Critical BUG with rendering engine on Windows 11 Guest

[Soskaarcu]

Hi all !

There is a critical bug with the rendering engine of VMware , both Player and Workstation with Windows 11 Guests since the first public beta I've tried every single version and the bug is stuck there.

The bug itself looks like this , when you have checked the 3D Acceleration on the VM settings tab:

Several applications (such as: Opera, Brave Browser, Viber etc.)  have major misrendering like this:

OperaBraveViber

When you have turned off the 3D acceleration , then everything is fine again.

The full  specifications is : I have connected to the host through the RDP service, the host itself is a Windows 10 Home x64 /  21H1 19043.1415

The guest (as I have told above) several different (if not all) versions of Windows 11 from the first public beta to the latest stable versions.. this bug is in all the versions I have tested so far.

[bluefirestorm]

Questions:
#1 Does the problem show up if you don't use RDP but access on the host machine directly?
#2 What is the version of VMware Tools? This has a direct effect on the version of the SVGA 3D driver version.
#3 This could be a problem specific to certain graphics hardware. Is your host using Intel integrated graphics, Nvidia, or AMD graphics? Is it a laptop that has dual graphics (one integrated to CPU and another discrete) that switches according to power profile?

There are a few other things to try, instead of disabling 3D graphics on the VM, you could change the browser settings instead. I don't use Opera/Brave browser, but looks like they are Chromium-based browsers (just like Edge and of course Chrome, so find the equivalent in Opera and Brave).

With Chrome, Edge you can change ANGLE graphics to OpenGL instead of Default D3D11
chrome://flags/#use-angle
edge://flags/#use-angle

If that doesn't resolve the problem, you could try disabling hardware acceleration at the browser instead.
chrome://settings/system
edge://settings/system

turn off "Use hardware acceleration when available"

The answer to #3 might give other options but try first the browser settings but keeping the VM 3D acceleration on.

[Soskaarcu]

#1 Does the problem show up if you don't use RDP but access on the host machine directly?

Yes , the bug is there in both RDP and in console session mode.

#2 What is the version of VMware Tools? This has a direct effect on the version of the SVGA 3D driver version.

Workstation Pro 16.2.1 build-18811642

VMWare Tools : 11.3.5.31214

#3 This could be a problem specific to certain graphics hardware. Is your host using Intel integrated graphics, Nvidia, or AMD graphics? Is it a laptop that has dual graphics (one integrated to CPU and another discrete) that switches according to power profile?

Host Machine : Lenovo B70-80 with dual VGA : Intel "APU" + NVidia GeForce 920M - 2048MB , configured to use the NVidia display adapter  as Primary Display Adapter with the latest official Microsoft  drivers for Windows 10 x64 21H2

...

As the problem looks persistent , and seems to be in other than Chromium based softwares , such like as Viber... I suspect  this is just a strange incompatibility issue between the new color space management in Windows 11  ( I mean the HDR color space management) and the SVGA protocol in VMWare Tools.

Some windows or tooltabs look like it they was transparent , or something like this..

[bluefirestorm]

So did you try the ANGLE workaround anyway with Opera and Brave browsers? I don't use Viber but if Viber was written with Qt it would also be using ANGLE graphics; but I wouldn't know how to change the ANGLE renderer (whether in Viber itself or Qt).

Rakuten Viber looks for C++ developers with Qt skills
https://www.viber.com/en/careers/desktop-developer-c-qt/
https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_5_on_Windows_ANGLE_and_OpenGL

I suggest you update to the latest available Nvidia driver (version 425.31 from 2019 seems to be the last update to Nvidia 920M). Sometimes Windows update does not update to the latest that Nvidia has available.
https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/145874/en-us

Assuming you set from Nvidia Control Panel that Nvidia is the default graphics processor, you can try switch to using OpenGL, add the following lines to the vmx file. Shut down the VM first before editing the vmx file, and make a backup of it before editing if you want to be cautious.

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

If you leave the default graphics processor in the Nvidia Control Panel, it can use the Intel GPU (looks like it is Intel HD 5500 for the Lenovo B70-80 with Nvidia 920M), the problem might be worse and affect even things like the Windows logon. I haven't tried this using GLRenderer with Intel HD in a long time (with HD630) but that was what happened with Workstation Pro version 12.5.x and the Windows 10 logon screen also had white circle for the avatar.

[MikhailT]

Hi, 

I'm using MS Edge Canary that is now affected. Edge stable is fine. 

The Angle switch to openGL was the first thing I did as this bug was in Chrome last year but this time, it isn't working. 

I switched the VM to OpenGL and it still didn't work. I also switched the browser's flag to use OpenGL and it still didn't work. 

I'm using 497.29 nvidia drivers on Windows 11, VMware Workstation 16.2.1 build-18811642. 

Note this is the actual VM, no RDP or anything like that. 

[bluefirestorm]

It looks like for Edge (version 96.0.1054.62), it does not make a difference if you have use-angle as Default, OpenGL, or D3D11. You can see it from edge://gpu version information with the GL_RENDERER, cross check it with the Command Line flag that which use-angle flag is in effect.

--use-angle=gl or use-angle=d3d11 or default
ANGLE (Unknown, VMware SVGA 3D Direct3D11 vs_4_1 ps_4_1, D3D11-8.17.3.5)
--use-angle=d3d9
ANGLE (Unknown, VMware SVGA 3D Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0, vm3dum64_loader.dll-8.17.3.5)
--use-angle=d3d11on12
ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.2.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero) (0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver-5.0.0)

Even for Edge on a physical laptop, it is the same (i.e. #use-angle Default, OpenGL, D3D11 results in the same GL_RENDERER in edge://gpu)

For Chrome --use-angle=gl and --use-angle=d3d11on12 uses the same GL_RENDERER

So you might want to try d3d11on12 or d3d9 for the Edge canary. If that doesn't workaround that render problems, you could try the vmx workaround.

[MikhailT]

Thanks!

Using D3D11on12 instead of OpenGL did fix this issue. 

vmx workaround did not work at all for me. 

[Soskaarcu]

Try the original workaround i've talked about : to simply turn off the 3D acceleration on the VM settings tab.. but !

To tell you all the truth i've posted this discussion as a BUG REPORT for VMWare developers ( who hopefully will recover the REASON of this issue ) and NOT to make workarounds on this issue....

[TYL201110141]

The issue actually started with Workstation 15 after some updates.  Of course, that is hind sight.  It was the main reason I upgraded to version 16.  But the issue persists.  I don't have enough technical prowess to figure out what the problem is.  Thank you for your suggestion.  I turned off 3D acceleration and the issue goes away.

[TYL201110141]

BTW, the issue happens with Windows 10 as well.

[Ion_Raid]

See my thread!

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Problem-with-Microsoft-Edge-Windows-11-and-...

Thanks.

[Kinnison]

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[klepp0906]

just  found this looking for a solution, its not purely browser related.  the dropbox client window also becomes ghostly/transparent and all but unreadable on a 11 guest. 

i guess i'll be turning off hardware acceleration for the time being it sounds like.   add that to windows 11 seeing the virtual adapters as unidentified/public.  its been fun so far. 

[Kinnison]

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