3D acceleration will be disabled for VMs as DirectX 11.1 is not supported by the host

[WhiteKnight]

When I upgrade my VMware Workstation 16 installation from 16.2.0 to 16.2.1, I get an installation warning message displayed, telling me that "3D acceleration will be disabled for VMs as DirectX 11.1 is not supported by the host":

On my host, however, even the newer DirectX version 12 is installed:

What's the meaning of this error message? Does it make any sense or is it just displayed because some installer checks are not working properly?

[bluefirestorm]

What does the feature levels show in the Display tab?

If the installer is looking at the Sandy Bridge graphics, it will likely show 10_1 (which means DX10.1 features)

[WhiteKnight]

Thank you for your reply.

I'm admittedly not an expert in this area. As far as I can see the driver seems to support DirectX 11:

Yesterday, I updated to 16.2.2. The installer didn't show that message then. But I'm still curious to know what caused the above message.

[bluefirestorm]

It is missing 11_1 in the feature level. Feature 11_1 would be the DX11.1 that Workstation Pro installer is checking for.

For Nvidia, at least Maxwell Gen 2 or newer would support Feature Level 11_1. Maxwell Gen 1 supports up to feature level 11_0 only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_levels_in_Direct3D#Direct3D_12

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

I have a laptop with GTX960M (Maxwell Gen 1 so up to Feature Level 11_0 only) as render device with Intel HD 530 (has feature level up to 12_1) as display device. I did an update from 16.2.1 to 16.2.2 and I also didn't get the installation warning about 11.1 (maybe because it checked the HD530???). Ran a Windows 11 VM and it didn't disable the 3D acceleration despite that the render device supports up to feature level 11_0 only. Maybe the 3D acceleration check is not yet strict at power up of the VM.

If it does get strict about feature level 11_1 to have 3D acceleration for the VM some time in the future, you could try switching the VM to use GLRenderer by having these lines in the vmx configuration file. You might have to disable the Intel graphics at the Device Manager of the Windows 10 host just to ensure it uses the Nvidia card. The Intel graphics have some other problems when the GLRenderer is used.

mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE"
mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE"

It appears the Nvidia GTS 450 supports OpenGL 4.6 so using the GLRenderer might be a viable, albeit unsupported VMware configuration on Windows 10/11 hosts.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gts-450.c1778

[WhiteKnight]

Thanks a lot for sharing this very helpful information with me!