ROS RViz OpenGL Problem on Ubuntu 20.04

Hello,
I am running Ubuntu 20.04 through Parallels on my 16 inch MacBook Pro with a "AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB" graphics card. I have set 3D acceleration to "On" and also ticked "Always use high performance graphics" in the VM config. I use ROS on Ubuntu and run into the following problem when I try to start RViz (a 3D visualization tool for ROS).

username@mbp-parallels:~$ rosrun rviz rviz
[ INFO] [1606388951.361636963]: rviz version 1.14.1
[ INFO] [1606388951.361718611]: compiled against Qt version 5.12.8
[ INFO] [1606388951.361728787]: compiled against OGRE version 1.9.0 (Ghadamon)
[ INFO] [1606388951.369020644]: Forcing OpenGl version 0.
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
rviz: /build/ogre-1.9-kiU5_5/ogre-1.9-1.9.0+dfsg1/RenderSystems/GL/src/OgreGLSupport.cpp:56: virtual void Ogre::GLSupport::initialiseExtensions(): Assertion `pcVer && "Problems getting GL version string using glGetString"' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

The error "Problems getting GL version string using glGetString" seems to be common as this troubleshooting page suggests: (http://wiki.ros.org/rviz/Troubleshooting). The website says the error "means you don't have OpenGL support available. Running through a virtualization environment that does not support hardware accelerated 3D is a common cause of this, as is not having the correct drivers installed under Linux.". How do I go about this and solve the problem?

Weirdly enough Gazebo (a robot simulation platform with 3D rendering) works perfectly, also really fast, so I guess the hardware acceleration works. If I disable 3D acceleration in the config before starting the VM the problem disappears and RViz opens (Gazebo is much slower without 3D acceleration, but also works). It's important to note that the problem with RViz occurred only after I installed Parallels Tools, before it worked normal.

All the best and thanks in advance!

 

Hi, I have the same problem. The 3D acceleration is very useful to Gazebo, but the rviz not work.

 

I have the exact same problem as well.

 

Mh, what should we do about this then? Doesn't seem to get much attention here. Should we file a bug with Parallels?

 

Same problem here. Hope this problem can be fixed asap.

 

I have also come across this error - and for anyone still struggling/arriving in the future, have managed to narrow it down to this change to rviz, which would have been introduced in versions after 1.14.0.

If you can use an older version, or build rviz yourself and include the `set(OpenGL_GL_PREFERENCE LEGACY)` in `CMakeLists.txt` then rviz will function correctly under Parallels.

 

I'm having this issue as well. The issue only seems to appear when Parallel tools is installed. Is there a way to maybe replace the drivers with the old ones before parallel tools replaced them?

 

I had this same issue and finally got a response from support that seems to have resolved the issue. It looks like hardware acceleration is working and rviz functions with VM hardware acceleration enabled. However, I'm not entirely sure how it fixed the issue.

These are the two commands I ran to switch out the libOpenGL library on the VM:

Code:

sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenGL.so.0.0.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenGL.so.0.0.0.orig # Back up original libOpenGL.so.0.0.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenGL.so.0.0.0 # Replace with libGL.so.1

 

Thank you so much! I don't believe I have any nonstandard libs. It might be worth noting that I recently built another package on this VM (using cmake, not catkin) that has an older version of yaml-cpp as a dependency. Could that cause a problem?

I cloned the rviz repository in a new catkin_ws/src folder and added set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Debug) to CMakeLists.txt. Then I ran catkin_make, and I got this error:

/home/aerial-robotics/catkin_ws/src/rviz/src/rviz/default_plugin/interactive_marker_display.cpp: In member function 'virtual void rviz::InteractiveMarkerDisplay:nInitialize()':
/home/aerial-robotics/catkin_ws/src/rviz/src/rviz/default_plugin/interactive_marker_display.cpp:122 error: no matching function for call to 'interactive_markers::InteractiveMarkerClient::InteractiveMarkerClient(tf::Transformer&, std::string)'
122 | kers::InteractiveMarkerClient(*tf, fixed_frame_.toStdString()));

 

Hey BradP6 thanks for the workaround, but it didn't seem to work. Did they say we needed to link to a different library?

 

Just checked by installing a new Ubuntu 20.04.2 (using the parallels provided one) VM using Parallels 17 and it still does not work. Parallels really needs to fix their OpenGL drivers since VMWare seems to handle this just fine.

 

For rviz2 and ubuntu 20.04.3, after shutting down the VM, I used Actions/Configure.../Graphics/Advanced and turned off 3D acceleration and rviz2/foxy now works

 

Yeah your solution also solved my problem!!! Thank you!

 

Maybe the following workaround I got from support for JCEF problem will help you as well to keep 3D acceletation on:

1. Turn on 3D acceleration in Ubuntu
2. Make sure that the virtual machine is shut down (Actions > Shut Down). If it is in a suspended state, please run it and then shut down (Actions > Shut Down)
3. Go to the virtual machine configuration and click "Hardware > Boot Order > Advanced Settings > Boot flags"
4. Paste the following text in the "Boot flags" field: video.gl3=2
5. Run the virtual machine and see if the issue reoccurs.

 

Chrome is now working with 3D acceleration in Ubuntu on Parallels 17.1 and the `video.gl3=2` is not needed anymore, yay! Maybe the update will fix your problem as well.

 

I have the similar issue. However, I have the M1 MacBook Pro and my Gazebo shows black screen when I have 3d acceleration enabled. Everything works fine without the 3d acceleration.

 

I also have similar problem on my 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Tried:
1. using boot flag aforementioned by others.
2. relink the gl library mentioned before.
3. Disable 3D acceleration.
Only disabling 3d acceleration works but reduce the graphic power to 1/4. Really hope parallel would come up patch for their OpenGL interface otherwise it's a big boomer for me to use the VM...

 

Same here but specifically with Gazebo. Does someone tried MatthewM20 solution? I'll try that tomorrow

 

I tried this and when I make catkin_make, I got this ERROR:
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:26 (find_package):
By not providing "Findurdfdom_headers.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this
project has asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by
"urdfdom_headers", but CMake did not find one.
This probably doesn't concern the add of : `set(OpenGL_GL_PREFERENCE LEGACY)`
I would like to know how did you build rviz from sources without any problems.
Also, note I add the set line just there: [see picture]

I would highly appreciate it if you can answer it, I must have debug this for like 20 hours. I think I have a lack of knowledge about VMs and CMakeLists scripts. Don't know from where to start to learn about it.

 

I'm able to compile the latest Rviz source code without any issue. I used catkin build instead of caktin_make. However, even with that flag, my Rviz still can't run with 3D acceleration. For now, I just run it by disabling the 3D acceleration. But I really hope Parallel can solve this issue otherwise I won't recommend any of my colleagues to use it.