OpenGL problems persist

[solaris235]

System:

DELL XPS L521X - 8GB ram dual i7 2.1GHz
4-cores assigned to guest with 4 GB of ram
Virtualbox 4.3.20r96997
Host: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1
Guest: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

The buck keeps geting passed on this one. As far back as 2010 maybe even earlier there have been problems with applications that use opengl. The most prevelant and annoying one is that openGL windows, in applications such as, Blender, FreeCad, mplayer..., the list goes on, is always the top most window obscurring anything that is behind it like the drop down menus or other application window, etc. Virtualbox keeps saying it's an opengl implementation problem, and opengl keeps saying it's a vitualbox problem. All the applications work fine when run on a native host, whether it be linux, windows or mac. Yet they all have problems when run in a virtualbox linux guest.
Now Ubuntu released some updates in early January that messed up my system a bit. It turned out to be the video drivers. They caused the same problems on both a virtualbox install and a native install of ubuntu 12.04 LTS. They messed up anything that used OpenGL. Virtualbox just released some updates that messed up my system in the same way. I had to back out of both sets of updates.
For those that may suggest upgrading to ubuntu 14.04 LTS don't bother, I tried the issues persist and I was unable to recreate my desktop experience on 14.04.
It seems that virtualbox is not implementing the video driver host to guest emulation successfully. Or OpenGL is the problem but that seems unlikely since it works fine on native systems. Since the video drivers work fine on native systems that leaves us with virtualbox being the problem.

Every post that I have found in virtualbox forums, opengl forums, video driver forums, even the forums for all the affected application have repeatedly stated that the problem has been fixed by a virtualbox update, then it gets broken again, then fixed then broken. I have been struggling through this for about 5 years now tried all the so called fixes... none of which have worked for me.

Is there a fix??? will there ever be a fix???
Just call me Frustrated....

[loukingjr]

The bottom line is, virtual machines are not real machines. They never will be. Speaking of real machines, not all apps written for various versions of Windows running on various hardware will run on all versions of Windows on other hardware. It is the same situation for OSX and Linux. It has always been that way and will continue to be that way.

[michaln]

Pretty much. The world for 3D graphics is highly complex, constantly changing, and poorly specified. There are far too many moving parts. From that stem all the other problems.

Just look at Windows games, even titles which sell hundreds of thousands of copies. They are often supported only on very specific hardware, with specific drives.

Viewed from another angle, you get what you pay for. It's certainly possible to make VirtualBox work with certain guest software on given host hardware/OS. But it takes effort, and there are no bored programmers sitting around twiddling their thumbs, so it takes a customer to ask for specific problems to be fixed.

[solaris235]

I certainly understand your point of view and I do understand the complexities of the hardware world and the software world,
But this is an issue that has been around for over 5 years that many people have asked to be fixed over that time.
It would be easier for those familiar with the code to either write patches for the affected application or even patch the root cause.
Nobody seems willing to put in the time.
If I had the time I'd try to fix it myself but I just don't have that time either.
Oh well...

[socratis]

If I had the time I'd try to fix it myself but I just don't have that time either.

I'm afraid that you're lacking something way deeper than time...

[loukingjr]

I think the part you are missing is the problems are a moving target over the past 5 years. How many versions of Linux, x11 servers, desktop environments have there been for example? How many versions of OSX and Windows. How many changes have they all had? How many versions of OpenGL have there been?

I don't think when people say they understand the complexities involved they really do understand. There have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, or tens of millions of permutations of software and hardware in five years.

So saying, fix OpenGL seems a bit naive.