Unable to start a VM with Accelerate 3D enabled

[goldeneye_007]

vmWare Workstation 17.0.2 running on OpenSUSE Linux 15.4.

Trying to start a particular Windows 11 VM with ' Enable 3D acceleration' set to ON in

VM options, the VM does not start. The video inside VMware Workstation stops updating when the

VM is launched and the machine becomes unresponsive, cannot power off or suspend. Workaround

is to initiate 'Logout' to kill the Workstation process. Also note the occasional

Waiting for Connection black screen with VMware logo while attempting to boot the VM.

Disabling 'Enable 3D acceleration' solves the problem.

I have tried installing a new video card in the PC to see if that would

make a difference, it did not. Both cards are nVidia and machine is running latest 470 series drivers

from the nVidia repository.

I should also mention I have other PC's with this same configuration that are not having these issues so I feel like it may be something specific to this instance.

[goldeneye_007]

Additional information:

sandbox log suggests problem lies with Vulkan.

You can see attempts to load the video stack and then workstation just bombs creating a crash.dmp.

Pretty sure I posted the log here but looks like it got deleted.

[Doe_]

First, ensure Vulkan actually works on your system. You can run vkcube for example.

What worked for me was to add the following to  my ~/.vmware/config:

mks.forceDiscreteGPU = "TRUE"

As it was defaulting to using the CPU, for which I did not have the vulkan libs.

You might also have some luck with this, although I'd only try it if the above doesn't work.

mks.vk.allowUnsupportedDevices = "TRUE"

[goldeneye_007]

You are correct in that vulkan is broken. vkcube shows a black box with error:

MESA-INTEL: warning: Performance support disabled, consider sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0

It is possible there is some sort of bug that is causing the Intel built in GPU core to be seen instead of the nVidia one. Not sure if it is a BIOS bug or other. I imagine I could use the force-discreet option but:

.vmware/config does not exist on OpenSUSE.

The only files under .vmware are:

inventory.vmls
preferences
preferences-private
shortcuts

[Doe_]

In that case, see if glxgears and glxinfo work and use your GPU. If that works you can just force vulkan off.

mks.enableX11Presentation=TRUE
mks.enableVulkanPresentation=FALSE

Performance won’t be as good but if you don’t want to fix vulkan it is an alternative option. Not sure about openSuse and the config file, however. 

[goldeneye_007]

If I run from a shell glxgears it loads and displays just fine. vkcube though is broken.

I am investigating what has happened to vulkan on this machine as I have others that

do not present these problems.