I have several space combat games that run on windows 98 under 16 bit color and use a joystick to maneuver my ship. Yet in all the times that I've had a win 98SE VM in VMware player, I could never attain a color depth of 16 bit color - the only choices that were in the guest's color settings under control panel > display where 24 bit color true color and 256 colors, 16 bit color should appear as a selectable choice between these two other color choices.

How can I get 16 bit color thousands of colors in the win 98SE guest in VMware player? Am running VMware player v3.

Thanks in advance.

If you have the VM Additions graphics driver loaded you sould see 16 Bit color as an option. Check the Virtual PC Console (before you start the VM). Ensure that the Display settings specify Allow any screen resolution.

Pardon me - did you say virtual pc? I thought we were talking about VMware player, not virtual pc in this new thread. We solved the virtual pc issues last night, remember?

I understand VMware player uses tools rather than additions like virtual pc uses.

They are there for me - did you update the VMware SVGA II driver?

Image of Windows 98

I never heard of this driver, but I heard of the VMware tools, isn't this the same thing? I'm positive that I've installed VMware tools, but it didn't get me the 16 bit color option in the win 98SE guest display settings.

If this is something different from VMware tools, how exactly do I update the driver, and where do I get the update from?

Edit - just saw your screenshot, inland. I see 16 colors, 256 colors and true color, but no 16 bit color. 16 bit color is different than 16 colors. 16 bit color is thousands of colors, and is just underneath 32 bit color, which is true color, but above 256 colors. 16 colors is underneath 256 colors.

In other words, I was asking about how to get 16 bit (thousands of colors) in VMWare Player's Win 98SE guest rather than saying that I had only 16 colors.

Ah, you're trying to use the high color resolutions. I've not seen them available for Windows 9x, however there may be alternative video drivers to enable those modes.

The only OS I've run under VPC/VMware that supported them was Windows 3.1.

Ok, which drivers do you recommend? Maybe the s3 driver for virtual pc 2004 - will this run in VMware player v3?

Inferno recommended the Uvbe51A and Uvesa drivers, but the link for uvesa doesn't work anymore so you have to download it through the ***web archive***, which is incredibly slow at the moment.

Inferno's site:
http://home.earthlink.net/~infernoj13usa/ComputeSpecs.htm

This is the site with the Uvbe51A download
http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/scitech/

Take your pick. I don't know which one would be better for your purposes.

No, I doubt the VPC drivers would run under VMware player. I downloaded several S3 drivers (the official OEM types) for Virtual PC several years ago.

Edit -

I've restored an XP VM under VMware Player - it supports 16 bit resolutions. You can try using that OS... as a plus, XP also supports 3D acceleration.