Hi! I am running on Mac Catalina and I've seen that the Sims 3 still isn't available for 64 bit technology. Does anyone know if the Sims 3 will run on virtualbox along with wine that will allow for me to run 32 bit applications? Thanks so much!
Or if there's any easier way to run the game other than downloading an entire new client, I'd appreciate the insight :-)
@fififoofoo3123 VirtualBox is a platform for creating a virtual machine, but it's not an operating system. If you did install VirtualBox, you'd then choose the OS(s) to install inside it, and if the point is to play Sims 3, you'd be best off installing some version of Windows. In that case, you technically wouldn't need Wine or any other support software—the game runs fine in any version of Windows from XP to 10.
However, the drivers you would get are terrible. I have Windows 10 installed in VirtualBox, and I couldn't install a compatible graphics driver; I was stuck with the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, which would run almost any game very poorly. (I tried out Sims 4, just to see, and my fps was as low as 0.7, as in, less than 1.) This is due to the way the VM is built and can't really be overcome: the VM doesn't have direct (or direct enough) access to the system's hardware, so it can only do software-based graphics rendering.
Wine can and will use the drivers installed on your system, since it acts as a layer between your operating system and the programs you're trying to run, translating the various information back and forth. However, wine doesn't have drivers of its own. So if it's installed within a VM, it will only have access to the VM drivers, not any operating purely within macOS. This is true no matter what operating system you installed in the VM.
I don't know if Linux has graphics rendering software—not drivers that access the hardware, just software-only rendering—that's adequate to run Sims 3 at a playable quality. I do know that a number of people play Sims 3 in Linux OSs, but they've installed the OS on their hard drives, either alone or in a dual-boot configuration, not in a VM. This is something you could ask about on Linux forums, or maybe on the Sims 3 Steam forum, where I think there are at least a few Linux/Wine players.
This all seems like a lot of work though, and without a guarantee that you'll get the results you want. A much easier approach would be to Bootcamp your Mac, i.e. to partition your hard drive and install Windows on one side. This is supported by Apple—Bootcamp Assistant is built into the OS, and Apple offers Bootcamp-specific drivers, including a GPU driver, that work quite well. I Bootcamped my Mac two years ago specifically to run Sims 3, and it's worked out great. Others have done the same, largely without problems. It should be noted however that if your Mac's hardware isn't strong enough to handle Sims 3, or at least its most demanding packs, that will still be true in Windows.
The one downside is that you do need a Windows 10 license. But you can actually install Windows first, make sure it and the game work, then buy the license key and register it after the fact. That way, you're not wasting your money if you decide you don't like the setup and end up wiping the partition.
If you want more information about Bootcamp, feel free to ask.
