Not 100% sure, but I was under the impression that unlike Windows (?), OSX simply does not allow you to have direct hardware access. (Plus, if Parallels was accessing the hardware directly, how would you be able to run the VM in a window while still doing OSX stuff underneath?)
Either way, there's clearly a way to make the game run significantly faster on OSX, but Valve isn't doing it for some reason.
I can't speak to OSX, but on linux I know that virtualbox likes to install kernel modules into the host. If your VM does that, then it should be able to get direct hardware access.
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Are you sure? I'd think it isn't passing function calls, but rather direct hardware access. I might be wrong.
Not 100% sure, but I was under the impression that unlike Windows (?), OSX simply does not allow you to have direct hardware access. (Plus, if Parallels was accessing the hardware directly, how would you be able to run the VM in a window while still doing OSX stuff underneath?)
Either way, there's clearly a way to make the game run significantly faster on OSX, but Valve isn't doing it for some reason.
I can't speak to OSX, but on linux I know that virtualbox likes to install kernel modules into the host. If your VM does that, then it should be able to get direct hardware access.
VirtualBox on OS X uses an installer, instead of being a .app you can drag to your Applications folder, so I assume it does as much.
VM software will not ship with drivers for all potential GPUs.
They use the platform graphics APIs like any other app.