Fusion Pro 13.5 + macOS Big Sur: No 3D support is available from the host.

[bayindirh]

Hello all,

I'm using Fusion Pro on my Mid-2014 MacBook Pro for a very long time, and I always had a single Debian Stable VM installed on it. After upgrading to Fusion 13.5, VMWare started to show "No 3D support is available from the host" warning during VM startups.

The 3D support was working before. open-vm-tools is installed the day I installed the VM (which is almost a decade ago IIRC), and everything worked perfectly. The GPUs on this particular MacBook supports Metal, too.

Any help and pointers are greatly appreciated.

Regards,

H.

[Technogeezer]

Fusion 13.5 is not supported to run on Big Sur. See  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2088571  and https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/13.5/rn/vmware-fusion-135-release-notes/index.html 

Fusion 12.2.5 was the last release to support Big Sur. It is likely that newer versions of Fusion expect hardware and software graphics features provided by Macs that are listed as supported by Monterey or later.

I would suggest that you downgrade your Fusion to 12.2.5 for that Mac. Apple doesn't support newer versions of macOS on that 2014 MacBook Pro that would match what later versions of Fusion require.  

[ColoradoMarmot]

If you’re running open core, that’s not a supported configuration, so you’re on your own.  

That Mac really should be retired at this point, there’s now way to get a supported OS on it without disabling critical security features.  It sucks, but unfortunately, there’s no other real option.

[Technogeezer]

@ColoradoMarmot That's a good point should the OP ask "If I use OpenCore to install Monterey or later, will it work?"

[bluefirestorm]

You could try adding the line

mks.mtl.allowUnsupportedDevices = "TRUE"

to the vmx configuration of the Debian VM and see whether Fusion 13.5 will use the GPU present in the 2014 MBP.

[bayindirh · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately it didn't work out.

Apparently, the new Metal renderer in 13.5 needs macOS 12. They didn't note this change anywhere, so I downgraded to 13.0.2, which has a Metal renderer which supports macOS 11.

The communication from VMWare's UI is not the most optimal, to be honest. It reports that my system supports OpenGL 4.3, but no mention that the OS is inadequate for hardware acceleration.

It's also impossible to enable GL renderer because of an obscure error message which Google knows nothing about.

Thanks a lot for the help, again.

Cheers.

[bayindirh]

No, it's not an OpenCore installation, and the OS is not patched in any way. Plus, it's going out of security patch coverage this year AFAIK, it recently installed some security patches.

If that OS is really unsupported, VMWare installer should warn me or refuse to install outright. I've seen it do that, so it's capable. If the installer doesn't refuse to install and doesn't show me any warnings, I expect it to work. It turned out that VMWare failed to warn me, so 13.5 has a bug in that regard.

That Mac is not my primary computer, I just refuse to create e-waste just because something is not supported for a couple of years. It's delegated to secondary tasks and doesn't leave my desk, but it's plenty useful, plus it's not directly exposed to the internet.

Thanks for your concerns,

Cheers,

H.

[bayindirh]

You're right, but 13.x never warned me or refused to install on that machine. I just double clicked, entered my password and it said I'm good to go. Also 13.0.x works as expected with GPU acceleration.

So, if it's that incompatible, the installer should warn me or refuse to install. I've seen that installer is capable of doing that, so failing to warn me is a mistake of VMWare, in my eyes.

I reverted back to 13.0.2, and that Mac will live with that version from now on. No harm done.

Cheers,

H.

[Technogeezer]

---

@bayindirh wrote:

If that OS is really unsupported, VMWare installer should warn me or refuse to install outright. I've seen it do that, so it's capable. If the installer doesn't refuse to install and doesn't show me any warnings, I expect it to work. It turned out that VMWare failed to warn me, so 13.5 has a bug in that regard.

---

It’s a good suggestion to put macOS version checks in the product.

I may be an outlier in the user community as I’ve been trained to check release notes before installing anything. VMware provides a warning. It’s just that it isn’t in the product directly. The release notes and KB article say what are considered supported and tested macOS versions,  As you find, it may be possible to install on unsupported systems, but there’s no guarantee that things will work and VMware won’t fix things that don’t. 

[bayindirh]

I always skim release notes, however, for me, the software's checks are king, because I'm very used to bend applications to my will if they agree to open in the first place. Probably due to using these things since 90s or something.

I don't expect VMWare to fix 13.5 to run with macOS 11. I agree that things move on, capabilities come and get used by applications. I expect communication.

I understand that VMWare is built as modules, and getting information from modules is not easy in some cases, but if the Metal renderer can write "Metal renderer requires macOS 12" into the log file, passing this error to "No 3D support from the host" pop-up shouldn't be that hard. Moreover, not giving any warnings in "Display" settings of the VM shouldn't be impossible.

I can understand that VMWare keeps version checks lax to allow at least some part of the product to function in unsupported OSes, and that's a good idea, but keeping the users in the dark about non-working parts is equally bad.

I'm not new to macOS either. Many of the applications warned me about unsupported features, outright incompatibilities, etc. either by refusing to update, refusing to launch, or giving correct warnings in the launch or entering to settings windows.

I'm a software developer myself, I care about these things in my code, too. I think VMWare at least should give a warning about the 3D support at least in the startup.

Or, if we insist on release notes of a minor version update (13.0.x -> 13.5.x), a big red box on the top should read "This version requires at least macOS 12 for 3D support. If you're on an older version by chance, 3D support will be unavailable on your guests. For more information click [here]."

For me, this is responsible communication, if nothing else.

[Technogeezer]

---

@bayindirh wrote:

I always skim release notes, however, for me, the software's checks are king, because I'm very used to bend applications to my will if they agree to open in the first place. Probably due to using these things since 90s or something.

I don't expect VMWare to fix 13.5 to run with macOS 11. I agree that things move on, capabilities come and get used by applications. I expect communication.

I understand that VMWare is built as modules, and getting information from modules is not easy in some cases, but if the Metal renderer can write "Metal renderer requires macOS 12" into the log file, passing this error to "No 3D support from the host" pop-up shouldn't be that hard. Moreover, not giving any warnings in "Display" settings of the VM shouldn't be impossible.

I can understand that VMWare keeps version checks lax to allow at least some part of the product to function in unsupported OSes, and that's a good idea, but keeping the users in the dark about non-working parts is equally bad.

Or, if we insist on release notes of a minor version update (13.0.x -> 13.5.x), a big red box on the top should read "This version requires at least macOS 12 for 3D support. If you're on an older version by chance, 3D support will be unavailable on your guests. For more information click [here]."

For me, this is responsible communication, if nothing else.

---

I'll disagree with you on one point. You got communication if you read the release notes. Both the Fusion 13 and 13.5 release notes tell you what OS versions are supported. They both explicitly have the first topic as "System Requirements", and they both do not include Big Sur.

We can debate whether VMware should include a warning in the software. In my opinion they're not going to build a message that you "need macOS 12 for 3D acceleration" when running on Big Sur because of the minimum system requirements for Fusion 13.5. And if they're going to notify you about an unsupported configuration through the Fusion app or nstaller (which isn't much of an installer, just a routine that copies the application bundle into /Applications) they're more likely going to throw a message that "sorry, Fusion doesn't run on this configuration) and exit.

[dempson]

---

@bayindirh wrote:

No, it's not an OpenCore installation, and the OS is not patched in any way. Plus, it's going out of security patch coverage this year AFAIK, it recently installed some security patches.

macOS Big Sur's final security update was version 11.7.10 which was released in September 2023 (the final Safari update for Big Sur was 16.6.1, later the same month).

Apple's undocumented policy since they started annual major releases is that security updates are supplied for the two major macOS versions prior to the current release, with the caveat that the older versions may miss out on some security updates (or get them later than newer versions). That means macOS 12 Monterey is the oldest version still getting security updates: its latest was in January 2024, and they will continue until about September 2024.

macOS 11 Big Sur can still get silently installed updates for Xprotect, Gatekeeper and related "security data files" which provide basic anti-malware for all recent macOS versions but do not fix known bugs or security issues. These updates are currently provided at least as far back as macOS Catalina (I haven't looked at older macOS versions recently to see if they are still getting these updates in some form).

[ColoradoMarmot]

Actually, Apple now has a documented policy.  They only guarantee security fixes for the then current release.  They will backport fixes, usually to the N-1, and sometimes N-2, rarely older, but there's no promise to do so.

Right now only Sonoma has guaranteed fixes.  Ventura will likely get the majority.  Older versions than that are hit or miss.  Folks need to start upgrading sooner (certainly within a year of release) in order to ensure that their OS is secure.  

[dempson]

To further expand on ColoradoMarmot's point:

The Apple Platform Deployment document states the official policy that only the latest OS version is guaranteed to get all security updates, in the following paragraph:

Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 14, iOS 17 and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 13, iOS 16 and so on).

This document does not specify how far back Apple will issue (at least partial) security updates (and I didn't find any others which specified this).

The observed pattern back as far as Lion is that Apple normally issues security updates for macOS versions N-1 and N-2 in sync with security updates for the latest version (N). There have been occasions where there were no security updates for N-1 and/or N-2 when the latest version got an update.

I cannot recall any N-3 security updates for macOS as far back as Lion, except for occasional overlaps around the release of the next major version.

This doesn't rule out the possibility that Apple might issue occasional N-3 security updates in future, e.g. to target a critical issue in an older macOS version which is still being used enough to justify the work. Evidence such as iOS 12.5.7 in January 2023 suggests this is more likely to happen on iOS due to its larger installed base.