VMware-Forum

Unfortunately that error message is bogus and should have been removed. 3D acceleration is not in any way related to vmware tools or open-vm-tools for linux guests. Typically 3D acceleration works out-of-the box using shipped drivers for most modern distros, but you might want to make sure that 3D is enabled by ticking the appropriate box in the VM settings. For some distros, like Kali, that box is not ticked by default at installation. To verify 3D support, make sure you have the "glxinfo" command available (typically comes with the "mesa-utils" package) and then type

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

You should then see something like

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build: RELEASE;

OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 11.0.3 (git-b4bfea0)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 11.0.3 (git-b4bfea0)
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

The important things to verify is the OpenGL render string that should be "Gallium x.y on SVGA3D...". Also the version on the line below that should be of interest. A distro shipping mesa 11.1+ shold have OpenGL 3 enabled.

/Thomas Hellström, VMware.