Bug + Potential Fix: Vulkan Swapchain Error (Ubuntu) (GCP)

[ibarra000]

Hi,

I'm currently running into an error with Isaac Sim, where the UI never renders. Here are the errors that occur:

2026-02-24T23:23:00Z [4,748ms] [Error] [carb.graphics-vulkan.plugin] vkCreateSwapchainKHR failed.

2026-02-24T23:23:00Z [4,748ms] [Error] [carb.graphics-vulkan.plugin] Failed to create a swapchain.

2026-02-24T23:23:00Z [4,748ms] [Error] [omni.kit.renderer.plugin] createSwapchain failed. Width: 1800, height: 1099, Format: 9

2026-02-24T23:23:00Z [4,748ms] [Error] [omni.kit.renderer.plugin] Failed to initialize graphics environment.

My attempts to debug were the following:

• Preventing NoMachine from resizing my window as to preserve the original resolution (1920X1080)
• Changing the drivers to to supported driver listed on the Isaac Sim Wiki (535.129.03 for Linux)
• Attempting to move /etc/vulkan to /usr/share/vulkan

None of which resolved the issue.

I'm not sure if something has changed recently, if anyone has any advice on how to fix this I'm all ears.

[ibarra000]

Note: Isaac Sim Shell works perfectly fine, only having issues with Isaac Sim

[ibarra000]

I was able to get this to work! BUT not using the standard ~/isaacsim.sh command

I had to do a work around using the following commands:

docker create --name isaacsim_temp nvcr.io/nvidia/isaac-sim:5.1.0
docker cp isaacsim_temp:/isaac-sim /home/ubuntu/isaac-sim
docker rm isaacsim_temp

cd /home/ubuntu/isaac-sim
export ACCEPT_EULA=Y
export OMNI_USER="user" // Don't know that these are necessary
export OMNI_PASS="pass" // Don't know that these are necessary
./runapp.sh --/renderer/activeGpu=0

Another thing I did was downgrade the drivers to 570.211.01, although I also don't know if this was necessary.

The main problem is with the Vulkan Library in the container create by the ~/isaacsim.sh command. Seems like regardless of viewport size it simply doesn't want to generate any viewports within the container (This was tested using vkcube --width=XX --length=XX) (I went all the way from 1920X1080 to 64X64). But Vkcube did work on the VM itself so thats how I came to the conclusion of making this script.

I will try to find more fixes if I can, but this is all I got for the time being.

Hope this helps!!!

[ibarra000]

for qol here is are some snippets:

cat > ~/isaacsim-host.sh << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
export ACCEPT_EULA=Y
export OMNI_USER="user"
export OMNI_PASS="pass"
cd /isaac-sim
./runapp.sh --/renderer/activeGpu=0 "$@"
EOF

chmod +x ~/isaacsim-host.sh

[akarhtutkaung]

@ibarra000 thank you. I was having the same problem, and your workaround saved me! I appreciated it.