VMware Communities
twoez
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-27-2017 10:16 AM

3d acceleration not working (Intel HD Graphics 530 & Ubuntu host)

Hello everyone,

I am running an Ubuntu 16.04.* server edition (without desktop) and VMware Workstation 12.5.7. But I do keep getting the message that "No 3D support is available from the host" when I start my Windows 10 guest. Graphical hardware is an Intel HD Graphics 530. 3d acceleration used to work on a Windows host, but now that I switched to Ubuntu as host I can't get it to work anymore. On the host I've tried several commands to see if 3d is indeed supported, see below:

lspci | grep VGA
"00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Sky Lake Integrated Graphics (rev 06)"

glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 4.0, 256 bits)
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 17.0.7
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:

glxinfo
direct rendering: Yes

Also the command "glxgears" shows the gears rotating without any problems. I have to mention that I use x11 over ssh to show apps that require a GUI. I've also tried using a desktop interface called XFCE4 in combination with xrdp (remote desktop tool), but this method also doesn't give me OpenGL 3.* support in the Windows 10 guest. Either way I am not using Unity.

Any ideas?

3 Replies
ksc
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎09-27-2017 10:14 PM

Short version is, we have found the Intel graphics driver on Linux to be (far) too buggy to support 3d acceleration for a virtual machine.

The Intel driver is good enough for many applications, but emulating a full DirectX and/or OpenGL stack for the guest requires exotic features and applies stresses that normal applications would not see. Even displaying a basic desktop results in substantial corruption.

This is ultimately specific to the Intel (OpenGL) implementation on Linux; other graphics vendors and other OSes generally support 3d acceleration.

0 Kudos
twoez
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-27-2017 10:26 PM

Thanks for your answer. It's just that I had the 3d support working on Windows host without any issues, but I never want to go back to this terrible Windows OS.

Is it because I am not running a normal Linux desktop such as Unity? Or could it be that x11 ssh forwarding is causing problems? From what you are saying 3d acceleration isn't even possible in Ubuntu with Intel HD Graphics? I was hoping that it would and I was just doing something completely wrong...

0 Kudos
m4max
Contributor
Contributor
‎06-16-2018 03:39 AM

I am having the same issues as twoez.

VMWare: Workstation Player 12 (12.5.9 build-7535481)

host HW: Intel NUC5i7RYH

host OS: 4.4.0-128-generic #154-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 25 14:15:18 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics (rev 09)

OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Iris 6100 (Broadwell GT3)

OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 17.2.8

OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.50

OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)

OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL core profile extensions:

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 17.2.8

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

OpenGL context flags: (none)

OpenGL extensions:

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.1 Mesa 17.2.8

OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.10

OpenGL ES profile extensions:

guest OS: Windows 10

This really sucks! Any progress on encouraging Intel to fix this?

0 Kudos