VmWare fusion on Macos freeze and crash when loading 3D project

[Rollo62 536]

Hi there,

 

I have a very strange issue, which seems to be related to 3D graphics under Win10 guest in a MacOS host.

My configuration is the following:

Host: Macos 10.14.4

Guest: Win10 x64 Pro 1909, (16.12.19) 

VmWare Fusion: 11.5.1 (27.01.20),  Graphics settings: USE 3D, when a 3D application is loaded
RadStudio 1033 Ent. RIO (21.11.19 +Patches 30.12.19

 

Problem:

Usually the configuration works fine under all projects, never seen an larger issue before.

What happens is the following:

When I open the standard RadStudio Demo \Object Pascal\Multi-Device Samples\User Interface\ModelViewer\ModelViewer.dproj

  - the loading shows half of the project form

  - then IDE freezes

  - the whole Win10 guest freezes

  - the whole VmWare fusion session freezes (including other running VM) (not able to stop/cancel/do anything)

  - I need to kill the VmWare processes to move forward.

What I've tried is to
  - restart VmWare (same issue, 100% reproduceable),

  - restart/reboot the whole Macos host (same issue, 100% reproduceable),

 

So I think this has something to do with graphics drivers, Vulkan support, etc.

From VmWare there is a hint leading to Vulkan drivers

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151397?lang=en_US&queryTerm=3d+vulkan

 

But I cannot find any Vulkan drivers under Windows}System32

I have not installed the VM via Bootcamp anyway, so this should be a different case.

 

Has anybody seen such behaviour and probably has a solution to it ?

I'm pretty sure that 3D worked before, in an earlier Host/Guest/Ide, but I cannot really say from when this started to crash.

Probably change to Vulkan drivers is the best guess I have so far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by Rollo62

[sjordi 39]

No problem on my side.

VMWare Fusion Professional Version 11.5.1 (15018442)

Loaded the demo and then loaded the mattress data file.

Works without problem.

The VM Is Windows10 Pro 1909

Here is a screen shot

[Rollo62 536]

Thanks for testing.

Strange, I have the same version, but it reliably crashes on 3D acceleration.

 

What I found is that the whole VmWare app crashes, also when opening Paint3D or some other 3D related apps.

Maybe RadStudio switches to 3D hardware acceleration mode only when a project is loaded, that would make sense.

 

It seems something wrong with my VmWare 3D drivers here, but I haven't changed anything special.

I have to check with VmWare more deeply.

[Rollo62 536]

Short update:

 

I've got proposals from VmWare support:

1. ReInstall VmWare tools

2. Disable 3D acceleration

 

1. I've tried, no success.

That was forseeable for me, since I update VmTools usually always after updates (und usually I don't forget that).

 

2. Disable 3D acceleration helps of coarse, but switched off 3D acceleration.
My 3D apps work again.

 

Not 100% what 3D acceleration means under VmWare Fusion, but I assume this switches to new Metal driver.
If disabled, I assume this falls back to OpenGL driver.

 

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/11/com.vmware.fusion.using.doc/GUID-C0E9FDAC-BC40-4A6B-8940-013597CA5E5B.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/11.5.0/rn/VMware-Fusion-1150-Release-Notes.html

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/581677

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2562929#2562929

 

Anyway, maybe I have to wait until Metal drivers are more stable, no big issue for me at the moment.

Of coarse I don't want to see any sudden, fatal crashes anymore.

 

 

Edited March 13, 2020 by Rollo62

[sjordi 39]

Mhhh.

Just in case, here is my Display setting for my Windows 10 64bit VM

 

 

See the bottom note to see whether it's your case (Vulkan libraries) 

Edited March 15, 2020 by sjordi

[Rollo62 536]

Thanks, yes I have seen that link in the bottom.

I referred to it here

Quote

From VmWare there is a hint leading to Vulkan drivers

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151397?lang=en_US&queryTerm=3d+vulkan

Does this leads to the same page in your system ?

 

But the hints doesn'T help, as I wrote, I cannot find any Vulkan.xxx libraries under Windows/System32, etc.

I think that VmWare simply is not ready yet for the full Vulkan support under Windows 10 (my assumnption).

 

Edited March 16, 2020 by Rollo62

[Rollo62 536]

By the way, I just found out that my VmWare also crashes when VmWare+IDE is running,

and when I start then PAServer via PAServerManager on the same host.

 

But its a different crash type, since I can close and restart VmWare normally, but maybe this is related.

 

When I start PAServer first, and then run VmWare+IDE, all is OK.

So its a matter of startup sequence here.

 

P.S. I just see there is a new VmWare version 11.5.2 available, I will check that out later.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/11.5.0/rn/VMware-Fusion-1152-Release-Notes.html

Edited March 16, 2020 by Rollo62

[sjordi 39]

Can you try to fully reinstall a naked Windows 10 VM machine and just 1 copy of RadStudio in it?
That's what I did for a long time now.

A new Rad Studio version? I start from my Windows 10 naked template.

Make all the Windows Updates

Install RadStudio

Then I dedicate that Windows VM to development. I'm sure nothing else interferes like PowerDVD, Quicken, etc... who also install drivers that might conflict with something. All those non development Windows apps are installed in another Windows 10 VM.

 

It's a one time full job to create an empty Windows 10 VM but it is well worthy.

Then if it's still crashing in a Windows10+RAD VM you should use one of your support tickets.

 

Tip: Now and then, I update my empty Windows10 VM template and compress it again to store it somewhere. This way, the delta between the last windows update and the ones available on the current day is not growing too much and updates are faster.

Edited March 17, 2020 by sjordi

[Rollo62 536]

No time to do that at the moment,

but my current setting was produced from such clean Windows image.

Only I had some updates now, and its not that clean machine anymore.

 

Maybe I will check later, I have no 3D applications at the moment, and the IDE is running well.

Better I wait until Rx10.4, then I have a good reason to start with a clean installation again.

[Rollo62 536]

I just wanted to add the comment from VmWare support about this case.

They recommend to switch to OpenGL.

Quote

Generally we disable "Accelerate 3D Graphics" when host environment runs into trouble and which is not normal.'
Here we have to make the virtual machine use OpenGL instead of metal rendering.

 

Please add the following vmx entries:-
mks.enableMTLRenderer = "FALSE"
mks.enableGLRenderer = “TRUE"