Does Azure allow App need OpenGL, any way to go around?

Question

I was hoping to host a remote app on Azure Virtual Machine, that was developed on top of VTK using python. Every time, I got crash message says "vtkWin32OpenGLRenderWindow...GL version2.1 with the gpu_shader4 extension is not supported by your graphic driver". I tried windows server 2016 and windows 10 Virtual machine, same crash.

Is that Azure does not support to run app need OpenGl support? Unless renting super expensive N virtual machine?

Any advise how to get my app run on normal cost virtual machine without revising my program too much?

Answer 1

Building Mesa from source is not so hard when the process is automated to some extent: https://github.com/pal1000/mesa-dist-win

You don't have to mess with file permissions and overwrite opengl32.dll on VMs lacking GPUs to install Mesa3D. There is a registry tweak that tells Windows to use Mesa3D as default software rasterizer. Just rename Mesa3D opengl32.dll file(s) to mesadrv.dll, drop them in windows\system32 and windows\syswow64 if applicable and then apply these registry tweaks:

• For 64-bit applications or 32-bit applications on 32-bit Windows

REGEDIT4

; https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749368.aspx
; https://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143241-portable-windows-7-build-from winpe-30/page-5#entry942596
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL]
"DLL"="mesadrv.dll"
"DriverVersion"=dword:00000001
"Flags"=dword:00000001
"Version"=dword:00000002

• For 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows

REGEDIT4

; https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749368.aspx
; https://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143241-portable-windows-7-build-from winpe-30/page-5#entry942596
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL]
"DLL"="mesadrv.dll"
"DriverVersion"=dword:00000001
"Flags"=dword:00000001
"Version"=dword:00000002

Reference: https://www.mesa3d.org/llvmpipe.html

Answer 2

I finally got it to work for a program called PsychoPy that wants OpenGL 2.0 for everything. I had to use the system wide install script "systemwidedeploy.cmd" at the top of the 7zip file "mesa3d-21.3.5-release-msvc.7z" to install it as detailed below. It's already compiled, and you just have to download it and 7unzip it. Opengl Extensions Viewer reports the version as 3.3. (How can I get the version through powershell?)

"OpenGL in a virtual machine - Thomas Schwery" https://thomas.inf3.ch/2019-06-12-opengl-kvm-mesa3d/index.html

Here's some relevant code from the install script. It looks like there's a couple extra dll files to copy.

@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x86\libgallium_wgl.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x86\libgallium_wgl.dll" "%windir%\SysWOW64\mesadrv.dll"
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x64\libgallium_wgl.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x64\libgallium_wgl.dll" "%windir%\System32\mesadrv.dll"

@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x86\libglapi.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x86\libglapi.dll" "%windir%\SysWOW64"
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x64\libglapi.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x64\libglapi.dll" "%windir%\System32"

@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x86\dxil.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x86\dxil.dll" "%windir%\SysWOW64"
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 IF EXIST "%mesaloc%\x64\dxil.dll" copy "%mesaloc%\x64\dxil.dll" "%windir%\System32"

@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "DLL" /t REG_SZ /d "mesadrv.dll" /f
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "DriverVersion" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "Flags" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
@IF /I %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%==AMD64 REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "Version" /t REG_DWORD /d "2" /f

@REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "DLL" /t REG_SZ /d "mesadrv.dll" /f
@REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "DriverVersion" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
@REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "Flags" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
@REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL" /v "Version" /t REG_DWORD /d "2" /f