7.0.1 and Photoshop openGL requirements

openglvmware-workstation

I'm running Workstation 7.0.1 on a 64-bit Linux host, with a Vista guest, and the Aero theme works a treat – full marks for getting that working!

However, when running Photoshop there are some operations (like interactive image rotation) that seem to require graphics support that VMWare doesn't have – attempting to do these operations returns an error that the functionality "only works with OpenGL enabled windows".

It seems that it needs OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0 which I gather are supported under Workstation 7 – do I need to put in additional settings of some kind? I've updated to the right version of VMWare Tools, and the video driver is listed as "VMWare SVGA 3D (Microsoft Corporation – WDDM)". I see that in 6.5 there was an option to switch between the beta WDDM driver and the SVGAII driver, but I assume the features of both of these would have been merged into the standard driver in 7.0?

Thanks

-Matthew

Best Answer

HERE's a link to a good 'how to do hardware DX/OpenGL with WS' document - there's loads of checks for you to be sure you're setup right.

Also what virtual machine model version is the VM? it needs to be the latest to support the beta WDDM vmtools driver.

Related Solutions

Windows – VMware WDDM Video Driver Scores Higher Than VMware SVGA II Driver In Windows 7 64bit

WDDM drivers have more robust feature sets presented that the older driver model does. WDDM is required for Aero under Vista and above. You should also see this VMware KB article that says not to install the SVGA driver from the tools.

Linux – How to OpenGL graphics be displayed remotely using VNC

I'm using x11vnc to gain remote access to whatever the monitor is displaying. x11vnc talks to the local X11 server and copies the framebuffer from the server to the client via vnc. Since the local X11 server renders everything with hardware acceleration, I get hardware accelerated OpenGL over VNC, even with all the cool desktop effects. This is how I start x11vnc:

x11vnc -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd  -display :0 -forever -bg -repeat -nowf -o ~/.vnc/x11vnc.log

I think almost any vnc viewer works, but I'd recommend turbovnc or tigervnc. I tried VirtualGL first, and it works fine, but not for the whole desktop, only for individual OpenGL applications.

It is even possible to change resolution on the display/vnc using xrandr. E.g. like this:

xrandr -q (to see available modes and outputs)
xrandr --output DVI-I-0 --mode "1024x768" (change mode on DVI output)

(It is possible to add new resolutions if the available modes aren't enough, but that's outside the scope here.)

So now I have a fully OpenGL hardware accelerated and resizable VNC session.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – VMware WDDM Video Driver Scores Higher Than VMware SVGA II Driver In Windows 7 64bit

Linux – How to OpenGL graphics be displayed remotely using VNC

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