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Experimental Support for Direct3D Experimental Support for Direct3D
VMware Workstation includes experimental support for Direct3D video acceleration. This feature is not fully functional.
Caution: Features with experimental support are not intended to be enabled on production systems. Enabling 3D acceleration may cause the host or guest to crash, causing you to lose data, even if 3D applications are not active.
Experimental support for Direct3D acceleration is described in the following sections:
  • Audience for Direct3D Experimetnal Support
  • Accelerated 3D Limitations
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Host
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Virtual Machine
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Guest Operating System
  • Known Issues
  • Helping VMware with Experiemental Support
  • Audience for Direct3D Experimetnal Support
    VMware is enabling this feature for advanced customers who want to explore an in-progress implementation of 3D acceleration.
    Technical support for accelerated 3D is not yet provided by VMware. However, we encourage you to file a Support Request (SR) so we can evaluate problems you might experience with accelerated 3D. Please review Helping VMware with Experiemental Support before you file a support request.
    Accelerated 3D Limitations
    Experimental support for Direct3D functions only for the configurations shown in the following matrix.
    Guest Operating System:
    Host Operating System
    Windows
    9x/ME/NT
    Windows
    2000/ XP
    Linux Host
    Windows 9x/ME/NT
    No
    No
    No
    Windows 2000/XP
    No
    Yes
    Yes
    Linux
    No
    No
    No
    Experimental support includes the following limitations:
  • Workstation accelerates DirectX 8 applications, and DX9 applications which use only the subset of DX8.
  • Performance/speed of 3D applications is not yet optimized.
  • OpenGL applications run in software emulation mode.
  • All aspects of 3D acceleration are not enabled. Some 3D features that are not yet accelerated include:
  • Pixel and vertex shaders
  • Multiple vertex streams are not supported.
  • Hardware bump-mapping, environment mapping
  • Projected textures
  • 1, 3, or 4 dimensional textures
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D
    Caution: Features with experimental support are not intended for production systems!
    By default Direct3D technology is disabled. You must prepare the host first, the virtual machine second, and the guest operating system last.
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Host
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Virtual Machine
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Guest Operating System
  • Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Host
    To enable a host for for accelerated 3D:
    Hardware —
    Use a host video card with support for accelerated OpenGL, such as NVIDIA TNT, GeForce and Quadro cards, or ATI FireGL and Radeon 8500 (or higher) video cards. If you are unsure, check with your hardware manufacturer.
    Software —
    Upgrade the video drivers for your host to the latest available.
  • NVIDIA drivers are available at this URL:
  • www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
  • ATI drivers are available at this URL:
  • www.ati.com/support/driver.html
  • (Linux only) — NVIDIA GPUs support the features used in Direct3D acceleration. Linux open source drivers are not enabled. However, if you have a video card with an Radeon 8500 (or better) GPU, you can attempt use the Direct3D acceleration using the ATI driver available at
  • www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-linux.html
    Windows
    Follow these steps to prepare a Windows 2000 or Windows XP Host:
    1. Install DirectX 9 runtime, available from Microsoft at
    www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a9b6820-bfbb-4799-9908-d418cdeac197&displaylang=en
    2. Make sure hardware acceleration is turned up in the display properties.
    a. Right click the desktop and select Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot.
    b. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the Full position.
    Linux
    Perform these steps to test your Linux Host for compatibility:
    1. Run glxinfo | grep direct to verify that direct rendering is enabled.
    2. Run glxgears to ensure that 3D applications work on your host.
    After your host is configured, configure a virtual machine for accelerated 3D.
    Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Virtual Machine
    To enable a virtual machine for accelerated 3D:
    1. Choose a virtual machine with Windows 2000 or XP guest operating system.
    Note: Do not enable Direct3D on a virtual machine that is powered on or suspended.
    2. Add the following three lines to the .vmx configuration file for the virtual machine:
    mks.enable3d = TRUE
    (Required) This enables accelerated 3D on the host. It is required to support accelerated 3D in the guest and also enables the host to accelerate 2D portions of the guest display.
    svga.vramSize = 67108864
    (Optional) This increases the amount of VRAM on the virtual display card to 64 MB. Adding more VRAM helps to reduce thrashing in the guest. The maximum value is 128 MB.
    vmmouse.present = FALSE
    (Optional) This disables the absolute pointing device in the guest. Applications which required DirectInput relative mode need to turn off the absolute pointing device in the guest. In practice, this is only required for a certain class of fullscreen 3D applications (e.g. realtime games like first person shooters).
    Note: If you set the vmmouse.present option, VMware recommends also turning off the preference for motion ungrabbing in the Input tab of the Preferences settings dialog.
    To turn off ungrabbing for vmouse.present:
    a. Choose Edit > Preferences.
    b. Click Input.
    c. Uncheck the box for Ungrab when cursor leaves window.
    The following sample is presented so you can conveniently copy and paste the 3D enabling configuration into a .vmx file.
    # Experimental Support for Direct3D (option 1 of 3)
    # (REQUIRED) The line below enables accelerated 3D on the host.
    # It is required to support 3D in the guest
    mks.noGL = FALSE
    # Experimental Support for Direct3D (option 2 of 3)
    # (OPTIONAL) The line below increases the amount of VRAM on the
    # virtual display card to 64 MB. Adding more VRAM helps to reduce
    # thrashing in the guest. The maximum value is 128 MB.
    # This option is expressed in bytes.
    svga.vramSize = 67108864
    # Experimental Support for Direct3D (option 3 of 3)
    # (OPTIONAL) Applications which required DirectInput relative
    # mode need to turn off the absolute pointing device in the guest.
    # In practice, this is only required for a certain class of fullscreen
    # 3d applications (e.g. realtime games like first person shooters).
    # If you set this option, we recommend also turning off the preference
    # for motion ungrabbing in the Input tab of the Preferences settings
    # dialog.
    vmmouse.present = FALSE
    Enabling Accelerated 3D for a Guest Operating System
    To enable the guest operating system for accelerated 3D:
    1. Power on the virtual machine.
    2. Install VMware tools.
    Note: It is critical for stability that your VMware Tools match your current VMware Workstation.
    3. Install DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
    This download is available from Microsoft at:
    www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2
    4. Install and run your 3D applications.
    Known Issues
    Common problems for Direct3D experimental support include the following:
  • Switching tabs in the VMware Workstation console does not work while 3D applications are running.
  • Switching between full screen and windowed mode does not work while 3D applications are running.
  • Running multiple 3D applications simultaneously may crash the Workstation application.
  • Suspend/Resume, and taking snapshots are all non-functional while a 3D application is running.
  • Graphical corruption occurs, such as:
  • Screenshot or movie capture displays graphical corruption for the 3D area of the screen.
  • The guest cursor occasionally has a halo of corruption (usually white) when mousing over 3D regions in the guest operating system.
  • Helping VMware with Experiemental Support
    VMware offers only experimental support for Direct3D acceleration. VMware may not respond personally to all support requests (SR) regarding Direct3D acceleration.
    What VMware is Interested In
  • Catastrophic failures such as bluescreening the guest, or 3D applications that crash VMware Workstation.
  • Testing reports about ATI 8500 (and later) video cards (whether or not they work)
  • Testing reports about Linux host operating systems (whether or not they work).
  • Testing reports about specific DirectX8 and DX9 applications you are using (whether or not they work).
  • Specific problems you are having when running 3D.
  • Specific directions you want to see VMware 3D technology evolve.
  • Specific and detailed reports can help speed this feature from experimental support to full functionality. Please include as many details about your configuration, 3D applications, and hardware as you can.
    Configuring Sound Configuring Sound
    VMware Workstation provides a sound device compatible with the Sound Blaster AudioPCI and supports sound in Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Linux guest operating systems. The VMware Workstation sound device is enabled by default.
    Sound support includes PCM (pulse code modulation) output and input. For example, you can play .wav files, MP3 audio and Real Media audio. MIDI output from Windows guests is supported through the Windows software synthesizer. MIDI input is not supported, and no MIDI support is available for Linux guests.
    Windows 2000, Windows XP and most recent Linux distributions automatically detect the sound device and install appropriate drivers for it.


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