Fusion 5.0.3 + 10.8.3 VM + Apple Preview + COLLADA == Crash

[asmaloney]

Fusion 5.0.3 w/Mac OS X 10.8.3 VM on 10.6 & 10.7 hosts

Trying to open any COLLADA .dae file crashes Apple Preview.  Does not crash a "real" install of 10.8.3, so it's something wrong with virtualization.

Attached is the COLLADA reference cube.

Anyone have ideas on how to fix/work around this?  Is there somewhere to file bug reports (if so it has eluded me)?

Thanks!

- Andy

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

Hi Andy, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

Thanks for the detailed post!  I can easily reproduce the problem here using the information you gave.

It looks like one of the components that Preview is using (SceneKit) is not handling the lack of hardware 3D acceleration correctly (or mishandling some other attribute of the Mac OS software 3D renderer), which is the ultimate cause of the failure.  A VMware Mac OS virtual machine does not have hardware 3D acceleration, and nor does a physical Mac booted in Safe Mode, so it's possible reproduce the same crash without VMware Fusion by booting a physical Apple Mac into Safe Mode (hold Shift when you press the Mac's power button to turn it on)... then try to open the same file in Preview on the host, and you'll see exactly the same failure.  So it's not directly VMware Fusion's fault, although perhaps if we had 3D acceleration for Mac OS guests it might not happen in our virtual machines...

I've reported the issue to Apple with the above details.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[asmaloney]

Darius:

Thanks for the analysis and for reporting it to Apple.  I sent in the crash reports as well.

A VMware Mac OS virtual machine does not have hardware 3D acceleration, and nor does a physical Mac booted in Safe Mode, so it's possible reproduce the same crash without VMware Fusion by booting a physical Apple Mac into Safe Mode (hold Shift when you press the Mac's power button to turn it on)... then try to open the same file in Preview on the host, and you'll see exactly the same failure.

So it's not directly VMware Fusion's fault, although perhaps if we had 3D acceleration for Mac OS guests it might not happen in our virtual machines...

Ah - didn't realize that about Safe Mode.  Sorry for blaming virtualization :smileysilly:

So when is Fusion going to support 3D acceleration for Mac OS X guests? 

- Andy

[dariusd]

Hi Andy,

So when is Fusion going to support 3D acceleration for Mac OS X guests? 

We can't speculate on future features/timelines, sorry.  We're aware of the increasing need for Mac OS guest 3D acceleration support... the issue definitely has our attention.

--

Darius

[asmaloney]

I'm a software developer so I get it.  In fact I use Fusion to support Mac OS 10.6-10.8 and Windows XP-7 versions of my software (hosted on 10.6) which is how I ran into this issue to begin with.

Thanks again.

- Andy