CAD drawing does not appear in FlexSim running in a virtual machine (VM)

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Ben Wilson asked May 2, '18 Ben Wilson answered May 2, '18

CAD drawing does not appear in FlexSim running in a virtual machine (VM)

We have been testing remote deployment of FlexSim to our group's computers. We are first testing the deployment to virtual machines, rather than our final hardware.

The software seems to install just fine, but when I open an existing model, which has a CAD drawing as the background, it does not display in the 3D window. So I copied the original image to the desktop, taking care to import it into the model with the same dimensions and position, but it still does not display in the 3D model. It did import, as I can see the thumbnail image with the menu pick View Media to display Preloaded Shapes and Images.

Do I have the wrong settings? Or maybe it is an artifact of the testing environment? I am testing on different VM's, which have "GDI Generic 1.1.0" OpenGL Driver, rather than our typical Nvidia Quadro drivers. The VM is using VMware SVGA 3D for graphics.

Are there known issues with displaying images with "GDI Generic"? Or some subtle setting for backgrounds which I am missing (everything looks the same for background-properties, compared to PCs that work)?

Software Version:

FlexSim 18.1.0

3d view cad layout drivers virtual machine graphic setting

Answer 1 · 2018-05-02T14:11:28Z

Ben Wilson answered May 2, '18

VMs will often have graphics issues, due to their not having hardware graphics acceleration.

To meet FlexSim's minimum requirements, a system must have a GPU that supports OpenGL 3.1 or higher. Likely your VMs don't meet this requirement, so some graphics incompatibilities will result.

Indeed, it looks like the VMware SVGA 3D driver provides support only for up to OpenGL 2.1.

Some day I hope that virtualized graphics can catch up to the present, having better compatibility with newer 3D APIs. OpenGL 2.1 came out in 2006!

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