2022-04-29-vbox6_3d.txt

               VirtualBox6 3D acceleration _(experimental)_

With Sculpt release [https://genode.org/download/sculpt - 22.04] we enabled
experimental 3D acceleration support within Genode's VirtualBox6 port. This
short guide describes how to try it out.

VirtualBox supports 3D acceleration through the
[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#settings-screen - VMWare SVGA]
graphics device model. On the VMM side this model connects via
[https://www.khronos.org/egl - EGL] to
[https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL-Refpages/es2.0 - OpenGL ES] which both
are provided by Genode's
[https://www.mesa3d.org - Mesa 3D library]. This implies that 3D hardware
acceleration is available for Intel Graphics Devices (Gen8 - Gen9.5) for
VirtualBox6 guest operating systems.

In order to test drive VirtualBox's 3D support the SVGA model must be enabled in
the configuration file (e.g., 'machine.vbox6') configuration file.

For a Linux guest replace:

! <Display VRAMSize="20" monitorCount="1" controller="VBoxSVGA"/>

by

! <Display controller="VMSVGA" VRAMSize="256" accelerate3D="true"/>

For a Windows guest use:

! <Display VRAMSize="128" monitorCount="1" controller="VBoxSVGA" accelerate3D="true"/>

[image vbox63d_cat-fs8]
  Unbuntu guest running glmark2 and native gears.

On the Sculpt configuration side, the 'GPU' has to set to 'GPU' and
'ROM (mesa gpu drv lib.so)' to 'mesa gpu-intel' (hardware acceleration)
or 'mesa gpu-cpu' (software rendering) - as described in our
[https://genodians.org/ssumpf/2021-10-25-glmark2 - glmark2] article - for the
'Virtual Machines/vbox6' package.

Have fun testing!