Direct3D not working properly in Fusion 3, running bootcamp install of Windows 7 RC

[Shaolo]

Hello,

I want to start off by saying how much I liked Fusion 2.06. I was extremely eager for the Win7 3D support in Fusion 3. Alas, it doesn't work for me. In fact, it's less useable than 2.06. Images and an explanation below.

Setup:

OSX 10.6.1

Windows 7 RC

Altium Designer Winter 09 and Summer 09 (both tested, same results)

17" Apple MacBook Pro Unibody with both integrated and discrete graphics.

I'm an Electrical Engineer. So all the software I use is more or less Windows based. I love my mac, and I prefer to run windows through Fusion if at possible. I use a program called Altium Designer. Altium uses Direct3D for all of their PCB layout drawing routines. Both in 2D and 3D. Using Fusion 2.06 I had issues with these routines. If I wanted to draw a trace, the trace would not be displayed while moving. BUT, the rest of the board was displayed just fine. 3D mode failed to run completely because I did not have a 3D compatible driver.

Install Fusion 3 and everything fails to work. The parts of the board that were being rendered properly before fail completely now.

Here is an example of what the file should look like while using Fusion 2.06: http://img.skitch.com/20091106-si92hg72dchbijuurij252r2w.jpg

Here's what it looks like in Fusion 3: http://img.skitch.com/20091106-f3yqyqyy5d332fahpqjyyn7aqp.jpg

The other issue is how incredibly slow Fusion 3 has become. 2.06 was fast enough to be useable. 3 is slow all around. It makes it painful to use. I've stopped using Fusion as a result and now just boot in to boot camp.

This has me very disappointed. I waited months for Fusion 3 to come out and was severely let down.

I hope that someone can help me figure this out. However, as there are no 3D settings per se, I don't have much hope.

[admin]

Hi Shaolo,

Thanks for letting us know about this issue. I've followed a bug with our developers, referencing this thread and being sure to point our your very illustrative screen captures.

They're working now to reproduce -- and resolve -- this issue. I can't offer you an ETA, but I will keep you updated with their progress.

Stephen

[pjkay]

I'd like to confirm the same problem (3d not working with Altium) on an older Macbook Pro with Nvidia GeForce 8600 M GT discrete graphics with 512 MB VRAM. The virtual machine is running Windows XP SP3 under VMware Fusion 3.0 and has all updates installed.

I believe that you can turn 3d off in Altium Designer by navigating to DXP -> preferences -> PCB Editor -> Display and unchecking the "Use DirectX if possible" box. I did this and everything runs fine, albeit in 2d only.

On XP, you can also run dxdiag.exe from the command line and turn 3d off from there.

[admin]

Thanks very much for the additional data, ; I'll pass this on to the developers.

You make a good point about disabling DirectX (and hence 3D); it sounds like a good workaround until we can get this issue resolved.

[wila]

Hi

Welcome to the VMware forums!

As you mention that you are using Windows 7, you might be interested to know that there are in fact 2 display drivers you can use.

The default display driver used for Windows 7 is the WDDM driver. This is the new driver that supports things like aero, but it is not as full fledged and robust on some parts as the old XPDM driver (the VGA II driver you also used in Fusion 2.0.x).

If you don't mind loosing aero for now, then I'd suggest changing the display driver to the non fancy pancy VGA II driver and see if that helps you to be able to get your work done in the PCB application.

Here are some notes on how-to switch between the two display drivers.

I suggest to take a snapshot before switching so you can easily switch back.

6.0 Windows 7 - Install SVGA II

1) Open Device Manager from Control Panel

2) Expand Display Adapters entry

3) Right click on VMWare SVGA 3D (WDDM) and click properties

4) Click on Uninstall Button

5) Check the “Delete the driver software for this device” option

6) Click OK

7) Your screen may flicker as the driver is removed.

😎 Close Device Manager and reboot Windows 7.

9) Windows will default to the Standard VGA device

10) Open Device Manager, expand Display Adapters

11) Right Click Standard VGA and select Properties

12) Click on Update Driver

13) Click on Browse my Computer

14) Browse to directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\video

15) Click Next

16) Confirm driver installation

17) Close window and reboot

7.0 Windows 7 – Revert to WDDM

1) Open Device Manager from Control Panel

2) Expand Display Adapters entry

3) Right click on VMWare SVGA II and click properties

4) Click on Driver tab

5) Select Update Driver

6) Select Browse My Computer for driver software

7) Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video

😎 Driver will report successful installation. Reboot as requested.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[snake22]

Hi,

I'm running Windows XP on a Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Core

Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4870

Tested altium and it's completely unusable. The vmWare machine locks up for many seconds when altium is trying to draw graphics.

Any special problems on the ATI cards or Fusion 3 in general ?

[1998neon]

Unfortunately the driver change solution did not help for me (NVidia 9600). Disabling the directX in Altium helped, but this solution should be temporarily as mentioned above.

I hope VMWarew will fix this soon.

TRS

[Shaolo]

Just bumping this back up hoping to get a solution soon. Would be happy to try out a beta driver too.

[1998neon]

Unfortunately the Fusion 3.0.1 does not fix this problem. (at least for me the 3d is not working, I still have to use the 2D mode) Which is a shame, it worked in VMWare fusion 2 series and it works with Parallels 4 and even with the 5 series....maybe b/c I use 64bit W7 ?

.

[CoronaFire]

I too use Altium Designer on a daily basis, and have been waiting for a long time to get 3d working in vmware. I still use it every day in vmware fusion (since version 1 days) but with directx turned off in altium prefs. The 3d features of altium are great to use and I very much hope they can be made to work soon.

I recently tried parralels (V5.0.9blah) and the 3d actually worked great there, looked perfect and was very fast. To your credit though vmware is far far more stable for me, I found numerous programs that didn't work properly in parallels, and it crashed a lot more in various ways, so I'm still using vmware and lamenting the lack of 3d in altium

For me, when I enable directx (summer 09 version of altium) every object being displayed turns to flat yellow/white. in 3d rendering there is still some shape to some objects, ie a certain amount of shading is taking place, but other than that it is all one flat colour. On top of that is is painfully slow, as in a pan operation will take about 30 seconds to update the screen, which normally is a realtime operation.

I've attached a picture of a board being displayed in 3d mode in vmware 3.0.1; running on macbook pro early 08, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, OSX 10.6.2.

Also, a fully functional trial of altium can be downloaded from http://trial.altium.com/ if that helps you diagnose the problem.

Regards,

Andrew Leech

eidt: oh yeah, I never had any direct x working at all in vmware fusion 2 series, altium wouldn't even try to enable it, so 3.0.x is a step in the right direction. Also I'm running altium on windows xp sp2 boot camp'd. The same install booted natively has working 3d not-surprisingly. Also, I was in the IRON-BETA testing group for workstation some time back when it first got 9.0c support, and altium did the same thing there. I posted on the beta board about it at the time, had a little discussion on the topic but nothing ever came of it.

[lscall]

I have been also part of the beta testing community and reported the issues with 3D and Altium designer already including the link to the trial of Altium Designer. I am running Fusion 3.01 on a Mac Pro with a GeForce 7300GT, Win XP SP2 and Altium Designer.

I hope VM Ware is working on these issues and just for further reference I have attached a screenshot of the 3D graphics I can get when enabling 3D. When trying to enable a second core, I can not see any significant difference compared to one core only.

It is interesting to see that Parallels can manage it, but as other users have reported, Fusion is by far superior otherwise and hope our patience is rewarded sooner than later.

Cheers

[Shaolo]

Just wanted to drop a note in the forums again. The latest release of Fusion does NOT fix the 3D problem. It's still useless.

[brouhaha]

It's not just fusion.  Same problems are present in Workstation 7.1.3 on Linux:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1688272