper-V. For work, we use ESXi (a lot - because of things that don't work in Hyper-V) and deploy product on Linux or UNIX. I have a Dell PowerEdge 2950 at home that has ESXi on it. Workstation lets me manipulate the ESXi server with my Linux box (before I had to use the vSphere client on a Windows machine). I believe enough in it that I personally bought it and upgraded it several times (even though as a personal user, the license would have allowed me a free license).

When I started in with virtualization/emulation, I messed around with QEMU (again, Linux) and then did quite a bit in VirtualBox. I ran into performance issues with them on my older hardware that I didn't have with vmware. (Unlike that laptop, most of my hardware is quite old.)

Example:

I could not run LOTRO in VirtualBox on this system (my main personal system since 2013):

Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0
Processor: AMD FX-6300
CPU Socket: Socket AM3+
RAM: 16 GB
Graphics: GTX 750Ti

I actually tried my vmware instance I mention above on this system last night. Though the frame rate was rather low, it was actually playable. This is a Linux system. I could not do that with Hyper-V.

I do have multiple Windows boxes at home for other family members to use. Some older, some newer. I don't like or want to use Windows, and even less Windows Server.

[cdq1958]

This is interesting to me. I dual-boot Linux and Windows. I have VMware Player on the Linux side of my system. I did have troubles running a virtual machine instance, though. This post may help me get over that virtual machine hump. That said, my machine is older and cannot go to Windows 11 (which does not cost me a penny as long as I remain in the Windows Insider program).

[BRaymarK]

I upgraded this VM to the hardware level created by VMware Workstation 17.0. The upgrade was painless, and
LOTRO updated fine even though the install was a year old. It switched the .ini without a hitch and allowed
selecting DirectX 11, which I did with no problem.

At this point I haven't played hard, but have the impression it is decent. It is not stellar as I really do not feel it
is responsive enough to run graphics "Very High" or above even though the underlying hardware is capable of it.
I was able to play a Trestlebridge mission and do Yule festival without aggravation. At "Medium" it is still evident
that graphics aren't particularly optimal (though I have not tried at all to fine tune settings). Riding a horse at 78%
makes the environment movement look a bit jerky at times but play-ability under VMware 17.0 would not put
me off when my regular system is unavailable.

[BRaymarK]

While messing around with various Windows 10 VMs, it is worth mentioning that whatever foolishness is done on the character selection screen can make you believe the game will not work. It has been apparent for a long time that the character selection screen on a non-VM game will cause my GTX 750 Ti to heat to the point that the graphics card fans ramp up gradually when on this screen to a level not seen during gameplay. Selecting a character and playing the game results in the fans slowing down. The performance issues show up particularly in a VM. It can be more evident, and, in fact, today, the animation behind the selected character was VERY slow and VERY jerky.

When I started the VM, at first, I felt the mouse was not working at all (I had moved the VM from another system), but it turned out that I just had to move the mouse by very slow increments and wait for it to show up. It would disappear with almost any movement. With this, I was able to make my character selection, and as soon as the character selection screen was gone, performance issues greatly diminished and mouse pointer usability became normal again.

It seems quite unnecessary for the character selection screen to requires more processing power than playing the game!