STL meshes can't be rendered using WSL2 ROS Galactic Rviz2

[chenjunnn]

rviz2 does not have any error outputs.

can't see robot model(stl file) in rviz2, the one can be seen is the collision box:

when using real ubuntu 20.04 in NUC, it can be shown correctly:

[iuhilnehc-ynos]

There is a robot model in the pic.

but I know that it might be not what you want, could you check your robot model description file? (or you can upload it if someone wants to help.)

[chenjunnn]

@iuhilnehc-ynos This is the collision, not the visual mesh model. Sorry that I forgot to update the expected behavior. And I am quite sure that it is not the urdf problem.

[iuhilnehc-ynos]

@sink0918

I'm not familiar with WSL2. After installing it (Ubuntu20, WSL2, galactic), I tried to( use native opengl also) use rviz2 to show a demo model (without using stl), and it seems to work fine.

Could you confirm whether it can work in your environment? If yes, I'll continue to use another robot urdf containing stl to debug the rviz2.

[chenjunnn]

Basic shapes work fine:

The problem seems to be meshes using stl or dae can not be rendered in rviz2 using WSL2.

By the way, I'm using WSLg to use rviz2, not X11-forwarding.

And I also tried realsense-description, the stl mesh can't be seen either.

[iuhilnehc-ynos]

@sink0918

Thank you for your information, but I'm sorry that I can't reproduce it. (I use windows10 so that I can't use WSLg.)

[chenjunnn]

I have tested it using X11-forwarding, but the mesh still can't be rendered😢

Here is some infos of my WSL2:

• Windows Build Number
  Microsoft Windows [版本 10.0.22000.194]

• WSL Version
  WSL 2

• Kernel Version
  5.10.16

[chenjunnn]

I have also reported this issue to microsoft/WSL, here is the link: microsoft/WSL#7788

[dpiet]

I can confirm experiencing this issue as well.

[ravnicas]

+1 here, tried on Win11 with iGPU and also nVidia GPU systems.

[dpiet]

This appears to still be an issue in rolling, rviz2 v9.1.1. Any ideas what could be the culprit?
It appears to be an issue with WSLg and/or MESA as discussed here: microsoft/wslg#492
Although not ideal, one workaround is to force software rendering by setting env variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1
Hope that helps others.

[junaidamin]

Did anyone find a solution to this issue? I am using ROS2 foxy on WSL2 Ubuntu 20.04, and could not see a rendering of either the dae file or stl files. There are no related errors in the terminal. I'm following the tutorial on this page: https://docs.ros.org/en/foxy/Tutorials/Intermediate/URDF/Building-a-Visual-Robot-Model-with-URDF-from-Scratch.html , where grippers are expected to show up at the end of the red cylinder. Below is my output on RVIZ2:

[junaidamin]

Also, does anyone know why the sphere (head of robot) surface isn't smooth?

[chenjunnn]

It works well with ROS2 Humble with WSL Ubuntu 22.04 now.