Programming OpenGL 3+ in virtualized linux with software rendering

Question

Using VMware 10 and ubuntu 13.10 as the guest OS.

Installing the guest additions can provide hardware rendering for OpenGL 2.1

For academic purposes, there is a need to develop and run OpenGL 3+ code, preferably in the virtual machine.

I assume that it is not possible to use the host GPU, so I am trying to force software rendering, using an OpenGL 3+ renderer.

Mesa3D + llvmpipe seems promising, but I am unable to find information on whether the software renderer supports OpenGL 3+.

Is there a way to develop OpenGL 3+ under vmware?

EDIT: (For someone who replied and then deleted their post :p)

Yes, I am also seeing OpenGL 2.1 using glxinfo. I removed hardware acceleration in my VM, and am only interested in software rasterization, even if it is really slow. The question is, is there a version of llvmpipe that implements a software rasterizer for OpenGL versions higher than 2.1? I know that mesa3d supports it, albeit only for hardware.

Answer 1

The mesa software renderer (both the "old" pre-gallium swrast and the "new" gallium softpipe/llvmpipe), do support most of GL3.2. The only major thing missing is support for multisampling, hence they are not advertising full 3.0 support.

Update 2017

Current versions of mesa's various software rasterizers now do claim to support up to GL 3.3 in a core profile. (The progress can be tracked on https://mesamatrix.net/). However, there is a caveat, as documented in mesa's feature.txt:

freedreno, llvmpipe, softpipe, and swr have fake Multisample anti-aliasing support

which means they still do not fullfill the requirements of the GL 3.0 spec. However, in most cases, this will not matter in practice. But one should still be aware of that limitiation.

Answer 2

In case anyone is still interested, VMWare Workstation (both Workstation Pro and Workstation Player) have added OpenGL 3.3 support in version 12.

However, at the time of writing, the Linux guest drivers side of the equation has not been available, and is planned for Linux 4.3.

So: Use VMWare Workstation Player (or Pro, if you have it) version 12 or up, and Linux 4.3 or up.

Update: using VirtualBox without any kind of acceleration and Mesa LLVMpipe, I also get OpenGL 3.3 support (Mesa version is 17.1.1)