CUPC can run in deskphone control mode in a virtualised environment but not as a pure softphone.
This will still be the case when 8.5 is released. I believe full softphone support is roadmapped for verion 9.0.
In the meantime you could try CUPC as a softphone in your virtual environment and it may work acceptably - you just would not get any support from Cisco if you have sound quality issues.