3D acceleration on OSX host (or any other?)

[jimoe]

OSX 10.13 (High Sierra)
VBox 5.1.28

Just upgraded an iMac to OSX 10.13. All VBox guests broke because of 3D acceleration: The VB frame became disconnected from the window's content, a rather strange effect. Apparently this is a Known Problem for a while.

The fix is to disable 3D acceleration.

Which brings me to my observation: Does 3D acceleration actually make any difference? My experience says "No." Enabled, disabled, the guest seems to perform the about the same whether the host is OSX or linux.

How would I get a more objective reading on the usefulness of 3D Acceleration?

[socratis]

The fix is to disable 3D acceleration.

There are other fixes as well. See this post of mine in the other thread you commented and in ticket #17168 that you opened (busy busy... aren't we? ).

How would I get a more objective reading on the usefulness of 3D Acceleration?

When you actually want to use an application that has to have 3D acceleration, you'll know it usefulness. It may not be the best 3D acceleration stack in the world, it might not offer the greatest and latest, but for some applications it's indispensable. Logic says that if you're using Calculator, Notepad or Minesweeper and 3D is causing other problems (like the "frameless window") you can disable it.

[jimoe]

The fix is to disable 3D acceleration.

There are other fixes as well. See this post of mine in the other thread you commented and in ticket #17168 that you opened (busy busy... aren't we? ).

A useful list, that.

Busy, yes. The user prefers to shuffle the app windows when switching apps rather than have multiple desktops. The first three options in your list were not so handy in this case. Apparently there are no applications here that benefit from 3D acceleration; disabling it is a useful workaround.

[socratis]

I'm going to try and keep similar threads together. It saves on the duplicate posts ^[1]. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to lock this one and direct any further conversation to the thread In "High Sierra VB window and guest display area do not match!". You've already posted there and there's no point in continuing on this thread.

^[1]: I was about to post that Apple seems to have fixed the problem with 10.13.1b2, but I would be duplicating the posts, hence the "redirection".