vglrun and turbovnc?

[qibin2020]

Hi experts, I have a very naïve question -- After I have setup the turbovnc server and xfce4 desktop environment I can directly run e.g. glxgear in the xfce terminal (with very good FPS), does that mean turbovnc itself now handles all the virtual-GL function? I have checked some documentations and they all described the usage like vglrun glxgear is necessary. Do I understand them correctly or turbovnc could handle all of this with single software now. Many thanks!

[dcommander]

TurboVNC and VirtualGL are independent. VirtualGL basically just intercepts the OpenGL function calls from an OpenGL application and directs them away from TurboVNC so that the function calls can be GPU-accelerated. (This is a vastly oversimplified statement. Refer to the VirtualGL User's Guide for diagrams and more details.) vglrun just sets LD_PRELOAD to preload the VirtualGL interposer libraries ahead of libGL so that those libraries can intercept the necessary function calls. If you use vglrun with a single application, then VirtualGL is only active for the life of that application. If you want to activate VGL for the entire TurboVNC session, then you have to run the window manager using vglrun by passing -vgl to /opt/TurboVNC/bin/vncserver or setting the $useVGL variable in the TurboVNC Server config file.