Hi Jon, the lack of flickering and lack of double-buffering you describe sounds like geomview being run without opengl, either because it has been compiled without opengl (still the default if you just type ./configure, I believe), or because geomview -noopengl was issued. Did you build Geomview with --with-opengl, and have you turned on a texturemapped Earth showing coloured continents? (If geomview issues a 'Shared memory unavailable, using fallback display method' to stderr at launch, it's not using OpenGL.)
When geomview is run with opengl, I see consistent flickering at every single animation stage, not just when dragging with the mouse. -noopengl is much smoother. (I'm using a fairly high-end Core2Duo with graphic card.) I've now realised that my crashes only occur when I use the second screen attached to my machine. (Mea culpa - I take multiple screens for granted.) When geomview's camera is on the root (laptop) screen, X doesn't crash, even when texturemapping, and I get slow but flickery animations of texturemapped Earths. Move it over to the second screen and do something that invokes texturemapping like turning on a detailed Earth - goodbye, Mr X. It's a little odd that XWin.0.log doesn't explicitly call out the two screens as such - it knows the primary (laptop) monitor is 1280 by 800, and that DIB has a height of 1824 because there's a 1280x1024 screen positioned above it. $ less /var/log XWin.0.log Welcome to the XWin X Server Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project Release: 1.8.0.0 (10800000) Build Date: 2010-04-02 Contact: [email protected] XWin was started with the following command line: X :0 -multiwindow ddxProcessArgument - Initializing default screens winInitializeDefaultScreens - primary monitor w 1280 h 800 winInitializeDefaultScreens - native DPI x 96 y 96 winInitializeDefaultScreens - Returning [534027.271] winValidateArgs - g_iNumScreens: 1 iMaxConsecutiveScreen: 1 [534027.286] (II) xorg.conf is not supported [534027.286] (II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information [534027.286] LoadPreferences: /home/lw0011/.XWinrc not found [534027.286] LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc [534027.286] LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file... [534027.286] winGetDisplay: DISPLAY=:0.0 [534027.302] winDetectSupportedEngines - Windows NT/2000/XP [534027.380] winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw installed [534027.380] winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed [534027.380] winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 00000007 [534027.380] winSetEngine - Multi Window or Rootless => ShadowGDI [534027.380] winAdjustVideoModeShadowGDI - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel [534027.458] winAllocateFBShadowGDI - Creating DIB with width: 1280 height: 1824 depth: 32 [534027.458] winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff [534027.458] winInitVisualsShadowGDI - Masks 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff BPRGB 8 d 24 bpp 32 [534027.458] null screen fn ReparentWindow [534027.458] null screen fn RestackWindow [534027.458] InitQueue - Calling pthread_mutex_init [534027.458] InitQueue - pthread_mutex_init returned [534027.458] InitQueue - Calling pthread_cond_init [534027.458] InitQueue - pthread_cond_init returned [534027.458] winInitMultiWindowWM - Hello [534027.474] winInitMultiWindowWM - Calling pthread_mutex_lock () Is it still useful to give you a bt from gdb? thanks, L. -----Original Message----- From: Jon TURNEY [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 09 August 2010 13:43 To: [email protected] Cc: Wood L Dr (Electronic Eng) Subject: Re: X hardware acceleration still flaky? Importance: High On 08/08/2010 15:57, [email protected] wrote: > Hi Jon, > > I just downloaded the current X server and its libraries in the Cygwin > distro; the xwin-gl allusion came from the previous thread I mentioned. So, the current problem is with OpenGL on X. "OpenGL" and "hardware acceleration" are not synonyms. Testing with the experimental AIGLX code is moot if it doesn't work with the current X server. > Compiling geomview 1.9.4 --with-opengl is straightforward (that's one > improvement on pre-7.4 X; configure doesn't get confused about X library > locations and building is easier). I then tried running savi with geomview: > - using OpenGL. 30 seconds of slow flickering (slow enough to be the software > rendering that you alluded to?), then the X server consistently crashes, even > before I've had a chance to turn on texturemapping... I've built savi and geomview, and I'm afraid I can't reproduce this crash. There's no flickering unless I use the mouse to rotate the planet, which almost looks like it's not using double-buffering for some reason, as the whole frame looks like it's being drawn into the front buffer... I've rebuilt X server 1.8.2-1 with debugging symbols and uploaded it at [1], can you run that under gdb and reproduce your crash and post a backtrace, please. [1] ftp://cygwin.com/pub/cygwinx/XWin.20100808-git-66f3680cb47fbd09.exe.bz2 > - forcing internal geomview software rendering using geomview -noopengl -run > ../savi1.4.3/savi $* . Works, but is rather stately. No texturemapping > support, obviously. Less slow than the brief opengl attempt, though, which > figures given that doing OpenGL in software imposes more layers of overhead? > > That's the status from testing with what cygwin ships at the moment. I > haven't tried your older binaries. Please let me know when you get to another > test release, and I'll try it out. > > thanks, > > L. > > SaVi satellite constellation visualization http://savi.sf.net/ > > On 8 Aug 2010, at 13:57, Jon TURNEY wrote: > >> On 08/08/2010 10:18, [email protected] wrote: >>> Well, it's been eighteen months since I last asked: >>> http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2009-02/msg00259.html >> >>> so I attempted to use opengl hardware acceleration with Cygwin and XFree >>> 7.4, using Geomview (www.geomview.org) as the test application on an >>> uptodate Cygwin 1.7 install. >>> >>> Lots of flickering for about thirty seconds (of correct output), but then >>> the X server crashes. So, no visible change over previous. It's still a >>> regression on pre-7.4. >> >> I'm not sure what you were testing here, but I can't see how it could >> be hardware AIGLX. >> >> xwin-gl is obsolete, an empty package since R7.4 [1], so if you are >> running that somehow, it must be an old version, which I am surprised works >> at all. >> >> Alternatively, you are using xwin with software rendering, and your >> application exposes some bug in the Xserver which makes it crash. >> >> >> I am happy to work with you to resolve these issues. >> >>> Has any work been attempted on improving hardware acceleration in xwin-gl? >> >> Yes, this is something I have been working on in my copious free time(TM): >> >> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2009-06/msg00088.html >> http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin-xfree/2009-08/msg00021.html >> http://x.cygwin.com/devel/todo.html >> >> I hope you'll note that savi is one of the applications I've been testing >> with. >> >> However, given the lack of response so far, it seems that you and me >> are the only 2 people interested in working AIGLX for XWin :-) >> >> I wouldn't suggest testing with those binaries at this stage, as I've >> moved on a bit. I hope to shortly make another test release >> containing AIGLX based on the upcoming Xserver 1.9, and I would very >> much appreciate some testing of the AIGLX functionality in that, when it is >> available. >> >> [1] http://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=xwin-gl -- Jon TURNEY Volunteer Cygwin/X X Server maintainer -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
