Details of the latest update to Parallels Desktop have been released, and probably the most exciting has to be 3D support. This finally allows OpenGL and DirectX games like Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike to be played within a Windows virtual machine, without having to restart into a boot-camped Windows install. How awesome is that!!

The one thing missing from the press release it exactly what version of DirectX is supported. My hope (as is every gamer interested in this) is that it will support DirectX 9, but the upgrade page states that Vista Aero support is “coming soon”, which suggests that it does not support DirectX 9 just yet (DX9 is a requirement of Aero).

This would really complete the move for me, as it was always a bit of a nuisance to have to restart whenever I wanted to play a Windows game. If it works as well as Parallels are saying it will, I will be promptly deleting my Boot Camp partition and installing all my games in Mac OS X since gaming is all that it is used for

The other two major features of this update are SmartSelect, which lets you assign Windows programs to open files from Mac OS X’s Finder, and vice versa, allowing files from Windows Explorer to open in Mac OS X programs, and Snapshots which allows you to “undo” any changes to a virtual machine. The latter is one of the features that I really like about Microsoft Virtual PC, and I am glad to see it make it to Parallels.

More details of this major update is available on the upgrade pre-order page.