Windows 7/Vista Aero on Apple Silicon with patched QEMU + DXVK + MoltenVK

[The-Sequence]

I got Windows 7 SP1 x64 and Windows Vista SP2 x64 running with working Aero glass on an Apple Silicon Mac. The guest uses VMware’s WDDM 1.0 display driver; a patched QEMU/qemu-vmvga device translates its SVGA3D (D3D9-class) commands through DXVK and MoltenVK to Metal.

Project and screenshots: https://github.com/The-Sequence/aero-on-apple-silicon

What currently works:

• Aero glass, Flip 3D, transparency, and full-colour composition
• WinSAT completes (6.0 graphics on Windows 7; 5.9 on Vista)
• Exact dynamic resizing and sharp Retina output without installing VMware Tools
• Clipboard sharing, audio, networking, and a guided installer/control screen

A few technical findings may be useful beyond this project: a sparse GMR 0 compatibility quirk in the VMware driver, a dead D3D9 shadow-sampling branch that caused MoltenVK/SPIRV-Cross to type colour textures as Metal depth textures, and several resource-lifetime issues behind VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST. The full write-up, measurements, patches, and opt-in switches are here:

https://github.com/The-Sequence/aero-on-apple-silicon/blob/main/TECHNICAL.md

Important distinction: this is a standalone patched-QEMU build today, not a UTM configuration or UTM integration. Apple Silicon still has to emulate the x86 CPU with TCG, so CPU-heavy workloads are slow, the working graphics path is D3D9-class only, and high resolutions can freeze because presentation still reads frames back to the CPU.

I am sharing it here because it addresses the long-standing Windows 7 Aero/3D question on Apple Silicon and because parts of the QEMU, VMware SVGA3D, DXVK, and MoltenVK investigation may be useful to people working on UTM graphics. Feedback on the architecture and remaining command-processing bottleneck is very welcome.