stride3d/stride · error · InvalidOperationException

No Vulkan physical device

Error message

No Vulkan physical device

What it means

PickPhysicalDevice enumerates Vulkan physical devices after instance creation and throws when vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices reports count == 0 — the Vulkan loader works but no ICD provided any device. Thrown from the test harness's EnsureSharedContext path, so the whole Vulkan rendering test cannot run.

Solutions

1. Install a Vulkan ICD: on Linux e.g. mesa-vulkan-drivers (Lavapipe) or the vendor driver package
2. Verify with `vulkaninfo --summary` that at least one physical device appears
3. Fix VK_ICD_FILENAMES / VK_DRIVER_FILES pointing at valid .icd.json files
4. Enable softwareRendering so the harness accepts a CPU (Lavapipe) device
5. Skip the Vulkan test path when no device exists (the harness's `available` check)

Example fix

// before
var devices = frameRenderer.RunVulkanTest();
// after
if (FrameRenderer.VulkanAvailable == false)
{
    Assert.Skip("No Vulkan device available");
    return;
}
var devices = frameRenderer.RunVulkanTest();

uint count = 0;
bool HasVulkanDevice() => instanceApi.vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices(instance, &count, null) == VkResult.Success && count > 0;

try { EnsureSharedContext(); }
catch (InvalidOperationException ex) when (ex.Message.Contains("No Vulkan physical device"))
{
    Assert.Skip("No Vulkan device; skipping Vulkan rendering test");
}

When it happens

Trigger: vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices(instance, &count, null) returns Success but count stays 0 — no driver/ICD installed, or all ICDs were filtered out (bad VK_ICD_FILENAMES, headless container, broken driver install).

Common situations: CI containers without mesa-vulkan-drivers or GPU ICDs; Windows machines without a GPU vendor driver; broken Vulkan loader configuration; running inside WSL without GPU passthrough configured.

Understand the failure class

Background: 'Could not be found', 'does not exist', 'not found in database': the resource-not-found family when an ID, slug, key, or URI lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• No graphics+compute queue family
• No Vulkan 1.2+ physical device
• Vulkan: Failed to find GPUs with Vulkan support
• AHardwareBuffer import requires…
• argumentsBuffer

AI-assisted analysis of stride3d/stride@96fad776d2 (2026-09-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f5751ce70624701c. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at sources/shaders/Stride.Shaders.Tests/FrameRenderer.Vulkan.cs:145

            pApplicationInfo = &appInfo,
        };
        var result = vkCreateInstance(&createInfo, out VkInstance createdInstance);
        if (result == VkResult.ErrorIncompatibleDriver)
        {
            appInfo.apiVersion = VkVersion.Version_1_2;
            result = vkCreateInstance(&createInfo, out createdInstance);
        }
        Check(result, "vkCreateInstance");
        instance = createdInstance;
        instanceApi = GetApi(instance);
    }

    private static void PickPhysicalDevice()
    {
        uint count = 0;
        Check(instanceApi.vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices(instance, &count, null));
        if (count == 0)
            throw new InvalidOperationException("No Vulkan physical device");
        var devices = new VkPhysicalDevice[count];
        fixed (VkPhysicalDevice* devicesPtr = devices)
            Check(instanceApi.vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices(instance, &count, devicesPtr));

        // SPIR-V 1.4 modules require a Vulkan 1.2+ device.
        // Software rendering (see Module) selects a CPU device (Lavapipe); otherwise prefer real GPUs.
        var softwareRendering = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("STRIDE_GRAPHICS_SOFTWARE_RENDERING") == "1";
        var best = -1;
        var bestScore = -1;
        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            instanceApi.vkGetPhysicalDeviceProperties(devices[i], out var properties);
            if (properties.apiVersion < VkVersion.Version_1_2)
                continue;
            var isCpu = properties.deviceType == VkPhysicalDeviceType.Cpu;
            var score = softwareRendering
                ? (isCpu ? 3 : 0)
                : properties.deviceType switch

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