VMware Workstation Player 16

[Jeffrey Forbes]

I have virtualgl working on Dell server running Alma Linux 8.5.

glxgear, glxinfo and glxspheres all work correctly.

I got VMware Workstation Player 16.2.1 build-18811642 working

without virtualgl and I get a 15-fold speed up with 3d acceleration

as reported in a Windows guest by furmark.

When I launch vmware with the command

/opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglrun +pr +v +tr  vmplayer

I don't see any glx command references, only ones like these:

[VGL 0xf1d494c0] XCreateWindow (dpy=0x5633e1cca180(localhost:10.0) parent=0x000001e2 x=-100 y=-100 width=10 height=10 depth=0 c_class=2 visual=0x5633e1cd66d8(0x2b) win=0x04c04513 ) 0
.005007 ms
[VGL 0xf1d494c0] XDestroyWindow (dpy=0x5633e1cca180(localhost:10.0) win=0x04c04513 ) 0.377893 ms
[VGL 0xf1d494c0] XCopyArea (dpy=0x5633e1cca180(localhost:10.0) src=0x04c04516 dst=0x04c00004 gc=0x5633e1d6ac40 src_x=0 src_y=0 width=203 height=17 dest_x=13 dest_y=1024 ) 0.005960 ms
[VGL 0xf1d494c0] XCopyArea (dpy=0x5633e1cca180(localhost:10.0) src=0x04c04518 dst=0x04c00004 gc=0x5633e1d6ac40 src_x=0 src_y=0 width=203 height=17 dest_x=13 dest_y=1024 ) 0.005960 ms
[VGL 0xf1d494c0] XCreateWindow (dpy=0x5633e1cca180(localhost:10.0) parent=0x000001e2 x=-100 y=-100 width=10 height=10 depth=0 c_class=2 visual=0x5633e1cd66d8(0x2b) win=0x04c0451a ) 0
.008106 ms

Is this the expected behavior?

Launching without the trace, gives this output:

~]$ /opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglrun +pr +v   vmplayer    
[AppLoader] Use shipped PC/SC Lite smart card framework.
An up-to-date "pcsc-lite-libs" or "libpcsclite1" package from your system is preferred.
[VGL] Shared memory segment ID for vglconfig: 3
[VGL] VirtualGL v3.0 64-bit (Build 20211119)
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml"
[VGL] NOTICE: Replacing dlopen("libX11.so.6") with dlopen("libvglfaker.so")

[DRC]

I forget which version of VMWare I tested before adding the VMWare section to the VirtualGL User's Guide, but I'm pretty sure it was v16.x.  When I tested it, both 'vglrun +pr' and VGL_LOGO worked properly, but that no longer seems to be the case.  :(  VMWare appears to be accelerated in my TurboVNC session, because the frame rate with WGLSpheres is about 5x what it is with 3D acceleration turned off.  Oddly, though, I get the same frame rate whether or not I run the VMWare application using VirtualGL.  I wonder aloud whether they are using device-based EGL or some other mechanism that bypasses GLX, in which case VirtualGL might not even be necessary anymore?  I can't find any confirmation online, but I did find some vague statement about VMWare accessing the host GPU through its drivers, which would imply that it's implementing 3D acceleration at a lower level than the 3D API.

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[DRC]

I did some more tinkering and research and figured out what's going on.  My findings are here: https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues/248

tl;dr: VMware Workstation uses Vulkan by default since v16.2.0, so VirtualGL is useless.  The legacy OpenGL renderer no longer works with VirtualGL, for unknown reasons.