1 2 3This documentation is about running OpenGL _applications_ in an xpra session and this has nothing to do with the [client's opengl acceleration](./Client-OpenGL.md). 4 5By default, OpenGL applications are supported but they are executed in a virtual framebuffer context which uses a software renderer, and therefore without any GPU acceleration. 6 7 8# GPU Acceleration 9To take advantage of GPU [OpenGL](https://www.opengl.org/) acceleration, here are some options: 10 11* ## VirtualGL 12[VirtualGL](http://www.virtualgl.org/) does API intercept and delegates OpenGL acceleration to a real GPU. Example: 13```shell 14xpra start --start="vglrun glxgears" 15``` 16Or even: 17```shell 18xpra start --exec-wrapper="vglrun" --start="glxgears" 19``` 20 21* ## via Xwayland 22From within an X11 session, you can use start the Weston Wayland compositor, then start Xwayland and the xpra server with the `-use-display` option: 23```shell 24Xwayland :20 & 25xpra start :20 --use-display 26``` 27(the Weston window can be hidden) 28 29 30* ## Shadowing 31If the GPU is driving an existing display, you can [shadow](./Shadow-Server.md) it.\ 32The limitation here is that the performance of shadow sessions is inferior to [seamless](./Seamless.md) and [desktop](./Start-Desktop.md) sessions. 33 34 35* ## Taking over an existing display 36Similarly to the shadow solution, you can tell xpra to take over an existing X11 display and manage it for remote access using the `--use-display` flag: 37```shell 38xpra start --use-display :0 39``` 40The downside is that the session is no longer accessible from the local display. 41 42 43*** 44 45 46# Caveats 47 48## GL library conflicts 49Proprietary graphics drivers can interfere with software OpenGL, [glvnd](https://github.com/NVIDIA/libglvnd) can solve this issue by allowing multiple OpenGL libraries to co-exist. 50 51## Stability 52VirtualGL and Xwayland will tie the OpenGL application to a secondary context (X11 / Wayland server) and if this server is killed or restarted then the application will crash. 53 54## VirtualGL setup 55Please refer to the extensive [documentation](https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/tree/master/doc). 56Some applications may require workarounds, ie: [12: Using VirtualGL with setuid/setgid Executables 57](https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/blob/master/doc/setuid.txt). 58
