Intended audience: System Administrators, Graphics Programmers, Researchers, and others with knowledge of Linux or Unix operating systems, OpenGL and GLX, and X windows.

1 Legal Information

This document and all associated illustrations are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Any works that contain material derived from this document must cite The VirtualGL Project as the source of the material and list the current URL for the VirtualGL web site.

The official VirtualGL binaries contain libjpeg-turbo, which is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.

The VirtualGL server components include software developed by the FLTK Project and distributed under the terms of the FLTK License.

VirtualGL is licensed under the wxWindows Library License, v3.1, a derivative of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), v2.1.

2 Conventions Used in This Document

This document assumes that VirtualGL will be installed in the default directory (/opt/VirtualGL). If your installation of VirtualGL resides in a different directory, then adjust the instructions accordingly.

2.1 Terminology

3D application

A computer program that uses a 3D rendering API (OpenGL, for the purposes of this document) to generate 2D images/animation frames (“rendered frames”) from 3D data in real time

VirtualGL server/application server (sometimes just “server”)

The remote machine (“remote” from the point of view of the user) on which 3D applications will be run with VirtualGL

3D graphics accelerator/graphics processing unit (GPU)

A specialized hardware device that processes 3D rendering commands and data from a 3D application into 2D images much more quickly than a general-purpose CPU could. In order to effectively use VirtualGL, a GPU must be present in the VirtualGL server.

3D X server

An X-Windows server (“X server”) attached to one or more GPUs in the VirtualGL server. The 3D X server can be “headless” (not attached to a monitor.)

X proxy

A virtual X server that runs on a remote machine (usually, but not always, on the VirtualGL server.) Because X proxies render X-Windows (“X11”) drawing commands to a virtual framebuffer in main memory rather than to a real framebuffer in GPU memory, multiple simultaneous instances of an X proxy can co-exist on the same server. However, for the same reason, X proxies generally do not support hardware-accelerated 3D rendering (without the help of VirtualGL.) Most X proxies send only images to the client.

2D X server

The X server to which the 3D application’s GUI will be displayed, and with which the user will interact. The 2D X server can be an actual X server running on the local machine (“local” from the point of view of the user) or a remote X proxy instance. The 2D X server does not need to support OpenGL.

VirtualGL Faker

A shared library (“dynamic shared object” or “DSO”), loaded into a Linux/Unix OpenGL application at run time, that intercepts and modifies (“interposes”) certain GLX, OpenGL, X11, and XCB function calls in order to seamlessly redirect 3D rendering into an off-screen buffer on the 3D X server, read back the rendered frames, and transport the rendered frames (which normally means delivering them to the 2D X server)

frame trigger

A function that is called by the 3D application to signal that it has finished rendering a frame. VirtualGL reads back and transports a rendered frame if the 3D application calls glXSwapBuffers() while rendering to the back buffer, or if the application calls glFinish(), glXWaitGL(), and (optionally) glFlush() while rendering to the front buffer.

VGL Transport

The (optional) protocol that VirtualGL uses to transport rendered frames to a 2D X server on a machine other than the VirtualGL server

VirtualGL Client

The (optional) application that receives rendered frames in real time from the VirtualGL Faker by way of the VGL Transport, decompresses or decodes those frames, and composites them into the 3D application’s windows

client

The machine that is physically in front of the user. For the purposes of this document, the word “client”– when used generically– always refers to this machine, not to the VirtualGL Client application.

3 Overview

VirtualGL is an open source toolkit that gives any Linux or Unix remote display software the ability to run OpenGL applications with full hardware acceleration. Some remote display software cannot be used with OpenGL applications at all. Other remote display software forces OpenGL applications to use a slow, software-only renderer, to the detriment of performance as well as compatibility. The traditional method of displaying OpenGL applications to an X server on a different machine (indirect rendering) supports hardware acceleration, but this approach requires that all of the OpenGL commands and 3D data be sent over the network to be rendered. That is not a tenable proposition unless the 3D data is relatively small and static, unless the network is very fast, and unless the OpenGL application is specifically tuned for a remote X-Windows environment.

With VirtualGL, the OpenGL commands and 3D data are instead redirected to a GPU in the application server, and only the rendered frames are sent over the network. VirtualGL thus virtualizes GPU hardware, allowing it to be co-located in the “cold room” with compute and storage resources. VirtualGL also allows GPUs to be shared among multiple users, and it provides “workstation-like” levels of performance on 100-megabit and faster networks. This makes it possible for large, noisy, hot 3D workstations to be replaced with laptops or even thinner clients. More importantly, however, VirtualGL eliminates the workstation and the network as barriers to data size. Users can now visualize huge amounts of data in real time without needing to copy any of the data over the network or sit in front of the machine that is rendering the data.

Normally, a Un*x OpenGL application sends all of its graphics rendering commands and data, both 2D and 3D, to an X-Windows server, which may be located across the network from the application server. VirtualGL employs a technique called “split rendering” to redirect the 3D commands and data from the OpenGL application to a GPU in the application server. VGL accomplishes this by pre-loading a dynamic shared object (DSO), the VirtualGL Faker, into the OpenGL application at run time. The VirtualGL Faker intercepts and modifies a handful of GLX, OpenGL, X11, and XCB function calls in order to divert OpenGL rendering from the 3D application’s windows into corresponding pixel buffers (“Pbuffers”), which VGL creates in GPU memory on the application server. When the 3D application swaps the OpenGL drawing buffers or flushes the OpenGL command buffer to indicate that it has finished rendering a frame, VirtualGL reads back the rendered frame from the Pbuffer and transports it (which normally involves delivering the frame to the 2D X server and compositing it into the 3D application’s window.)

The beauty of this approach is its non-intrusiveness. VirtualGL monitors a few X11 commands and events to determine when windows have been resized, etc., but it does not interfere in any way with the delivery of X11 2D drawing commands to the X server. For the most part, VGL does not interfere with the delivery of OpenGL commands to the GPU, either. VGL merely forces the OpenGL commands to be delivered to a GPU that is attached to a different X server (the 3D X server) than the X server to which the 2D drawing commands are delivered (the 2D X server.) Once the OpenGL rendering has been redirected to a Pbuffer, everything (including esoteric OpenGL extensions, fragment/vertex shaders, etc.) should “just work.” If an OpenGL application runs correctly when accessing a 3D server/workstation locally, then the same application should run correctly with VirtualGL when accessing the same machine remotely.

VirtualGL has two built-in “image transports” that can be used to deliver rendered frames to the 2D X server:

1. VGL Transport

The VGL Transport is most often used whenever the 2D X server is located across the network from the application server– for instance, if the 2D X server is running on the client. VirtualGL uses its own protocol on a dedicated TCP socket to send the rendered frames to the client, and the VirtualGL Client decodes the frames and composites them into the appropriate X window. The VGL Transport can either deliver the frames in uncompressed form (RGB-encoded), or it can compress them in real time using a high-speed JPEG codec. It also supports the delivery of stereo image pairs, which can be reconstructed into a stereo frame by the VirtualGL Client.

Figure 3.1: The VGL Transport with a Client-Side 2D X Server

2. X11 Transport

The X11 Transport simply draws the rendered frames into the appropriate X window using XPutImage() or similar X-Windows commands. This is most useful in conjunction with an X proxy, which can be one of any number of Un*x remote display applications, such as VNC. When using the X11 Transport, VirtualGL does not normally perform any image compression or encoding itself. It instead relies on an X proxy to encode the frames and deliver them to the client(s). Since the use of an X proxy eliminates the need to send X-Windows commands over the network, this is the recommended method for using VirtualGL over high-latency or low-bandwidth networks.

The XV Transport, described in Chapter 10, is a variant of the X11 Transport.

Figure 3.2: The X11 Transport with an X Proxy

VirtualGL also provides an API that can be used to develop custom image transport plugins.

4 System Requirements

4.1 Linux/x86 and Other x86 Un*x Operating Systems

4.2 Mac/x86

4.3 Windows

4.4 Additional Requirements for Stereographic Rendering

4.5 Additional Requirements for Transparent Overlays

5 Obtaining and Installing VirtualGL

5.1 Installing VirtualGL on Linux

1. Download the appropriate VirtualGL binary package(s) for your system from the Files area of the VirtualGL SourceForge project page. Packages are provided for RPM-based and Debian-based Linux distributions that contain GLIBC 2.12 or later.
   

   If you want to run both 32-bit and 64-bit OpenGL applications with VirtualGL on 64-bit x86 Linux systems, then you will need to install both VirtualGL-2.6.3.x86_64.rpm and VirtualGL-2.6.3.i386.rpm, or both virtualgl_2.6.3_amd64.deb and virtualgl32_2.6.3_amd64.deb. (virtualgl32_2.6.3_amd64.deb is a supplementary package that contains only the 32-bit server components.)

2. cd to the directory where you downloaded the binary package(s), and issue the following commands as root:

   RPM-based systems using YUM

   rpm -e VirtualGL --allmatches
   yum install VirtualGL*.rpm
   

   RPM-based systems using DNF

   rpm -e VirtualGL --allmatches
   dnf install VirtualGL*.rpm
   

   RPM-based systems using YaST2

   rpm -e VirtualGL --allmatches
   yast2 --install VirtualGL*.rpm
   

   Other RPM-based systems (dependencies will not be installed automatically)

   rpm -e VirtualGL --allmatches
   rpm -i VirtualGL*.rpm
   

   Debian-based systems

   dpkg -i virtualgl*.deb
   apt install -f
   

5.2 Installing the VirtualGL Client on OS X

1. Download the VirtualGL Mac disk image (VirtualGL-2.6.3.dmg) from the Files area of the VirtualGL SourceForge project page.
2. Open the disk image, then open VirtualGL-2.6.3.pkg inside the disk image. Follow the instructions to install the Mac VirtualGL Client.

5.3 Installing the VirtualGL Client on Windows (Cygwin)

In a Cygwin terminal, execute the following commands:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/VirtualGL/vglcygsetup/master/vglcygsetup
chmod 700 vglcygsetup
./vglcygsetup

vglcygsetup will synchronize the available VirtualGL packages to a local directory under ~/.vglrepo, download Cygwin Setup, and run Cygwin Setup against the local directory in order to install VirtualGL.

5.4 Installing VirtualGL from Source

If you are using a platform for which there is not a pre-built VirtualGL binary package available, then download the VirtualGL source tarball (VirtualGL-2.6.3.tar.gz) from the Files area of the VirtualGL SourceForge project page, uncompress it, cd VirtualGL-2.6.3, and read the contents of BUILDING.md for further instructions on how to build and install VirtualGL from source.

5.5 Uninstalling VirtualGL

Linux

As root, issue one of the following commands:

RPM-based systems

rpm -e VirtualGL

You may need to add --all-matches to the RPM command line if you have installed both the 32-bit and 64-bit VirtualGL RPMs.

Debian-based systems

dpkg -r virtualgl

If you have also installed the 32-bit supplementary package:

dpkg -r virtualgl32

OS X

Open the Uninstall VirtualGL application, located in the VirtualGL Applications folder. You can also open a terminal and execute:

sudo /opt/VirtualGL/bin/uninstall

Windows (Cygwin)

Use Cygwin Setup to uninstall the VirtualGL package.

6 Configuring a Linux or Unix Machine as a VirtualGL Server

6.1 Initial System Configuration

Before configuring VirtualGL, you should first ensure that:

1. The appropriate GPU drivers have been installed on the machine. With few exceptions, you should install the drivers supplied by your GPU vendor rather than the drivers supplied by your O/S distribution. See Section 4.1.

2. The 3D X server has been configured to use the GPU drivers you installed above.

3. The machine has an appropriate display manager (such as GDM, KDM, or LightDM) installed and has been configured to start the display manager and 3D X server at boot time. This is the default with most modern Linux and Unix distributions.

4. Accelerated OpenGL is working properly in the 3D X server.

• If the 3D X server is not headless, then this can be verified by logging into the X server locally and running glxinfo.
• If the 3D X server is headless, then proceed with the instructions below, and the Sanity Check section will provide you with an opportunity to verify that the 3D X server is using accelerated OpenGL.

More specific instructions are unfortunately outside of the scope of this guide, since they will vary from system to system.

6.2 Granting Access to the 3D X Server

VirtualGL requires access to a GPU in the application server so that it can create off-screen pixel buffers (Pbuffers) and redirect the 3D rendering from X windows into these Pbuffers. Unfortunately, accessing a GPU on Linux and Unix systems requires going through an X server. On such systems, the only way to share the application server’s GPU(s) among multiple users is to grant those users access to the 3D X server.

It is important to understand the security risks associated with this. Once a user has access to the 3D X server, there is nothing that would prevent the user from logging keystrokes or reading back images from that X server. Using xauth, one can obtain “untrusted” X authentication keys that prevent such exploits, but unfortunately, those untrusted keys also disallow access to the 3D hardware. Thus, it is necessary to grant full, trusted access to the 3D X server for any users that will need to run VirtualGL. Unless you fully trust the users to whom you are granting this access, then you should avoid logging in locally to the 3D X server (particularly as root) unless absolutely necessary (logging in locally to the 3D X server is discouraged anyhow, for reasons explained in the previous section.)

This section will explain how to configure a VirtualGL server such that selected users can run VirtualGL, even if the server is sitting at the login prompt.

1. Shut down the display manager. Examples:

   Red Hat/Fedora/SuSE Linux servers

   init 3
   

   Ubuntu Linux servers running LightDM

   service lightdm stop
   

   FreeBSD servers running GDM

   /usr/local/etc/rc.d/gdm stop
   

   Solaris 11/OpenSolaris servers running GDM

   svcadm disable gdm
   

2. Log in as root from the text console (or remotely using SSH.)
3. Run

   /opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglserver_config
   

4. Select option 1 (Configure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode.)

5. Restrict 3D X server access to vglusers group (recommended)?
   [Y/n]
   

   Yes

   Only users in the vglusers group can use VirtualGL (the configuration script will create the vglusers group if it doesn’t already exist.) This is the most secure option, since it prevents any users outside of the vglusers group from accessing (and thus exploiting) the 3D X server.

   No

   VirtualGL can be used by any user that successfully logs into the VirtualGL server. The 3D X server can also be accessed (and potentially exploited) by any user who is logged into the VirtualGL server. If you choose this option, it is recommended that you also disable the XTEST extension (see below.)

6. Restrict framebuffer device access to vglusers group (recommended)?
   [Y/n]
   

   Yes

   Only users in the vglusers group can run OpenGL applications on the VirtualGL server (the configuration script will create the vglusers group if it doesn’t already exist.) This limits the possibility that an unauthorized user could snoop the 3D framebuffer device(s) and thus see (or alter) the output of a 3D application that is being used with VirtualGL.

   No

   Any authenticated user can run OpenGL applications on the VirtualGL server. If it is necessary for users outside of the vglusers group to log in locally to this server and run OpenGL applications, then this option must be selected.

7. Disable XTEST extension (recommended)?
   [Y/n]
   

   Yes

   Disabling XTEST will not prevent a user from logging keystrokes or reading images from the 3D X server, but if a user has access to the 3D X server, disabling XTEST will prevent them from inserting keystrokes or mouse events and thus hijacking local X sessions on that X server.

   If you are using GDM 2.14 through 2.20, it will be necessary to run gdmsetup and manually add an argument of -tst to the X server command line to disable XTEST for the first time. After this, vglserver_config should be able to disable and enable XTEST properly.

   GDM 2.22 and later no longer provide a means of editing the X server command line, so disabling XTEST will not work. The only known alternative as of this writing is to use a different display manager.

   No

   x11vnc and x0vncserver both require XTEST, so if you need to attach a VNC server to the 3D X server, then it is necessary to answer “No” (and thus leave XTEST enabled.)

8. If you chose to restrict 3D X server or framebuffer device access to the vglusers group, then edit /etc/group and add root to the vglusers group. If you choose, you can also add additional users to the group at this time. Note that any user you add to vglusers must log out and back in again before their new group permissions will take effect.
9. Restart the display manager:

   Red Hat/Fedora/SuSE Linux servers

   init 5
   

   Ubuntu Linux servers running LightDM

   service lightdm start
   

   FreeBSD servers running GDM

   /usr/local/etc/rc.d/gdm start
   

   Solaris 11/OpenSolaris servers running GDM

   svcadm enable gdm
   

6.2.1 Sanity Check

To verify that the application server is ready to run VirtualGL, log out of the server, log back into the server using SSH, and execute the following commands in the SSH session:

If you restricted 3D X server access to vglusers

xauth merge /etc/opt/VirtualGL/vgl_xauth_key
xdpyinfo -display :0
/opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxinfo -display :0 -c

If you did not restrict 3D X server access

xdpyinfo -display :0
/opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxinfo -display :0 -c

Both commands should output a list of visuals and should complete with no errors. If you chose to disable the XTEST extension, then check the output of the xdpyinfo command to verify that XTEST does not show up in the list of extensions.

You should also examine the output of the glxinfo command to ensure that at least one of the visuals is 24-bit or 32-bit TrueColor and has Pbuffer support (the latter is indicated by a P in the last column.) Example:

    visual  x   bf lv rg d st  colorbuffer  ax dp st accumbuffer  ms  cav  drw
  id dep cl sp  sz l  ci b ro  r  g  b  a F bf th cl  r  g  b  a ns b eat  typ
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x151 24 tc  0  32  0 r  y  .  8  8  8  0 .  4 24  8 16 16 16 16  0 0 None PXW

If none of the visuals has Pbuffer support, then this is most likely because there is no 3D acceleration, which is most likely because the correct GPU drivers are not installed (or are misconfigured.) Lack of 3D acceleration is also typically indicated by the word Mesa in the client GLX vendor string and/or the OpenGL vendor string, and the words Software Rasterizer in the OpenGL renderer string.

6.3 Using VirtualGL with Multiple GPUs

VirtualGL can redirect the OpenGL commands from a 3D application to any GPU in the VirtualGL server. In order for this to work, however, all of the GPUs must be attached to different screens on the same X server or to different X servers. Attaching them to different screens is the easiest and most common approach, and this allows the GPUs to be individually addressed by setting VGL_DISPLAY to (or invoking vglrun -d with) :0.0, :0.1, :0.2, etc. If the GPUs are attached to different X servers, then they can be individually addressed by setting VGL_DISPLAY to (or invoking vglrun -d with) :0.0, :1.0, :2.0, etc.

6.4 SSH Server Configuration

The application server’s SSH daemon should have the X11Forwarding option enabled and the UseLogin option disabled. This is configured in sshd_config, which is usually located under /etc/ssh.

6.5 Un-Configuring the Server

You can use the vglserver_config script to restore the security settings that were in place before VirtualGL was installed. Option 2 (Unconfigure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode) will remove any shared access to the 3D X server and thus prevent VirtualGL from accessing the 3D hardware in that manner. Additionally, this option will re-enable the XTEST extension on the 3D X server and will restore the framebuffer device permissions to their default (by default, only root or the user that is currently logged into the application server locally can access the framebuffer devices.)

After selecting Option 2, you must restart the display manager before the changes will take effect.

7 Configuring a Windows Machine as a VGL Transport Client

The VirtualGL Client can take advantage of the MIT-SHM extension in Cygwin/X to accelerate the compositing of rendered frames into the 3D application’s windows. This can significantly improve the end-to-end performance of VirtualGL when using the VGL Transport over a local-area network.

To enable MIT-SHM in Cygwin/X:

1. Open a Cygwin Bash shell
2. Run cygserver-config
3. Answer “yes” when asked Do you want to install cygserver as service?
4. From a Windows (not Cygwin) administrator command prompt, run net start cygserver
5. Start or re-start Cygwin/X
6. Run xdpyinfo and verify that MIT-SHM appears in the list of X extensions

8 Using VirtualGL with the VGL Transport

Advantages of the VGL Transport

• Seamless windows; every window from the 3D application appears as a separate window on the client
• Supports stereographic rendering (see requirements in Section 4.4)
• Consumes less memory and CPU time on the server, since the 2D (X11) rendering occurs on the client

Disadvantages of the VGL Transport

• The VGL Transport is designed to be used with client-side 2D X servers, and thus it relies on the chatty remote X11 protocol to send the non-OpenGL elements of the 3D application’s GUI to the client. As a result, the VGL Transport is not recommended for use on high-latency or low-bandwidth networks.
• No collaboration features
• From the point of view of the 3D application, the client/server connection is not stateless. As with any remote X11 environment, if the network connection drops, then the application will exit.

8.1 VGL Transport with X11 Forwarding

This mode is recommended for use only on secure local-area networks. The X11 traffic is encrypted, but the VGL Transport is left unencrypted to maximize performance.

8.1.1 Procedure

1. Start the 2D X server if it isn’t started already.

   Mac clients

   Start the Mac X11 application or XQuartz.

   Cygwin clients

   Start Cygwin/X.

2. Open a new terminal window.

   Mac clients

   In the X11 application or XQuartz, start a new xterm [Command-N] if one isn’t already started.

   Cygwin clients

   Start a new xterm if one isn’t already started (right-click on the Cygwin/X taskbar icon, then select Applications–>xterm.)

3. In the same terminal/xterm window, open a Secure Shell (SSH) session into the VirtualGL server:

   /opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglconnect user@server

   Replace user with your username on the VirtualGL server and server with the hostname or IP address of that server.
4. In the SSH session, start a 3D application with VirtualGL:

   /opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglrun [vglrun options] 3D-application-executable-or-script [arguments]

   Consult Chapter 19 for more information on vglrun command-line options.

8.2 VGL Transport with X11 Forwarding and SSH Tunneling

Both the VGL Transport and the X11 traffic are tunneled through SSH when using this mode, and thus it provides a completely secure solution. It is also useful when either the client or the VirtualGL server is behind a restrictive firewall and only SSH connections are allowed through. Using SSH tunneling on wide-area networks should not affect performance significantly. However, using SSH tunneling on a local-area network can reduce the end-to-end performance of the VGL Transport by anywhere from 20-40%.

Procedure

The procedure for this mode is identical to the procedure for the VGL Transport with X11 forwarding, except that you should pass a -s argument to vglconnect when connecting to the server:

/opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglconnect -s user@server

vglconnect will make two SSH connections into the server, the first to find an open port on the server and the second to create the SSH tunnel for the VGL Transport and open the secure shell. If you are not using an SSH agent to enable password-less logins, then you will have to enter your password twice.

vglconnect -s can be used to create multi-layered SSH tunnels. For instance, if the VirtualGL server is not directly accessible from the Internet, then you can run vglconnect -s on the client to connect to an SSH gateway server, then you can run vglconnect -s again on the gateway server to connect to the VirtualGL server (application server.) Both the X11 traffic and the VGL Transport will be forwarded from the VirtualGL server through the gateway and to the client.

8.3 The VirtualGL Client Application: Nuts and Bolts

The VirtualGL Client application (vglclient) receives encoded and/or compressed frames on a dedicated TCP socket, decodes and/or decompresses the frames, and draws the frames into the appropriate X window. The vglconnect script wraps both vglclient and SSH to greatly simplify the process of creating VGL Transport connections.

vglconnect invokes vglclient with an argument of -detach, which causes the VirtualGL Client to completely detach from the console and run as a background daemon. It will remain running silently in the background, accepting VGL Transport connections for the X server on which it was started, until that X server is reset or until the VirtualGL Client process is explicitly killed. Logging out of the X server will reset the X server and thus kill all VirtualGL Client instances that are attached to it. You can also explicitly kill all instances of the VirtualGL Client running under your user account by invoking

vglclient -kill

(vglclient is installed in /opt/VirtualGL/bin by default.)

vglconnect instructs the VirtualGL Client to redirect all of its console output to a log file named ~/.vgl/vglconnect-hostname-display.log, where hostname is the name of the computer on which vglconnect was invoked and display is the display name of the X server on which the VirtualGL Client was started (read from the DISPLAY environment or passed to vglconnect using the -display argument.) In the event that something goes wrong, this log file is the first place to check.

When the VirtualGL Client successfully starts on a given X server, it stores its listener port number in a root window property on the X server. If other VirtualGL Client instances attempt to start on the same X server, they read the X window property, determine that another VirtualGL Client instance is already running, and exit to allow the first instance to retain control. The VirtualGL Client will clean up the X property under most circumstances, even if it is explicitly killed. However, under rare circumstances (if sent a SIGKILL signal, for instance), a VirtualGL Client instance may exit uncleanly and leave the X property set. In these cases, it may be necessary to add an argument of -force to vglconnect the next time you use it. This tells vglconnect to start a new VirtualGL Client instance, regardless of whether the VirtualGL Client thinks that there is already an instance running on this X server. Alternately, you can simply reset the X server to clear the orphaned X window property.

8.3.1 The VirtualGL Client and Firewalls

To retain compatibility with previous versions of VirtualGL, the first VirtualGL Client instance on a given machine will attempt to listen on port 4242 for unencrypted connections and 4243 for SSL connections (if VirtualGL was built with OpenSSL support.) If it fails to obtain one of those ports, because another application or another VirtualGL Client instance is already using them, then the VirtualGL Client will try to obtain a free port in the range of 4200-4299. Failing that, it will request a free port from the operating system.

In a nutshell: if you only ever plan to run one X server at a time on the client, which means that you’ll only ever need one instance of the VirtualGL Client at a time, then it is sufficient to open inbound port 4242 (and 4243 if you plan to use SSL) in the client’s firewall. If you plan to run multiple X servers on the client, which means that you will need to run multiple VirtualGL Client instances, then you may wish to open ports 4200-4299. Similarly, if you are running the VirtualGL Client on a multi-user X proxy server that has a firewall, then you may wish to open ports 4200-4299 in the server’s firewall. Opening ports 4200-4299 will accommodate up to 100 separate VirtualGL Client instances (50 if OpenSSL support is enabled.) More instances than that cannot be accommodated on a firewalled machine, unless the firewall is able to create rules based on application executables instead of listening ports.

Note that it is not necessary to open any inbound ports in the firewall to use the VGL Transport with SSH Tunneling.

9 Using VirtualGL with X Proxies Such as VNC

The VGL Transport is a good solution for using VirtualGL over a fast network. However, the VGL Transport is not generally suitable for high-latency or low-bandwidth networks, due to its reliance on the X11 protocol to send the non-OpenGL elements of the 3D application’s GUI. The VGL Transport also requires an X server to be running on the client, which makes it generally more difficult to deploy and use on Windows clients. VirtualGL can be used with an X proxy to overcome these limitations. An X proxy acts as a virtual X server, receiving X11 commands from the 3D application (and from VirtualGL), rendering the X11 commands into images, compressing the resulting images, and sending the compressed images over the network to a client or clients. X proxies perform well on all types of networks, including high-latency and low-bandwidth networks. They often provide rudimentary collaboration capabilities, allowing multiple clients to simultaneously view the same X session and pass around control of the keyboard and mouse. X proxies are also stateless, meaning that the client can disconnect and reconnect at will from any machine on the network, and the 3D application will remain running on the server.

Since VirtualGL is sending rendered frames to the X proxy at a very fast rate, the proxy must be able to compress the frames very quickly in order to keep up. Unfortunately, however, most X proxies can’t. They simply aren’t designed to compress, with any degree of performance, the large and complex images generated by 3D applications. Therefore, The VirtualGL Project provides an optimized X proxy called TurboVNC, a high-speed VNC (Virtual Network Computing) variant that is designed specifically to achieve high levels of performance with VirtualGL. More information about TurboVNC, including instructions for using it with VirtualGL, can be found in the TurboVNC User’s Guide.

Many other X proxy solutions work well with VirtualGL, and some of these solutions provide compelling features (seamless windows, for instance), but none of these X proxies matches the performance of TurboVNC, as of this writing.

9.1 Using VirtualGL with an X Proxy on the Same Server

The most common (and optimal) way to use VirtualGL with an X proxy is to set up both on the same server. This allows VirtualGL to send rendered frames to the X proxy through shared memory rather than over a network.

With this configuration, you can usually invoke

/opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglrun [vglrun options] 3D-application-executable-or-script [arguments]

from a terminal inside of the X proxy session, and it will “just work.” VirtualGL reads the value of the DISPLAY environment variable to determine whether to enable the X11 Transport by default. If DISPLAY begins with a colon (:) or with unix:, then VirtualGL will assume that the 2D X server is on the same machine and will enable the X11 Transport as the default. In some cases, however, the DISPLAY environment variable in the X proxy session may not begin with a colon or unix:. In these cases, it is necessary to manually enable the X11 Transport by setting the VGL_COMPRESS environment variable to proxy or by passing an argument of -c proxy to vglrun.

9.2 Using VirtualGL with an X Proxy on a Different Machine

If the X proxy and VirtualGL are running on different servers, then it is desirable to use the VGL Transport to send rendered frames from the VirtualGL server to the X proxy. It is also desirable to disable image compression in the VGL Transport. Otherwise, the frames would have to be compressed by the VirtualGL server, decompressed by the VirtualGL Client, then recompressed by the X proxy, which is a waste of CPU resources. However, sending images uncompressed over a network requires a fast network (generally, Gigabit Ethernet or faster), so there needs to be a fast link between the VirtualGL server and the X proxy server for this procedure to perform well.

The procedure for using the VGL Transport to display 3D applications from a VirtualGL server to an X proxy on a different machine is the same as the procedure for using the VGL Transport to display 3D applications from a VirtualGL server to a client-side 2D X server, with the following exceptions:

1. The “client” in this case is the X proxy host.
2. The “2D X server” is the X proxy.
3. It is recommended that you disable image compression in the VGL Transport by either setting the VGL_COMPRESS environment variable to rgb or passing an argument of -c rgb to vglrun when launching VirtualGL. Otherwise, VirtualGL will detect that the 2D X server is on a different machine, and it will automatically try to enable JPEG compression.

10 Support for the X Video Extension

The X Video extension allows applications to pre-encode or pre-compress images and send them through the X server to the graphics adapter, which presumably has on-board video decoding capabilities. This approach greatly reduces the CPU resources used by the X server, which can be beneficial if the X server is running on a different machine than the application.

In the case of VirtualGL, what this means is that the client no longer has to decode or decompress rendered frames from the 3D application. It can simply pass the frames along to the graphics adapter for decoding.

VirtualGL supports the X Video extension in two ways:

10.1 The VGL Transport with YUV Encoding

Setting the VGL_COMPRESS environment variable to yuv or passing an argument of -c yuv to vglrun enables the VGL Transport with YUV encoding. When this mode is enabled, VirtualGL encodes rendered frames as YUV420P (a form of YUV encoding that uses 4X chrominance subsampling and separates Y, U, and V components into separate image planes) instead of RGB or JPEG. The YUV420P-encoded frames are sent to the VirtualGL Client, which draws them to the 2D X server using the X Video extension.

On a per-frame basis, YUV encoding uses about half the server CPU time as JPEG compression and only slightly more server CPU time than RGB encoding. On a per-frame basis, YUV encoding uses about 1/3 the client CPU time as JPEG compression and about half the client CPU time as RGB encoding. YUV encoding also uses about half the network bandwidth (per frame) as RGB.

However, since YUV encoding uses 4X chrominance subsampling, the encoded frames may contain some visible artifacts. In particular, narrow, aliased lines and other sharp features may appear “soft”.

10.2 The XV Transport

Setting the VGL_COMPRESS environment variable to xv or passing an argument of -c xv to vglrun enables the XV Transport. The XV Transport is a special flavor of the X11 Transport that encodes rendered frames as YUV420P and draws them directly to the 2D X server using the X Video extension. This is mainly useful in conjunction with X proxies that support the X Video extension. The idea is that, if the X proxy is going to have to transcode the frame into YUV anyhow, VirtualGL may be faster at doing this, since it has a SIMD-accelerated YUV encoder.

11 Transport Plugins

VirtualGL 2.2 (and later) includes an API that allows you to write your own image transports. Thus, you can use VirtualGL for doing split rendering and framebuffer readback but then use your own library for delivering the rendered frames to the client.

When the VGL_TRANSPORT environment variable (or the -trans option to vglrun) is set to {t}, then VirtualGL will look for a DSO (dynamic shared object) with the name libvgltrans_{t}.so in the dynamic linker path and will attempt to access a set of API functions from this library. The functions that the plugin library must export are defined in /opt/VirtualGL/include/rrtransport.h, and an example of their usage can be found in server/testplugin.cpp and server/testplugin2.cpp in the VirtualGL source distribution. The former wraps the VGL Transport as an image transport plugin, and the latter does the same for the X11 Transport.

12 Using VirtualGL with setuid/setgid Executables

vglrun can be used to launch either binary executables or shell scripts, but there are a few things to keep in mind when launching a shell script with vglrun. When you launch a shell script with vglrun, the VirtualGL Faker (libvglfaker.so) and dlopen() interposer (libdlfaker.so) will be preloaded into every executable that the script launches. Normally this is innocuous, but if the script calls any executables that have the setuid and/or setgid permission bits set, then the dynamic linker will refuse to preload the faker libraries into those executables. One of the following warnings will be printed for each setuid/setgid executable that the script tries to launch:

Linux

ERROR: ld.so: object 'libvglfaker.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

ERROR: ld.so: object 'libdlfaker.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

Solaris

ld.so.1: warning: libvglfaker.so: open failed: No such file in secure directories

ld.so.1: warning: libdlfaker.so: open failed: No such file in secure directories

These are just warnings, and the setuid/setgid executables will continue to run (without VirtualGL preloaded into them.) However, if you want to get rid of the warnings, an easy way to do so is to simply edit the application script and make it store the value of the LD_PRELOAD environment variable until right before the 3D application executable is launched. For instance, consider the following 3D application script:

#!/bin/sh
setuid-executable
3D-application-executable

You could modify the script as follows:

#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD_SAVE=$LD_PRELOAD
LD_PRELOAD=
export LD_PRELOAD

setuid-executable

LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD_SAVE
export LD_PRELOAD

3D-application-executable

This procedure may be necessary to work around certain other interaction issues between VirtualGL and the launch scripts of specific 3D applications. See Application Recipes for more details.

If the 3D application that you are intending to run with VirtualGL is itself a setuid/setgid executable, then further steps are required. Otherwise, the 3D application will launch without VirtualGL preloaded into it. Forcing VirtualGL to be preloaded into setuid/setgid executables has security ramifications, so please be aware of these before you do it. By applying one of the following workarounds, you are essentially telling the operating system that you trust the security and stability of VirtualGL as much as you trust the security and stability of the operating system. While we’re flattered, we’re not sure that we’re necessarily deserving of that accolade, so if you are in a security-critical environment, apply the appropriate level of paranoia here.

To force VirtualGL to be preloaded into setuid/setgid executables on Linux, you have to first make sure that the faker libraries are installed in the system library path (usually /usr/lib, /usr/lib64, /usr/lib32, or /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu). Next, make the faker libraries setuid executables. To do this, run the following commands as root:

chmod u+s /usr/lib/libvglfaker.so
chmod u+s /usr/lib/libdlfaker.so

where lib is lib, lib64, lib32, or lib/i386-linux-gnu, depending on your system.

On Solaris, you can force VirtualGL to be preloaded into setuid/setgid executables by adding the VirtualGL library directories to the Solaris “secure path.” Solaris keeps a tight lid on what goes into /usr/lib and /lib, and by default, it will only allow libraries in those paths to be preloaded into an executable that is setuid and/or setgid. Generally, 3rd party packages are forbidden from installing anything into /usr/lib or /lib, but you can use the crle utility to add other directories to the operating system’s list of secure paths. In the case of VirtualGL, you would execute one of the following commands (as root):

32-bit VirtualGL:

crle -u -s /opt/VirtualGL/lib32

64-bit VirtualGL:

crle -64 -u -s /opt/VirtualGL/lib64

13 Using VirtualGL with VirtualBox

VirtualBox is an enterprise-class, open source virtualization solution that supports hardware-accelerated OpenGL in Windows and Linux guests running on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris/x86 hosts. 3D acceleration in VirtualBox is accomplished by installing a special driver in the guest that uses a subset of Chromium to transmit OpenGL calls through a local connection to the VirtualBox process running on the host. When used in conjunction with VirtualGL on a Linux or Solaris/x86 host, this solution provides a means of displaying Windows 3D applications remotely.

To use VirtualGL with VirtualBox, perform the following procedures:

Configuring the System

1. Launch VirtualBox and use the VirtualBox GUI to create and test your virtual machine.
2. Follow the procedures outlined in the VirtualBox User’s Manual to enable 3D acceleration in the virtual machine. If possible, verify that 3D acceleration works on a local display without VirtualGL before adding VirtualGL to the mix.
3. Follow the procedure described in Chapter 12 to make libvglfaker.so and libdlfaker.so setuid executables (Linux) or to add the VirtualGL library directory to the list of secure paths (Solaris).

Launching VirtualBox

vglrun VirtualBox -startvm VM-name-or-UUID

NOTES

• You might want to temporarily enable profiling (add an argument of +pr to vglrun above) or set the VGL_LOGO environment variable to 1 in order to verify that VirtualGL is loaded and working.
• It is necessary to start the virtual machine directly as described above. Simply executing vglrun VirtualBox and using the GUI to launch the VM does not work. VirtualBox forks a separate process for each VM, and the value of the LD_PRELOAD environment variable from vglrun does not get propagated to the VM process unless you start it directly.
• VirtualBox sends mainly uncompressed images to the X server, so even with VirtualGL, it will not perform well over a remote X connection. Using a high-performance X proxy (such as TurboVNC) is generally preferred when remotely displaying VirtualBox using VirtualGL, particularly on 100-megabit and slower networks.

14 Using VirtualGL with VMWare Workstation

VirtualGL can also be used with VMWare Workstation, and the concept is basically the same as that of VirtualBox. As with VirtualBox, VMWare uses a special driver in the guest O/S to intercept the OpenGL commands and marshal them to the host O/S, where VirtualGL picks them up.

To use VirtualGL with VMWare Workstation, perform the following procedures:

Configuring the System

1. Launch VMWare and use the VMWare GUI to create and test your virtual machine.
2. Follow the procedures outlined in the VMWare User’s Manual to enable 3D acceleration in the virtual machine. If possible, verify that 3D acceleration works on a local display without VirtualGL before adding VirtualGL to the mix.
3. Follow the procedure described in Chapter 12 to make libvglfaker.so and libdlfaker.so setuid executables.

Launching VMWare

vglrun vmware -X VM-path/VM-name.vmx

NOTES

The notes from the previous chapter apply to VMWare Workstation as well.

15 Other Application Recipes

16 Advanced OpenGL Features

16.1 Stereographic Rendering

Stereographic rendering is a feature of OpenGL that creates separate rendering buffers for the left and right eyes and allows a 3D application to render a different image into each buffer. How the rendered stereo frames are subsequently displayed depends on the particulars of the GPU and the user’s environment. VirtualGL can support stereographic applications in one of two ways: (1) by sending the stereo image pairs to the VirtualGL Client to be displayed in stereo by the client’s GPU, or (2) by combining each stereo image pair into a single image that can be viewed with traditional anaglyphic 3D glasses or a passive stereo system, such as a 3D TV.

16.1.1 Quad-Buffered Stereo

The name “quad-buffered stereo” refers to the fact that OpenGL uses four buffers (left front, right front, left back, and right back) to support stereographic rendering with double buffering. GPUs with quad-buffered stereo capabilities generally provide some sort of synchronization signal that can be used to control various types of active stereo 3D glasses. Some also support “passive stereo”, which requires displaying the left and right eye buffers to different monitor outputs. VirtualGL supports quad-buffered stereo by rendering the stereo images on the server and sending the image pairs across the network to be displayed on the client.

In most cases, VirtualGL does not require that a GPU be present in the client. However, a GPU is required to display stereo image pairs, so one must be present in any client that will use VirtualGL’s quad-buffered stereo feature. Since the GPU is only being used to draw images, it need not necessarily be a high-end GPU. Generally, the least expensive GPU that has stereo capabilities will work fine in the client. The VirtualGL server must also have a GPU that supports stereo, since this is the only way that VirtualGL can obtain a stereo Pbuffer.

When a 3D application tries to render something in stereo, VirtualGL will default to using quad-buffered stereo rendering if the 2D X server supports OpenGL and has stereo visuals available (not currently supported in Cygwin/X.) Otherwise, VirtualGL will fall back to using anaglyphic stereo (see below.) It is usually necessary to explicitly enable stereo in the graphics driver configuration for both the client and VirtualGL server. The Troubleshooting section below lists a way to verify that both the 3D X server and the 2D X server have stereo visuals available.

In quad-buffered mode, VirtualGL reads back both the left and right eye buffers on the server and sends the contents as a pair of compressed images to the VirtualGL Client. The VirtualGL Client then decompresses both images and draws them as a single stereo frame to the 2D X server using glDrawPixels(). It should thus be no surprise that enabling quad-buffered stereo in VirtualGL decreases performance by 50% or more and uses twice the network bandwidth to maintain the same frame rate as mono.

Quad-buffered stereo requires the VGL Transport. Attempting to enable it with any other image transport will cause VGL to fall back to anaglyphic stereo mode.

16.1.2 Anaglyphic Stereo

Anaglyphic stereo is the type of stereographic display used by old 3D movies. It typically relies on a set of 3D glasses consisting of red transparency film over the left eye and cyan transparency film over the right eye, although green/magenta and blue/yellow schemes can be used as well. To generate a 3D anaglyph, one color channel from the left eye buffer is combined with the other two color channels from the right eye buffer, thus allowing a monographic frame to contain stereo data. For instance, in the case of red/cyan, the red channel is taken from the left eye buffer, and the green and blue channels are taken from the right eye buffer. From the point of view of VirtualGL, an anaglyphic rendered frame is the same as a monographic rendered frame, so anaglyphic frames can be sent using any image transport to any type of client, regardless of the client’s capabilities.

VirtualGL uses anaglyphic stereo if it detects that a 3D application has rendered something in stereo but quad-buffered stereo is not available, either because the client doesn’t support it or because a transport other than the VGL Transport is being used. Anaglyphic stereo provides a cheap and easy way to view stereographic applications in X proxies and on clients that do not support quad-buffered stereo. Additionally, anaglyphic stereo performs much faster than quad-buffered stereo, since it does not require sending twice the data to the client.

As with quad-buffered stereo, anaglyphic stereo requires that the VirtualGL server have stereo rendering capabilities. However, anaglyphic stereo does not require any 3D rendering capabilities (stereo or otherwise) on the client.

16.1.3 Passive Stereo

As with anaglyphic stereo, passive stereo combines a stereographic image pair into a single image (a “stereogram”), and thus it can be used with any image transport. However, unlike anaglyphic stereo, passive stereo must be used with specific display hardware, such as a 3D TV or monitor, that decodes the left and right eye images from the stereogram and sends them separately to a pair of 3D glasses (typically, this is accomplished by way of polarization.)

VirtualGL supports three methods of encoding stereograms:

Interleaved

The even rows of the stereogram are taken from the left eye image, and the odd rows are taken from the right eye image.

Top/Bottom

The top half of the stereogram is taken from the left eye image, and the bottom half is taken from the right eye image. Both halves are subsampled 2X vertically.

Side-by-Side

The left half of the stereogram is taken from the left eye image, and the right half is taken from the right eye image. Both halves are subsampled 2X horizontally.

Most 3D TVs/monitors can be configured to decode at least one of these types of stereograms. In order for this to work, however, the 3D drawing area must be full-screen.

16.1.4 Selecting a Stereo Mode

A particular stereo mode can be selected by setting the VGL_STEREO environment variable or by using the -st argument to vglrun. See Section 19.1 for more details.

16.2 Transparent Overlays

In the case of transparent overlays, VirtualGL completely bypasses its own GLX faker and uses indirect OpenGL rendering to draw to the transparent overlay using the 2D X server. The underlay is still rendered on the 3D X server, read back, and transported, as always. Using indirect rendering to render the overlay is unfortunately necessary, because there is no reliable way to draw to an overlay using 2D (X11) functions, there are severe performance issues (on some GPUs) with using glDrawPixels() to draw to the overlay, and there is no reasonable way to composite the overlay and underlay in a Pbuffer on the VirtualGL server.

The use of overlays is becoming more and more infrequent, and when they are used, it is generally only for drawing small, simple, static shapes and text. We have found that it is often faster to ship the overlay geometry over to the 2D X server rather than to render it as an image and send the image. Thus, even if it were possible to implement overlays without using indirect rendering, it is likely that indirect rendering of overlays would still be the fastest approach for most applications.

As with quad-buffered stereo, overlays must be explicitly enabled in the graphics driver and X server configurations. In the case of overlays, however, they need only be supported and enabled on the client and in the 2D X server. Some graphics drivers are known to disallow using both quad-buffered stereo and overlays at the same time. Transparent overlays are not currently supported in Cygwin/X.

Indexed color (8-bit) overlays have been tested and are known to work with VirtualGL. True color (24-bit) overlays work, in theory, but have not been tested. Use glxinfo (see Troubleshooting below) to verify whether the 2D X server supports overlays and whether they are enabled.

16.3 Troubleshooting

VirtualGL includes a modified version of glxinfo that can be used to determine whether or not the 2D and 3D X servers have stereo or overlay visuals enabled.

Run the following command sequence on the VirtualGL server to determine whether the 3D X server has a suitable visual for stereographic rendering:

xauth merge /etc/opt/VirtualGL/vgl_xauth_key
/opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxinfo -display :n -c -v

(where n is the display number of the 3D X server.) One or more of the visuals should say stereo=1 and should list Pbuffer as one of the Drawable Types.

Run the following command sequence on the VirtualGL server to determine whether the 2D X server has a suitable visual for stereographic rendering or transparent overlays.

/opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxinfo -v

In order to use stereo, one or more of the visuals should say stereo=1. In order to use transparent overlays, one or more of the visuals should say level=1, should list a Transparent Index (non-transparent visuals will say Opaque instead), and should have a class of PseudoColor.

17 Performance Measurement

17.1 VirtualGL’s Built-In Profiling System

The easiest way to uncover bottlenecks in VirtualGL’s image pipeline is to set the VGL_PROFILE environment variable to 1 on both server and client (passing an argument of +pr to vglrun on the server has the same effect.) This will cause VirtualGL to measure and report the throughput of various stages in the pipeline. For example, here are some measurements from a dual Pentium 4 server communicating with a Pentium III client on a 100-megabit LAN:

Server

Readback   - 43.27 Mpixels/sec - 34.60 fps
Compress 0 - 33.56 Mpixels/sec - 26.84 fps
Total      -  8.02 Mpixels/sec -  6.41 fps - 10.19 Mbits/sec (18.9:1)

Client

Decompress - 10.35 Mpixels/sec -  8.28 fps
Blit       - 35.75 Mpixels/sec - 28.59 fps
Total      -  8.00 Mpixels/sec -  6.40 fps - 10.18 Mbits/sec (18.9:1)

The total throughput of the pipeline is 8.0 Megapixels/sec, or 6.4 frames/sec, indicating that our frame is 8.0 / 6.4 = 1.25 Megapixels in size (a little less than 1280 x 1024 pixels.) The readback and compress stages, which occur in parallel on the server, are obviously not slowing things down, and we’re only using 1/10 of our available network bandwidth. Looking at the client, however, we discover that its slow decompression speed (10.35 Megapixels/second) is the primary bottleneck. Decompression and blitting on the client cannot be done in parallel, so the aggregate performance is the harmonic mean of the decompression and blitting rates: [1/ (1/10.35 + 1/35.75)] = 8.0 Mpixels/sec. In this case, we could improve the performance of the whole system by simply using a client with a faster CPU.

17.2 Frame Spoiling

By default, VirtualGL will only transport a frame if the image transport is ready to receive it. If VirtualGL detects that the 3D application has finished rendering a new frame but there are already frames waiting in the queue to be transported, then those untransported frames are dropped (“spoiled”), and the new frame is promoted to the head of the queue. This prevents a backlog of frames on the server, which would cause a perceptible delay in the responsiveness of interactive 3D applications. However, when running non-interactive 3D applications (particularly benchmarks), frame spoiling should always be disabled. With frame spoiling disabled, the server will render frames only as quickly as VirtualGL can transport those frames, which will conserve server resources as well as allow OpenGL benchmarks to accurately measure the end-to-end performance of VirtualGL. With frame spoiling enabled, OpenGL benchmarks will report meaningless data, since the rate at which the server can render frames is decoupled from the rate at which VirtualGL can transport those frames.

In most X proxies (including VNC), there is effectively another layer of frame spoiling, since the rate at which the X proxy can send frames to the client is decoupled from the rate at which VirtualGL can draw rendered frames into the X proxy. Thus, even if frame spoiling is disabled in VirtualGL, OpenGL benchmarks will still report inaccurate data if they are run in such X proxies. TCBench, described below, provides a limited solution to this problem.

To disable frame spoiling, set the VGL_SPOIL environment variable to 0 on the VirtualGL server or pass an argument of -sp to vglrun. See Section 19.1 for further information.

17.3 VirtualGL Diagnostic Tools

VirtualGL includes several tools that can be useful for diagnosing performance problems with the system.

NetTest

NetTest is a network benchmark that uses the same network I/O classes as VirtualGL. It can be used to test the latency and throughput of any TCP/IP connection, with or without SSL encryption. nettest is installed in /opt/VirtualGL/bin by default. For Windows users, a native Windows version of NetTest is included in the VirtualGL-Utils package, which is distributed alongside VirtualGL.

To use NetTest, first start up the NetTest server on one end of the connection:

nettest -server [-ssl]

(Use -ssl if you want to test the performance of SSL encryption over this particular connection. VirtualGL must have been compiled with OpenSSL support for this option to be available.)

Next, start the NetTest client on the other end of the connection:

nettest -client server [-ssl]

Replace server with the hostname or IP address of the machine on which the NetTest server is running. (Use -ssl if the NetTest server is running in SSL mode. VirtualGL must have been compiled with OpenSSL support for this option to be available.)

The NetTest client will produce output similar to the following:

TCP transfer performance between localhost and server:

Transfer size  1/2 Round-Trip      Throughput      Throughput
(bytes)                (msec)    (MBytes/sec)     (Mbits/sec)
1                    0.093402        0.010210        0.085651
2                    0.087308        0.021846        0.183259
4                    0.087504        0.043594        0.365697
8                    0.088105        0.086595        0.726409
16                   0.090090        0.169373        1.420804
32                   0.093893        0.325026        2.726514
64                   0.102289        0.596693        5.005424
128                  0.118493        1.030190        8.641863
256                  0.146603        1.665318       13.969704
512                  0.205092        2.380790       19.971514
1024                 0.325896        2.996542       25.136815
2048                 0.476611        4.097946       34.376065
4096                 0.639502        6.108265       51.239840
8192                 1.033596        7.558565       63.405839
16384                1.706110        9.158259       76.825049
32768                3.089896       10.113608       84.839091
65536                5.909509       10.576174       88.719379
131072              11.453894       10.913319       91.547558
262144              22.616389       11.053931       92.727094
524288              44.882406       11.140223       93.450962
1048576             89.440702       11.180592       93.789603
2097152            178.536997       11.202160       93.970529
4194304            356.754396       11.212195       94.054712

We can see that the throughput peaks at about 94 megabits/sec, which is pretty good for a 100-megabit connection. We can also see that, for small transfer sizes, the round-trip time is dominated by latency. The “latency” is the same thing as the one-way (1/2 round-trip) transit time for a zero-byte packet, which is about 93 microseconds in this case.

CPUstat

CPUstat is available only for Linux and is installed in the same place as NetTest (/opt/VirtualGL/bin by default.) It measures the average, minimum, and peak usage for all CPU cores combined and for each CPU core individually. On Windows, this same functionality is provided in the Windows Performance Monitor, which is part of the operating system. On Solaris, the same data can be obtained using the vmstat program.

CPUstat measures the CPU usage over a given sample period (a few seconds) and continuously reports how much each CPU core was utilized since the last sample period. Output for a particular sample looks something like this:

ALL :  51.0 (Usr= 47.5 Nice=  0.0 Sys=  3.5) / Min= 47.4 Max= 52.8 Avg= 50.8
cpu0:  20.5 (Usr= 19.5 Nice=  0.0 Sys=  1.0) / Min= 19.4 Max= 88.6 Avg= 45.7
cpu1:  81.5 (Usr= 75.5 Nice=  0.0 Sys=  6.0) / Min= 16.6 Max= 83.5 Avg= 56.3

The first column indicates what percentage of time the CPU core was active since the last sample period. This is then broken down into what percentage of time the CPU core spent running user, nice, and system/kernel code. ALL indicates the average utilization across all CPU cores since the last sample period. Min, Max, and Avg indicate a running minimum, maximum, and average of all samples since CPUstat was started.

Generally, if a 3D application’s CPU usage is fairly steady, then you can run CPUstat for a bit and wait for the Max and Avg values in the ALL category to stabilize, and that will tell you the application’s peak and average CPU utilization.

TCBench

TCBench was born out of the need to compare VirtualGL’s performance to that of other thin client software, some of which had frame spoiling features that could not be disabled. TCBench measures the frame rate of a thin client system as seen from the client’s point of view. It does this by attaching to one of the windows on the client and continuously reading back a small area at the center of the window. While this may seem to be a somewhat non-rigorous test, experiments have shown that, if care is taken to ensure that the 3D application is updating the center of the window with every frame (such as in a spin animation), TCBench can produce quite accurate results. It has been sanity checked with VirtualGL’s internal profiling mechanism and with a variety of system-specific techniques, such as monitoring redraw events on the client’s windowing system.

TCBench is installed in /opt/VirtualGL/bin by default. For Windows users, a native Windows version of TCBench is included in the VirtualGL-Utils package, which is distributed alongside VirtualGL. Run tcbench from the command line, and it will prompt you to click in the window you want to benchmark. That window should already have an automated animation of some sort running before you launch TCBench. Note that GLXSpheres (see below) is an ideal benchmark to use with TCBench, since GLXSpheres draws a new sphere to the center of its window every time it renders a frame.

tcbench -?

lists the relevant command-line arguments, which can be used to adjust the benchmark time, the sampling rate, and the x and y offset of the sampling area within the window.

GLXSpheres

GLXSpheres is a benchmark that produces very similar images to nVidia’s (long-discontinued) SphereMark benchmark. In the early days of VirtualGL’s existence, it was discovered (quite by accident) that SphereMark was a pretty good test of VirtualGL’s end-to-end performance, because that benchmark generated images with about the same proportion of solid color, and similar frequency components, to the images generated by volume visualization applications.

Thus, the goal of GLXSpheres was to create an open source Un*x version of SphereMark (SphereMark was for Windows only) completely from scratch. GLXSpheres does not use any code from the original benchmark, but it does attempt to mimic the visual output of the original as closely as possible. GLXSpheres lacks some of the advanced rendering features of the original, such as the ability to use vertex arrays, but since GLXspheres was primarily designed as a benchmark for VirtualGL, display lists are more than fast enough for that purpose.

GLXSpheres has some additional modes that its predecessor lacked, modes that are designed specifically to test the performance of various VirtualGL features:

Stereographic rendering (glxspheres -s)

Overlay rendering (glxspheres -o)

This renders text, a moving crosshair cursor, and a block of pixels to an 8-bit transparent overlay while animating the spheres on the underlay. The color map of the overlay is changed periodically.

Immediate mode rendering (glxspheres -m)

Want to really see the benefit of VirtualGL? Run glxspheres -m over a remote X connection, then run vglrun -sp glxspheres -m over the same connection and compare. Immediate mode does not use display lists, so when immediate-mode OpenGL is rendered indirectly (over a remote X connection), this causes every OpenGL command to be sent as a separate network request to the X server … with every frame. Many 3D applications do not use display lists– because the geometry they are rendering is dynamic, or for other reasons– so this test models how such applications might perform when displayed remotely without VirtualGL.

Interactive mode (glxspheres -i)

In interactive mode, GLXSpheres will wait to render a frame until it receives a mouse event. Continuously dragging the mouse in the window should produce a steady frame rate, and this frame rate is a reasonable model of the frame rate that you can achieve when running interactive 3D applications with VirtualGL. Comparing this interactive frame rate (vglrun glxspheres -i) with the non-interactive frame rate (vglrun -sp glxspheres) allows you to quantify the effect of network latency on the performance of interactive applications in a VirtualGL environment.

GLXSpheres is installed in /opt/VirtualGL/bin by default. 64-bit VirtualGL builds name this program glxspheres64 so as to allow both a 64-bit and a 32-bit version of GLXSpheres to be installed on the same system.

18 The VirtualGL Configuration Dialog

Several of VirtualGL’s operational parameters can be changed on the fly once a 3D application has been launched. This is accomplished by using the VirtualGL Configuration dialog, which can be popped up by holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys and pressing the F9 key while any one of the 3D application’s windows is active. This displays the following dialog box:

You can use this dialog to adjust various image compression and display parameters in VirtualGL. Changes are communicated immediately to VirtualGL.

Image Compression (Transport)

This is a drop-down menu with the following options:

None (X11 Transport) : equivalent to setting VGL_COMPRESS=proxy. This option can be activated at any time, regardless of which transport was active when VirtualGL started.

JPEG (VGL Transport) : equivalent to setting VGL_COMPRESS=jpeg. This option is only available if the VGL Transport was active when VirtualGL started.

RGB (VGL Transport) : equivalent to setting VGL_COMPRESS=rgb. This option is only available if the VGL Transport was active when VirtualGL started.

YUV (XV Transport) : equivalent to setting VGL_COMPRESS=xv. This option is only available if the 2D X server has the X Video extension and the X Video implementation supports the YUV420P (AKA “I420”) image format.

YUV (VGL Transport) : equivalent to setting VGL_COMPRESS=yuv. This option is only available if the 2D X server has the X Video extension, the X Video implementation supports the YUV420P (AKA “I420”) image format, and the VGL Transport was active when VirtualGL started.

See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_COMPRESS configuration option.

If an image transport plugin is loaded, then this menu’s name changes to “Image Compression”, and it has options “0” through “10”.

Chrominance Subsampling

This drop-down menu is active only when using JPEG compression or an image transport plugin. It has the following options:

Grayscale : equivalent to setting VGL_SUBSAMP=gray

1X : equivalent to setting VGL_SUBSAMP=1x

2X : equivalent to setting VGL_SUBSAMP=2x

4X : equivalent to setting VGL_SUBSAMP=4x

See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_SUBSAMP configuration option.

If an image transport plugin is loaded, then this menu has two additional options, “8X” and “16X”.

JPEG Image Quality

This slider gadget is active only when using JPEG compression or an image transport plugin. It is the equivalent of setting VGL_QUAL. See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_QUAL configuration option.

If an image transport plugin is loaded, then this gadget’s name changes to “Image Quality”.

Connection Profile

This drop-down menu is active only if the VGL Transport was active when VirtualGL started. It has the following options:

Low Qual (Low-Bandwidth Network) : Sets the image compression type to JPEG (VGL Transport), the chrominance subsampling to 4X, and the JPEG image quality to 30.

Medium Qual : Sets the image compression type to JPEG (VGL Transport), the chrominance subsampling to 2X, and the JPEG image quality to 80.

High Qual (High-Bandwidth Network) : Sets the image compression type to JPEG (VGL Transport), the chrominance subsampling to 1X, and the JPEG image quality to 95.

Gamma Correction Factor

This floating point input gadget is the equivalent of setting VGL_GAMMA. This enables VirtualGL’s internal gamma correction system with the specified gamma correction factor. See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_GAMMA configuration option.

Frame Spoiling

This toggle button is the equivalent of setting VGL_SPOIL. See Sections 17.2 and 19.1 for more information about the VGL_SPOIL configuration option.

Interframe Comparison

This toggle button is the equivalent of setting VGL_INTERFRAME. See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_INTERFRAME configuration option.

Stereographic Rendering Method

This drop-down menu has the following options:

Send Left Eye Only : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=left.

Send Right Eye Only : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=right

Quad-Buffered (if available) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=quad

Anaglyphic (Red/Cyan) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=rc

Anaglyphic (Green/Magenta) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=gm

Anaglyphic (Blue/Yellow) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=by

Passive (Interleaved) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=i

Passive (Top/Bottom) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=tb

Passive (Side-by-Side) : equivalent to setting VGL_STEREO=ss

See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_STEREO configuration option.

Limit Frames/second

This floating point input gadget is the equivalent of setting VGL_FPS. See Section 19.1 for more information about the VGL_FPS configuration option.

You can set the VGL_GUI environment variable to change the key sequence used to pop up the VirtualGL Configuration dialog. If the default of ctrl-shift-f9 is not suitable, then set VGL_GUI to any combination of ctrl, shift, alt, and one of f1, f2, ..., f12 (these are not case sensitive.) For example:

export VGL_GUI=ctrl-f9

will cause the dialog box to pop up whenever Ctrl and F9 are pressed.

To disable the VirtualGL dialog altogether, set VGL_GUI to none.

19 Advanced Configuration

19.1 Faker Settings

You can control the operation of the VirtualGL faker libraries in four different ways. Each method of configuration takes precedence over the previous method:

1. Setting a configuration environment variable globally (for instance, in /etc/profile)
2. Setting a configuration environment variable on a per-user basis (for instance, in ~/.bashrc)
3. Setting a configuration environment variable only for the current shell session (for instance, export VGL_XXX=whatever)
4. Passing a configuration option as an argument to vglrun. This effectively overrides any previous environment variable setting corresponding to that configuration option.

Description

Normally, when VirtualGL maps a Pbuffer to a window and establishes an OpenGL rendering context with the Pbuffer, it forces direct rendering to be used with this context. Some 3D applications erroneously try to create indirect OpenGL contexts because they detect that the X server is on a different machine and assume that the 3D rendering commands will be sent over the network. Thus, VirtualGL normally forces all contexts to be direct in order to prevent severe readback performance degradation with such applications (even on modern GPUs, and even when the connection to the 3D X server is local, glReadPixels() can perform very slowly if an indirect OpenGL context is used.)

However, some 3D applications intentionally try to create indirect contexts so that these contexts can be shared, and those applications may not work properly when the contexts are forced to be direct. For such applications, setting VGL_ALLOWINDIRECT to 1 will cause VirtualGL to honor the application’s request for an indirect OpenGL context.

Description

When using the VGL Transport, VGL_CLIENT should be set to the hostname or IP address of the machine on which the VirtualGL Client is running. Normally, VGL_CLIENT is set automatically when executing vglconnect or vglrun, so don’t override it unless you know what you’re doing.

Description

proxy = Send rendered frames in uncompressed form using the X11 Transport. This is useful when displaying to a 2D X server or X proxy on the VirtualGL server (see Section 9.1.)

jpeg = Compress rendered frames using JPEG and send them using the VGL Transport. This is useful when displaying to a 2D X server on a machine other than the VirtualGL server (see Chapter 8.)

rgb = Encode rendered frames as uncompressed RGB and send them using the VGL Transport. This is useful when displaying to a 2D X server or X proxy on a machine that is connected to the VirtualGL server by a very fast network (see Section 9.2.)

xv = Encode rendered frames as YUV420P (planar YUV with 4X chrominance subsampling) and display them to the 2D X server using the XV Transport. This transport is designed for use with X proxies that support the X Video extension (see Chapter 10.)

yuv = Encode rendered frames as YUV420P, send them using the VGL Transport, and display them to the 2D X server using the X Video extension. This greatly reduces the CPU usage on both server and client and uses only about half the network bandwidth as RGB, but the use of 4X chrominance subsampling does produce some visible artifacts (see Chapter 10.)

If VGL_COMPRESS is not specified, then the default is set as follows:

If the DISPLAY environment variable begins with : or unix:, then VirtualGL assumes that the 2D X server is on the same machine and uses proxy compression by default.

If VirtualGL detects that the 2D X server is on a different machine, then it uses jpeg compression by default.

If an image transport plugin is being used, then you can set VGL_COMPRESS to any numeric value >= 0 (Default value = 0.) The plugin can choose to respond to this value as it sees fit.

Description

Normally, a Un*x OpenGL application would call the glXChooseVisual() function to obtain an X11 visual with a desired set of OpenGL attributes (such as a specific Z buffer depth, etc.) The application would then use that X visual when creating an X window for OpenGL rendering. VirtualGL’s fundamental purpose is to redirect OpenGL rendering from a window on one X server (the 2D X server) to a Pbuffer on another X server (the 3D X server.) Thus, for every OpenGL-enabled X visual that the 3D application tries to obtain, VirtualGL needs to obtain an equivalent “GLX FB config”, which is like an X visual for Pbuffers. VirtualGL does this by intercepting glXChooseVisual() and using the attributes passed to that function to build an attribute list for glXChooseFBConfig(), which is called on the 3D X server. The FB config returned from glXChooseFBConfig() is mapped internally to an X visual on the 2D X server, and that visual is returned from glXChooseVisual(). The FB config is later used when creating the Pbuffer that backs a 3D application window.

In rare cases, a 3D application may choose to implement its own visual selection mechanism rather than call glXChooseVisual(). Such applications will iterate through the list of X visuals and examine the OpenGL attributes of each using glXGetConfig(). The problem is this: whereas in a “normal” GLX environment, there would be a 1:1 correspondence between X visuals and GLX FB configs, in VirtualGL’s split rendering environment, X visuals are on the 2D X server and GLX FB configs are on the 3D X server. Thus, if a 3D application calls glXGetConfig() before calling glXChooseVisual(), VirtualGL has not yet mapped the X visual in question to a GLX FB config, and furthermore, VirtualGL has no idea what type of visual the application is looking for. In such cases, VGL has to map the visual to a default FB config. Since this default FB config is very basic, if the 3D application is hunting for a visual with a particular OpenGL attribute (such as an alpha channel or a stencil buffer), then it may fail to find one.

VGL_DEFAULTFBCONFIG allows the user to specify the attributes of VirtualGL’s default FB config. This may be necessary to make certain 3D applications work, if those applications do not use glXChooseVisual() to obtain a visual. The attribute list is specified in the same way that you would specify an attribute list for glXChooseFBConfig(). Example: VGL_DEFAULTFBCONFIG=GLX_ALPHA_SIZE,8,GLX_STENCIL_SIZE,8. See Application Recipes for a list of 3D applications that are known to require the use of this configuration option.

Description

If the VirtualGL server has multiple GPUs, each attached to a separate X screen or a separate X server, then you can use this option to specify which GPU should be used for 3D rendering. For instance, setting VGL_DISPLAY to (or invoking vglrun -d with) :0.1 would cause VirtualGL to redirect all of the OpenGL rendering from the 3D application to a GPU attached to Screen 1 on X display :0.

Description

In certain parallel rendering applications, it may be desirable to directly access multiple GPUs from within worker threads and to disable VirtualGL for those threads while leaving VirtualGL enabled for the main thread, which displays the final rendered result from all of the workers.

The VGL_EXCLUDE environment variable specifies a list of X display names (for instance, :0.1) for which VirtualGL should not interpose any X11, GLX, OpenGL, XCB, or OpenCL calls. In other words, VirtualGL treats these displays as 3D X servers instead of 2D X servers and does not attempt to redirect 3D rendering away from them. When an X display connection is opened using XOpenDisplay(), VirtualGL checks if the display name appears in the exclude list, and if so, all subsequent X11, GLX, OpenGL, and XCB calls intended for that display are allowed to pass through unimpeded. This variable is re-checked every time XOpenDisplay() is called, so it can be set dynamically from within a 3D application.

Description

In order to support applications that use OpenCL/OpenGL interoperability functions, VirtualGL has to interpose the clCreateContext() function and modify its arguments before passing them to the “real” clCreateContext() function in libOpenCL. Since libOpenCL is not available on all platforms that VirtualGL supports, the OpenCL interposer is disabled by default.

Description

Qt 5 uses XCB instead of Xlib to perform all non-OpenGL X11-related operations. Thus, in order to support Qt 5 applications, VirtualGL has to interpose enough of the XCB API to allow it to intercept window resize events and to make Qt 5 believe that a GLX extension is present, even when the 2D X server doesn’t support GLX. The XCB interposer in this release of VirtualGL should be non-intrusive, and thus it is enabled by default, and this option is provided only for troubleshooting purposes. You shouldn’t need to disable the XCB interposer unless unforeseen problems are encountered.

Description

Normally, VirtualGL will create Pbuffers whose attributes match those of the visuals requested by the 3D application. Setting VGL_FORCEALPHA to 1 causes VirtualGL to always create Pbuffers with alpha channels. This means that a 32-bit-per-pixel (BGRA) Pbuffer will be created if the application requests a 24-bit-per-pixel visual.

The primary purpose of this option is to work around a limitation of certain consumer-grade GPUs whereby the pixel format requested by the framebuffer readback operation must match the pixel format of the Pbuffer in order for pixel buffer objects (PBOs) to behave correctly. Since displaying to an X proxy typically requires VirtualGL to read back the framebuffer in BGRA format, enabling VGL_FORCEALPHA might be necessary in order to use PBO readback mode with the aforementioned GPUs (as of this writing, nVidia GeForce adapters are known to require this.) See the VGL_READBACK option for further information.

Description

This option prevents VirtualGL from transporting frames at a rate faster than the specified limit. It can be used, for instance, as a crude way to control network bandwidth or CPU usage in multi-user environments in which those resources are constrained.

If frame spoiling is disabled, then setting VGL_FPS effectively limits the server’s 3D rendering frame rate as well.

Description

“Gamma” refers to the relationship between the intensity of light that your computer’s monitor is instructed to display and the intensity that it actually displays. The curve is an exponential curve of the form Y = X^G, where X is between 0 and 1. G is called the “gamma” of the monitor. PC monitors and TVs usually have a gamma of around 2.2.

Some of the math involved in 3D rendering assumes a linear gamma (G = 1.0), so technically speaking, 3D applications will not display with mathematical correctness unless the pixels are “gamma corrected” to counterbalance the non-linear response curve of the monitor. However, some systems do not have any form of built-in gamma correction, so the applications developed for such systems have usually been designed to display properly without gamma correction. Gamma correction involves passing pixels through a function of the form X = W^1/G, where G is the “gamma correction factor” and should be equal to the gamma of the monitor. So, the final output is Y = X^G = (W^1/G)^G = W, which describes a linear relationship between the intensity of the pixels drawn by the application and the intensity of the pixels displayed by the monitor.

If VGL_GAMMA is set to an arbitrary floating point value, then VirtualGL will perform gamma correction on all of the rendered frames from the 3D application, using the specified value as the gamma correction factor. You can also specify a negative value to apply a “de-gamma” function. Specifying a gamma correction factor of G (where G < 0) is equivalent to specifying a gamma correction factor of -1/G.

Description

glFlush() is a sort of “asynchronous synchronization” command. It flushes the OpenGL command buffers, which generally has the effect of ensuring that the commands have been delivered to the GPU. However, unlike glFinish(), glFlush() does not wait until the commands have been rendered before it returns.

The use of glFlush() can vary widely from application to application. When doing front buffer rendering, some 3D applications call glFlush() after each object is rendered. Some call it only at the end of the frame. Others call glFlush() much more often, even as frequently as every time a few primitives are rendered. This creates problems for VirtualGL, since it has to guess the application’s intent. Not all 3D applications that use front buffer rendering call glFinish() to signal the end of a frame, so VirtualGL cannot usually get away with ignoring glFlush(). However, some 3D applications call glFlush() so often that VirtualGL cannot get away with reading back/transporting a frame every time glFlush() is called, either (see VGL_SPOILLAST for more information on how VirtualGL tries to handle this, under normal circumstances.)

Some 3D applications use glFlush() very liberally and intend for it to be an intermediate rather than a final synchronization command. Such applications will call glFinish() after a sequence of glFlush() calls, so for those applications, using glFlush() as a frame trigger is a waste of resources and can sometimes create visual artifacts (for instance, if the application clears the front buffer with a particular color, calls glFlush(), then clears it again with another color. We wouldn’t mention it if it hadn’t happened before.) For such applications, setting VGL_GLFLUSHTRIGGER to 0 should make them display properly with VirtualGL. See Application Recipes for a list of 3D applications that are known to require this.

Description

Normally VirtualGL will call the glXGetProcAddress() or glXGetProcAddressARB() function in the OpenGL library against which it or the 3D application was linked (usually libGL.so.1, in the system library path), and VGL will use that function to load any other “real” OpenGL or GLX functions that it needs to call (“real” as opposed to the “fake”, or “interposed”, versions of those functions that VirtualGL provides, which often modify the arguments or perform other operations before calling the “real” functions.) You can use the VGL_GLLIB environment variable to specify the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” GLX and OpenGL functions.

You shouldn’t need to change this unless something doesn’t work. However, setting this environment variable is potentially useful if one wishes to insert another OpenGL interposer between VirtualGL and the system’s OpenGL library.

Description

VirtualGL normally monitors a 3D application’s X event queue and pops up the VirtualGL Configuration dialog whenever Ctrl-Shift-F9 is pressed. In the event that this interferes with a key sequence that the application is already using, then you can redefine the key sequence used to pop up the VirtualGL Configuration dialog by setting VGL_GUI to some combination of shift, ctrl, alt, and one of f1, f2, ..., f12. You can also set VGL_GUI to none to disable the configuration dialog altogether. See Chapter 18 for more details.

Description

The VGL Transport normally compares each rendered frame with the previous frame and sends only the portions of the frame that have changed. Setting VGL_INTERFRAME to 0 disables this behavior.

This setting was introduced in order to work around a specific application interaction issue, but since a proper fix for that issue was introduced in VirtualGL 2.1.1, this option isn’t really useful anymore.

When using the VGL Transport, interframe comparison is affected by the VGL_TILESIZE option

Description

Setting this environment variable to the pathname of a log file (or “stdout”) on the VirtualGL server will cause VirtualGL to redirect all of its messages (including profiling and trace output) to the specified log file rather than to stderr.

Description

Setting VGL_LOGO to 1 will cause VirtualGL to add a small logo to the bottom right-hand corner of all of the rendered frames from the 3D application. This is meant as a debugging tool to allow users to determine whether or not VirtualGL is active.

Description

The VGL Transport can use multiple threads to divide the task of compressing/encoding each rendered frame among multiple server CPU cores. This might speed up the overall throughput in rare circumstances in which the server CPU is significantly slower than the client CPU.

VirtualGL will not allow more than 4 threads total to be used for compression, nor will it allow you to set this parameter to a value greater than the number of CPU cores in the system.

When using the VGL Transport, multithreaded compression is affected by the VGL_TILESIZE option

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load any “real” OpenCL functions that it needs to call (“real” as opposed to the “fake”, or “interposed”, versions of those functions that VirtualGL provides, which modify the arguments before calling the “real” functions.)

You shouldn’t need to change this unless something doesn’t work.

Description

The connection port for the VGL Transport is normally determined by reading an X property that the VirtualGL Client stores on the 2D X server, so don’t override this unless you know what you’re doing.

Description

If profiling output is enabled, then VirtualGL will continuously benchmark itself and periodically print out the throughput of various stages in its image pipeline.

See Chapter 17 for more details.

Description

In digital imaging, “frequency” refers to how quickly the color changes between light and dark as you move either horizontally or vertically in the image. Images with very sharp, bright features on a dark background, for instance, consist of both low-frequency and high-frequency components, whereas images with smooth transitions between neighboring pixels contain only low-frequency components. JPEG compression works by breaking down the image into its constituent frequencies and then throwing out the highest of these frequencies. The JPEG image “quality” determines which frequencies are thrown out. A JPEG quality of 1 throws out all but the lowest frequencies and thus produces a very impressionistic, but generally not very useful, compressed image. A JPEG quality of 100 retains all frequencies in the original image (but, due to roundoff errors, the compressed image is still not completely lossless.)

Because the human eye usually cannot detect the highest frequencies in the image, and often because the image lacks those high-frequency elements to begin with, a sufficiently high JPEG quality setting can produce a “perceptually lossless” image. A “perceptually lossless” image contains a small amount of mathematical error when compared to the original image, but this error is so small that, under normal circumstances, human vision cannot detect it. The threshold quality level at which JPEG compression becomes perceptually lossless is different for each image, but experiments with various visual difference benchmarks (such as HDR-VDP) suggest that a JPEG quality of 95 is sufficient to guarantee perceptual losslessness for the types of 3D applications (volume visualization applications, in particular) in which image quality is critical. As with any benchmarks, Your Mileage May Vary. Those who are particularly paranoid about image quality can set the JPEG quality to 100 or use RGB encoding, but a fast network is required for both.

If using an image transport plugin, then this setting need not necessarily correspond to JPEG image quality. The plugin can choose to respond to the VGL_QUAL option as it sees fit.

Description

• none = Do not read back the rendered frames at all. On rare occasions, it might be desirable to have VirtualGL redirect OpenGL rendering from an application’s window into a Pbuffer but not automatically read back and transport the rendered frames. Some 3D applications have their own mechanisms for reading back the rendered frames, so setting VGL_READBACK=none disables VirtualGL’s readback mechanism and prevents duplication of effort.
  
  This option was developed initially to support running ParaView in parallel using MPI. ParaView/MPI normally uses MPI Processes 1 through N as rendering servers, each rendering a portion of the geometry into a separate window on a separate X display. ParaView reads back these server windows and composites the pixels into the main application window, which is controlled by MPI Process 0. By creating a script that passes a different value of VGL_DISPLAY and VGL_READBACK to each MPI process, it is possible to make all of the ParaView server processes render to off-screen buffers on different GPUs while preventing VirtualGL from displaying any pixels except those generated by Process 0.
  
  
• pbo = PBO readback mode. Attempt to use pixel buffer objects (PBOs) to read back the rendered frames from the GPU. A PBO is an opaque memory buffer managed by OpenGL, so it can be locked down for direct DMA transfers. This improves readback performance as well as makes the readback operation non-blocking. Because PBOs are managed buffers, VirtualGL has to perform an additional memory copy to transfer a rendered frame out of the PBO and into the image transport’s buffer. However, on high-end GPUs, PBO readback mode will still generally perform better than synchronous readback mode, even with this additional memory copy. Furthermore, since the non-blocking nature of PBO readback reduces the load on the GPU, PBOs can improve performance dramatically when multiple simultaneous users are sharing a professional-grade GPU.
  
  As of this writing, some nVidia GeForce adapters will fall back to using blocking readbacks if the pixel format requested by the readback operation does not match the pixel format of the Pbuffer. If VirtualGL detects that this is occurring– that is, if PBOs are no longer behaving asynchronously– then VGL will fall back to synchronous readback mode until the next time the compression type is changed. If you are using an X proxy, then this situation could occur because the X proxy’s virtual framebuffer is BGRA but, unless the 3D application has requested an alpha channel, its Pbuffer is likely BGR. In this specific case, setting the VGL_FORCEALPHA option to 1 could alleviate the issue.
  
  
• sync = Synchronous readback mode. This disables the use of PBOs altogether, which causes VirtualGL to always use blocking readbacks.
  
  Setting VGL_VERBOSE=1 will cause VirtualGL to print the current readback mode being used, as well as the pixel format requested by the readback operation and the pixel format of the Pbuffer. Additionally, a notification will be printed if VirtualGL falls back from PBO readback mode to synchronous readback mode.

Description

The GLX_EXT_swap_control and GLX_SGI_swap_control extensions allow applications to specify that buffer swaps should be synchronized with the refresh rate of the monitor. When one of these extensions is used, glXSwapBuffers() will not return until a specified number of refreshes (the “swap interval”) has occurred. Although refresh rate has no meaning when rendering into an off-screen buffer, VirtualGL still emulates the swap control extensions so that 3D applications can control their own frame rate (this is often used by games, for instance, in which maintaining a constant frame rate is important.) VirtualGL uses an internal timer to emulate the refresh rate, and setting VGL_REFRESHRATE changes the interval of that timer.

Description

This option was added primarily because certain vendor-specific methods of enabling full-scene antialiasing at a global level (such as nVidia’s __GL_FSAA_MODE environment variable) do not work with Pbuffers and, subsequently, do not work with VirtualGL. If VGL_SAMPLES is > 0, then VirtualGL will attempt to create Pbuffers with the specified number (or a greater number) of samples. This effectively forces the 3D application to render with the specified multisampling level, as if the application had explicitly passed attributes of GLX_SAMPLES,{s} to glXChooseVisual(). If VGL_SAMPLES is 0, then VirtualGL forces multisampling to be disabled, even if the 3D application explicitly tries to enable it.

Multisampling cannot be used with Pixmap rendering. Any application that uses Pixmap rendering will fail if VGL_SAMPLES is set to a value other than 0.

Description

In remote display environments, the mouse movement is generally sampled 40-60 times per second. 3D applications generally render a new frame for every mouse motion event, so if the image transport and (if applicable) the client cannot process the frames quickly enough, the server’s TCP buffers will fill up, causing delays in the delivery of each frame. Effectively, unless the remote display software is able to transport at least 40-60 frames per second, the movement of a 3D scene will appear to lag behind the mouse motion. VirtualGL’s default behavior is to compensate for this by dropping (spoiling) each frame that the transport isn’t ready to receive. This ensures that the movement of the 3D scene will appear to “keep up” with the mouse, even though not all rendered frames are actually being transported.

Frame spoiling is usually necessary with interactive 3D applications, but it should be turned off when running benchmarks or other non-interactive 3D applications. Turning off frame spoiling will force every frame rendered on the server to be transported, and thus the frame rate reported by OpenGL benchmarks will accurately reflect the end-to-end performance of VirtualGL (though, in X proxy environments, this may still not accurately reflect the frame rate seen by the user. See Section 17.2.) Disabling frame spoiling also prevents non-interactive 3D applications from wasting graphics resources by rendering frames that will never be seen.

Description

VirtualGL normally reads back a rendered frame when the 3D application calls one of the frame trigger functions, such as glXSwapBuffers(). When frame spoiling is enabled and the image transport is busy transporting a frame, the newly-rendered frame is normally promoted to the head of the queue, and the rest of the frames in the queue are “spoiled” (discarded.) This algorithm, called “spoil first”, ensures that when a frame is actually transported (rather than spoiled), the transported frame will be the most recently rendered frame. However, this algorithm requires that VirtualGL read back every frame that the application renders, even if the frame is ultimately discarded.

Some 3D applications call glFlush() many thousands of times per frame while rendering to the front buffer. Thus, VirtualGL’s default behavior is to use a different spoiling algorithm, “spoil last”, to process frames triggered by glFlush() calls. “Spoil last” discards the most recently rendered frame if the image transport is busy. Thus, the only frames that are read back are the frames that are actually transported. However, there is no guarantee in this case that the transported frame will be the most recently rendered frame, so applications that perform front buffer rendering and call glFlush() in response to an interactive operation may not display properly. For such applications, setting the VGL_SPOILLAST environment variable to 0 prior to launching the application with vglrun will cause the “spoil first” algorithm to be used for all frame triggers, including glFlush(). This should fix the display problem, at the expense of increased load on the GPU (because VirtualGL is now reading back the rendered frame every time glFlush() is called.) See Application Recipes for a list of 3D applications that are known to require this.

Description

Enabling this option causes the VGL Transport to be tunneled through a secure socket layer (SSL.)

This option has no effect unless both the VirtualGL Faker and VirtualGL Client were built with OpenSSL support.

Description

left = When a 3D application renders a stereo frame, read back and transport only the left eye buffer

right = When a 3D application renders a stereo frame, read back and transport only the right eye buffer

quad = Attempt to use quad-buffered stereo, which will result in a pair of images being transported for every rendered frame. Using quad-buffered stereo requires the VGL Transport (or a transport plugin that can handle stereo image pairs.) Using quad-buffered stereo with the VGL Transport also requires that the 2D X server support OpenGL and be connected to a GPU that supports stereo rendering. The 2D X server should additionally be configured to export stereo visuals. Quad-buffered stereo is not supported when using the VGL Transport with YUV encoding. If quad-buffered stereo is requested but the transport or the client does not support it, then VirtualGL will fall back to using Red/Cyan (anaglyphic) stereo.

rc = Use Red/Cyan (anaglyphic) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

gm = Use Green/Magenta (anaglyphic) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

by = Use Blue/Yellow (anaglyphic) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

i = Use Interleaved (passive) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

tb = Use Top/Bottom (passive) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

ss = Use Side-by-Side (passive) stereo, even if quad-buffered is available

See Chapter 16 for more details.

Description

When an image is compressed using JPEG, each pixel in the image is first converted from RGB (Red/Green/Blue) to YCbCr. An RGB pixel has three values that specify the amounts of red, green, and blue that make up the pixel’s color. A YCbCr pixel has three values that specify the overall brightness of the pixel (Y, or “luminance”) and the overall color of the pixel (Cb and Cr, or “chrominance”.)

In the digital world, the terms “YCbCr” and “YUV” are often used interchangeably. Per the convention of the image processing and digital video communities, we use “YCbCr” when discussing JPEG compression and “YUV” when discussing video formats, but they are really the same thing.

Since the human eye is less sensitive to changes in color than it is to changes in brightness, the chrominance components for some of the pixels can be discarded without much noticeable loss in image quality. This technique, called “chrominance subsampling”, significantly reduces the size of the compressed image.

1x = no chrominance subsampling

2x = discard the chrominance components for every other pixel along the image’s X direction (this is also known as “4:2:2” or “2:1” subsampling.) All else being equal, 2x subsampling generally reduces the image size by about 20-25% when compared to no subsampling.

4x = discard the chrominance components for every other pixel along both the X and Y directions of the image (this is also known as “4:2:0” or “2:2” subsampling.) All else being equal, 4x subsampling generally reduces the image size by about 35-40% when compared to no subsampling.

8x = discard the chrominance components for 3 out of every 4 pixels along the image’s X direction and half the pixels along the image’s Y direction (this is also known as “4:1:0” or “4:2” subsampling.) This option is available only when using an image transport plugin that supports it.

16x = discard the chrominance components for 3 out of every 4 pixels along both the X and Y directions of the image (this is also known as “4:4” subsampling.) This option is available only when using an image transport plugin that supports it.

gray = discard all chrominance components. This is useful when running 3D applications (such as medical visualization applications) that are already generating grayscale images.

Subsampling artifacts are less noticeable with volume data, since it usually only contains 256 colors to begin with, but narrow, aliased lines and other sharp features on a black background will tend to produce very noticeable artifacts when subsampling is enabled.

The axis indicator from a popular visualization application displayed with 1x, 2x, and 4x chrominance subsampling (respectively):

If using an image transport plugin, then this setting need not necessarily correspond to JPEG chrominance subsampling. How the plugin responds to the VGL_SUBSAMP option is implementation-specific.

Description

Normally, VirtualGL’s operation is asynchronous from the point of view of the 3D application. The application calls a frame trigger function, and VirtualGL reads back the rendered frame and transports it to the 2D X server … eventually. This is fine for the vast majority of 3D applications, but it does not strictly conform to the GLX specification. Technically speaking, when an application calls a frame trigger function, it is well within its rights to expect the rendered frame to be immediately available in the X window. Fortunately, very few applications actually do expect this, but on rare occasions, a 3D application may try to use XGetImage() or other X11 functions to obtain a bitmap of the pixels that were rendered by OpenGL. Enabling VGL_SYNC is a somewhat extreme measure that may be needed to make such applications display properly with VirtualGL. It was developed initially as a way to pass the GLX conformance suite (conformx, specifically), but at least one commercial application is known to require it as well (see Application Recipes.)

When VGL_SYNC is enabled, every call to a frame trigger function will cause VirtualGL to read back the rendered frame and synchronously draw it into the 3D application’s window using the X11 Transport with no frame spoiling. The frame trigger function will not return control to the 3D application until VirtualGL has verified that the rendered frame has been composited into the application’s window. Therefore, this mode can have potentially dire effects on performance when used with a 2D X server on a machine other than the VirtualGL server. It is strongly recommended that VGL_SYNC be used only in conjunction with an X proxy running on the VirtualGL server.

If an image transport plugin is being used, then VirtualGL does not automatically enable the X11 Transport or disable frame spoiling when VGL_SYNC is set. This allows the plugin to handle synchronous image delivery as it sees fit (or to simply ignore this option.)

Description

Normally, the VGL Transport divides a rendered frame into equal-sized square tiles, compares each tile against the same tile in the previous frame, and compresses/sends only the tiles that have changed (assuming interframe comparison is enabled.) The VGL Transport also divides the task of compressing or encoding these tiles among the available CPUs in a round robin fashion, if multithreaded compression is enabled (see VGL_NPROCS.)

There are several tradeoffs that must be considered when choosing a tile size:

Parallel scalability:

• Smaller tiles can more easily be distributed among multiple CPUs. If the tile size is too large, then there may not be enough tiles to go around.

Compression efficiency:

• Compressing images requires a certain amount of fixed CPU overhead, so compressing larger tiles makes more efficient use of the CPUs and increases the aggregate throughput of the compressor.

Interframe optimization:

• When using smaller tiles, there is more of a chance that a given tile will remain unchanged from frame to frame and thus not need to be re-transported.

Network efficiency:

• Each tile requires a certain amount of fixed overhead to represent it on the network. Thus, using smaller tiles increases the total number of tiles per frame, which increases the total network usage.

256x256 was chosen as the default because, in experiments, it provided the best balance between scalability and efficiency on the platforms that VirtualGL supports.

Description

When tracing is enabled, VirtualGL will log all calls to the functions it is interposing, as well as the arguments, return values, and execution times for those functions. This is useful when diagnosing interaction problems between VirtualGL and a particular OpenGL application.

Description

If this option is specified, then VirtualGL will attempt to use an image transport plugin contained in a dynamic library named libvgltrans_{t}.so located in the dynamic linker path. See Chapter 11 for more information.

Description

If a 3D application does not install its own X11 error handler, then the default X11 error handler is used, thus causing the application to exit if an X11 error occurs. Enabling the VGL_TRAPX11 option causes VirtualGL to install its own X11 error handler, which prints a warning message but allows the application to continue running.

Description

When this option is enabled, VirtualGL will reveal some of the decisions it is making behind the scenes, such as which type of X11 drawing it is using in the X11 Transport, etc. This can be helpful when diagnosing performance problems.

Description

When window manager mode is enabled, VirtualGL will disable some of its internal features that interfere with the correct operation of compositing window managers such as compiz.

Description

Normally VirtualGL will use the X11 library against which it was linked (usually libX11.so.6, in the system library path) to load any “real” X11 functions that it needs to call (“real” as opposed to the “fake”, or “interposed”, versions of those functions that VirtualGL provides, which often modify the arguments or perform other operations before calling the “real” functions.) You can use the VGL_X11LIB environment variable to specify the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” X11 functions.

You shouldn’t need to change this unless something doesn’t work. However, setting this environment variable is potentially useful if one wishes to insert another X11 interposer between VirtualGL and the system’s X11 library.

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” XCB functions.

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” XCB atom functions.

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” XCB GLX functions.

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” XCB keysyms functions.

Description

Specifies the path of a dynamic library from which VirtualGL should load “real” X11 XCB functions.

Description

Some 3D applications expect the X11 vendor string to contain a particular value, which the application (sometimes erroneously) uses as an indicator of whether it is being displayed to an X server on the same machine or a different machine. This setting allows you to fool such applications into thinking that they are being displayed to an X server on the same machine.

19.2 Client Settings

These settings control the VirtualGL Client, which is used only with the VGL Transport. vglclient is normally launched automatically from vglconnect and should not require any further configuration except in exotic circumstances. These settings are meant only for advanced users or those wishing to build additional infrastructure around VirtualGL.

Description

If the client has a GPU, then it may be faster in some rare instances to draw the rendered frames using OpenGL rather than 2D (X11) drawing commands.

Description

Enabling this option will cause the VirtualGL Client to listen on IPv6 sockets and to support both IPv4 and IPv6 connections.

Description

The default behavior of the VirtualGL Client is to first try listening for unencrypted connections on port 4242, to maintain backward compatibility with VirtualGL v2.0.x. If port 4242 is not available, then the VirtualGL Client will try to find a free port in the range of 4200-4299. If none of those ports is available, then the VirtualGL Client will request a free port from the operating system.

Setting this option circumvents the automatic behavior described above and causes the VirtualGL Client to listen only on the specified TCP port.

Description

If profiling output is enabled, then VirtualGL will continuously benchmark itself and periodically print out the throughput of various stages in its image pipelines.

See Chapter 17 for more details.

Description

The default behavior of the VirtualGL Client is to first try listening for SSL connections on port 4243, to maintain backward compatibility with VirtualGL v2.0.x. If port 4243 is not available, then the VirtualGL Client will try to find a free port in the range of 4200-4299. If none of those ports is available, then the VirtualGL Client will request a free port from the operating system.

Setting this option circumvents the automatic behavior described above and causes the VirtualGL Client to listen only on the specified TCP port.

This option is available only if the VirtualGL Client was built with OpenSSL support.

Description

When this option is enabled, the VirtualGL Client will reveal some of the decisions it is making behind the scenes, such as which type of X11 drawing it is using, etc. This can be helpful when diagnosing performance problems.