Comment 9 for bug 121574

oz:
This is actually more of a support query than a bug report ("How do I get 3D going on my NVIDIA graphics card under Ubuntu?") and may have been better asked on one of the areas listed on http://www.ubuntu.com/support/communitysupport . You did not say what version of Ubuntu you were running (however I from the log posted I can deduce that it is probably Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty). If you are using 7.04, the short answer is to take a look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia .

The long answer is that you are using the open source nv driver and the open source driver for NVIDIA cards does not have any 3D support. This is because NVIDIA have not released specifications on how the 3D (or dual head for that matter) portion of their cards works and nor will they in the future (see http://www.abclinuxu.cz/clanky/rozhovory/andy-ritger-nvidia?page=1 ). There is a reverse engineering effort called Nouveau (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FrontPage ) that is attempting to rectify this but the project is in its infancy. The closed source NVIDIA binary driver DOES have accelerated 3D support and other features not available in the open source nv driver but is not installed "out of the box". https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverEducation talks a bit about the pros and cons of binary drivers.

At any rate, does following the instructions on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia rectify the problem?