WS15 disables 3D acceleration

[Bradall]

I have a GTS250 card (old I know), under WS14 my VM's are enabled for 3D acceleration and when VMs start there are no error messages. If I upgrade to WS15 the same VM now gets error messages that there is no 3D acceleration enabled in the host. If I uninstall WS15 and reinstall WS14 then that exact same VM starts up without any 3D acceleration error messages. Whats changed in WS15 that now results in my acceleration no longer working? If I look at the specs pages both say they need DX10.1 but obviously that can not be the case because WS14 works and WS15 doesn't. Any idea's?

[Bradall]

No responses at all.

Purchases of WS15 beware that the upgrade may make you need to purchase new hardware even if everything ran under WS14. This is not promoted on the specs sheet as being a repercussion of WS15. In my case it appears to now be the only answer, or continue to run ws14 which works fine.

WS15 causes hardware upgrade for acceleration to continue to work.

[bluefirestorm]

Don't know where you see this?

If I look at the specs pages both say they need DX10.1 but obviously that can not be the case because WS14 works and WS15 doesn't.

Support for DX10 and OpenGL 3.3 core profile inside VMs has been around since version 12. Workstation 15 added support for DX10.1, shader model 4.1, and 4x antialiasing inside VMs.

For Windows hosts, with default settings, Workstation 12/14/15 uses DX11 of the host machine to deliver the DX10/DX10.1/OpenGL 3.3 capabilities inside the VM.

On Linux hosts, Workstation 12/14/15 uses OpenGL 4.x to deliver the accelerated graphics capabilities of the VMs.

The graphic card you have supports DX10 and OpenGL 3.3 and shader model 4.0.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gts-250.c241

So if you had used this same card with Workstation 12, 3D acceleration would also not have worked with default settings.

You would have had to add entries in the vmx configuration file

mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE"

mks.enableD3DRenderer = "TRUE"

and the VM would have DX9.0c and OpenGL 2.1 capabilities with 3D acceleration enabled assuming the VM guest OS supports these.

It looks like the enableD3DRenderer option is no longer supported with version 14. Maybe the warning/error message just wasn't shown.

[Bradall]

I had WS14 and never added any entries to the VMX file on any VM that I created and never had a single error about 3D acceleration not working.

This is an item that has ONLY appeared with WS15. I can uninstall WS15 and resinstall WS14 and there is again no issues. This is on the exact same VMX file without any changes.

Quite simply WS15 has enforced some thing else that has caused this issue and requiring a subsequent Hardware upgrade. Rather bad release without any warning.

[bluefirestorm]

It does not matter what you did or did not do with the vmx configuration file. The fact remains that the GTS 250 card cannot support DX11 with a Windows host machine.

If the Workstation/Player version was 12.x, the workaround would have been to use the enableD3DRenderer option to have some scaled down 3D accelerated graphics inside VMs if the host graphics card could not support DX11.

But it looks like that option is not available starting with version 14.x.

From the vmware.log of Player 14.1.3, where vmx configuration mks.enableD3DRenderer set to TRUE

| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: Collecting RenderOps caps from D3DRenderer
| mks| I125: Failed to load D3DX9 library.
| mks| W115: D3DRenderer: Device: '\\.\DISPLAY1'
| mks| W115: D3DRenderer: GPU: 'Intel(R) HD Graphics Family' vendor=0x8086 device=0xa16 subsys=0x51414 revision=11
| mks| W115: D3DRenderer: Driver: 'igdumdim64.dll' 20.19.15.4568 WHQL=0
| mks| I125: D3DHost: Max 2D Texture Size=8192x8192
| mks| W115: D3DHost_UpdateDeviceCaps: HardwareVideo not enabled.
| mks| I125: D3D-Backend: successfully started by renderMux to do screen composition.
| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: Started D3DRenderer
| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: Found Full Renderer: D3DRenderer
| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: Stopping D3DRenderer
| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: Started MKSBasicOps
| mks| I125: MKS-RenderMain: MinimalCaps: maxTextureSize=8192
| vmx| I125: Msg_Post: Warning
| vmx| I125: [msg.mks.no3D] No 3D support is available from the host. The 3D features of the virtual machine will be disabled.

If having DX10 capabilities inside Windows VMs is a requirement, the host graphics needs to be capable of DX11/OpenGL 4.x. That has been a requirement since version 12.

[Bradall · Accepted solution]

Like I keep saying I was running WS14 and had no issues. The only response thats raising WS12 is in your replies fundamentally implying that my statements are incorrect. I'm happy to take a video and post it of WS14 running without any problems and then WS15 running with reported problems if that can convince you that I am not running WS12. Let me know what resolution you want. I've rolled forward and backards between WS14 and 15 a number of times now to confirm that its WS15 that breaks this.

As of yesterday, due to the upgrade of to WS15, I've had to spend $250 to get a new video card. I would have rather have known that WS15 would have different hardware requirements and simply not purchased that instead. So, WS15, at least for myself, imposes new hardware limitations for 3D acceleration that has resulted in additional cost. Upgraders be aware that simply because it works under WS14 does not imply that it will work under WS15.