Madrix v3.x and VMWare (Player and ESXi)

[SFX Group]

Hi

I have managed to install Madrix v3.5a, however it appears to need openGL v2.0 minimum... are you not using Direct X?

The software might work, however the preview isnt available, this will be architectural lighting control so i need the software to run on the server (thats under VMWare ESXi 6), we are testing this on VMWare Player at the moment with hardware acceleration disabled (as it crashes when its enabled due to not supporting openGL fully).

Direct X might fix the issue above, however i wont know so thought i would ask first.

I am sure i tested this about a year ago, however it may not have been on the Virtual PC.

Ideas?

Many Thanks
Ashley

[Wissmann]

Hi Ashley,

Previews in MADRIX 2.x was running with DirectX.
Previews in MADRIX 3.x needs OpenGL.

[SFX Group]

Hi Ashley,

Previews in MADRIX 2.x was running with DirectX.
Previews in MADRIX 3.x needs OpenGL.

Hi When was version 3 released?

Whats the fix for this? it has to run on a virtual PC...

Many Thanks
Ashley

[Ismal]

If your machine has an Intel CPU and is VT-d compatible, you can add a real graphics card and configure ESXi with passthrough settings that allows a virtual machine to access hardware directly. Google around, it is not hard to achieve. (There is also a way with AMD CPUs).
.
Also on vSphere 6 there is a feature called Virtual GPU (vGPU), you can look into that also.

[SFX Group]

If your machine has an Intel CPU and is VT-d compatible, you can add a real graphics card and configure ESXi with passthrough settings that allows a virtual machine to access hardware directly. Google around, it is not hard to achieve. (There is also a way with AMD CPUs).
.
Also on vSphere 6 there is a feature called Virtual GPU (vGPU), you can look into that also.

Thanks, will look in to this.... although the server has a vide card thats nVidia, is no means a power card (its PCIe x1)

Many Thanks

[SFX Group]

UPDATE

After 6+ hours of testing I managed to get it working, however did not need any video PassThrough support for a graphics card !!

Intel DX79TO (very basic XEON motherboard)
XEON CPU (supports Virtualization)
Genuine Intel compatible RAM
VMWare ESXi 6.0.0

Using the standard VMWare graphics (SVGA 3D), allowing 3D and giving that about 50Mb of RAM, Madrix works (not fully tested but the displays work).

This would kinda indicate the VMWare player i was testing in earlier had older VMWare Tools that did not support openGL v2


Note here, i do however have a VERY cheap NVidia PCIe x1 card for this server, i will test more to make sure this isnt impacting this install. Something else to note, if you DO use passthrough for a graphics card in VMWare you cant use this graphics card ON the server, so it will need 2, one for its own display and another for the virtual machine you assigned the other card to.

[Wissmann]

Hi SFX Group,
.
thanks for sharing your experiences!

[SFX Group]

The thread was for Madrix v3.x not v2.x....