Great...video rendering is restored reverting back to the 3.2.0.63 kernel.
So the issue is the updated 3.2.0.64 kernel interacting badly with the vmware video driver packaged with Ubuntu, while in a VMware Player (v5 or v6) VM.
This KB article aludes to this failure mode experienced in other (past) vmware versions and linux distros:
VMware KB: Linux Guest Display Splits into Multiple Panes with Identical Content
The solution involves doing various tricks (depending on VMware product) to force the vmware-config-tools.pl script to replace the vmware video driver packaged with the linux distribution, with the one contained in the installation package for VMware Tools.
I couldn't find any way to force this replacement in Player 6. The script detects the installed X drivers in Ubuntu and skips over this step.
The vmware-config-tools.pl script doesn't support the mentioned --overwritesvga option, and the driver file vmware_drv.o cannot be found in my file system.
I'm assuming, since 12.04 is LTS, eventually a future kernel and/or X driver will be released that fixes this regression...in the meantime...stuck on 63.
