Parallels 3.0 for Mac to feature 3D GPU emulation

Parallels has announced version 3.0 of its popular Mac virtualization package, offering long-anticipated emulation of 3D accelerated GPUs, allowing high-end Windows games to run in virtualization.

The company said it was just weeks away from the new release and named several key selling points:

Smartselect: the ability to associate a document on the OS X file structure to open in a Windows program, and vice versa. No more laborious switching to the virtualized OS and navigating to the file you want to open in your Mac shared folders.
3D GPU emulation: Parallels is also touting the ability to "run the hottest games and graphics applications" with 3D with support for graphics software.
Snapshot manager: Take a snapshot of your virtual machine and roll back to it easily if you mess something up.

The company also promised the ability to browse through Windows folders in the virtual machine file, without launching Windows itself and a new USB connection assistant that automatically senses the type of device you've plugged in and connects it to either OS X or your virtualized operating system, depending on what you've chosen in the past.

Parallels Inc is offering $10 off the normal upgrade price to existing registered users of Parallels for a week only, bringing the cost down to $39.99 USD. After this time, upgrades will cost $49.99 and full licences will cost $79.99. It will give the upgrade away free to customers who purchased Parallels after May 1, 2007.

View: Pre-Order the Upgrade
News source: APC Mag (with screenshots)