vmware player 3d acceleration laptop

OK I found the solution ! The problem came from the host, in my case :

    Ubuntu 18.04 + Integrated Intel Graphics i915 + NVidia GTX 1050 (it's a laptop)

Vulkan happens to run by default on the 1st GPU it lists. For me, it was the Intel graphics integrated GPU, which of course has no Vulkan support...

You can test Vulkan support on your system by using the executable "vkcube", installed with a package named "vulkan-tools". I used a well-known PPA to install the v460 nvidia proprietary drivers, from here : https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa . This utility simply displays a cube. If your system is not configured properly, the little window will be all black, with no cube.

To force Vulkan to run on the desired GPU, I used this command line for my NVidia card :

        export VK_ICD_FILENAMES="/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia_icd.json"

You can list the .json files in /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/ to find the best one for your system (Intel, AMD...)

After this command was launched : oh joy, the cube was finally displayed with "vkcube".

And using it before launching VMWare Workstation is good ! The 3D/OpenGL performance is total.

To permanently set this export, you can add the command line in your .profile. Log out, log in, launch your VM with these options in your .vmx file :

        mks.enableX11Presentation=FALSE
        mks.enableVulkanPresentation=TRUE