VM-IMAGES broken since January

[draymond at FoxValley.net]

I have been using virtual machine images of FreeBSD 11.0 to cross  
compile for my Raspberry Pi.  I recently noticed that the last working  
disk image is from January:

http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/VM-IMAGES/11.0-CURRENT/amd64/20150111/FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20150111-r276981.vmdk.xz

There have been 16 images uploaded since then and none of them will  
open in VMware Player.  They all result in the following error message:

The file specified is not a virtual disk.

I have seen reports from others having the same problem.  For instance:

http://superuser.com/questions/879718/how-can-i-import-the-freebsd-vm-current-snapshots-into-vmware-workstation-or-vmw