Hi Lionel, regarding the driconf file trick, for sure it does the job, but for Elisa and particularly Pigment we're trying as much as possible to detect such problems so that the user is not directly hurt. Pigment is in fact selecting the best vertical synchronization method for the user GPU/driver, using look-up tables to deal with the mess it currently is to avoid kernel crashes or dead slow frame rates. It seems like you've just encountered a change of behavior in recent ATI open source driver... Can you then please try something for me so that I can add a new entry in my crazy driver look-up table?
First you need to launch Elisa three times with a special environment variable set to test the different VBL methods, and for each launch write the resulting behavior: slow rendering, correctly synchronized to the VBL, system crash, etc. Here are the three commands to use: $ PGM_GL_VBLANK=0 ./elisa-core/bin/elisa $ PGM_GL_VBLANK=1 ./elisa-core/bin/elisa $ PGM_GL_VBLANK=2 ./elisa-core/bin/elisa Then you need to copy the output of that command: $ glxinfo Thanks for your report, Loïc. PS: Nice to see you using Pigment! On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 09:22 +0100, Lionel Dricot wrote: > Sorry, I was not clear that my interest in OpenGLES was to try to put > Elisa on some limited hardware where OpenGL is not available. > > Nevertheless, for people who want to run any pigment application with > the open source ATI driver, here's the trick : > > 1) Install driconf (available in Ubuntu) > > 2) Launch driconf. It will create a .drirc file in your $HOME > > 3) Choose the option to "never synchronize with vertical refresh, > ignore the choice of the application". > > That's it, pigment applications will now work perfectly. (even my > sample pigment test codes were broken. like my pigment solver for the > http://www.frustr8tor.nl/ puzzle ) > > There's no need to restart X. The use of driconf GUI is not mandatory. > All you have to do is to check that, in your .drirc, there's the > following line : > > <option name="vblank_mode" value="0" /> (the "0" value is the > important bit) > > > Thanks a lot to Harry which explained me that stuff. > > Lionel > > On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Loïc Molinari <[email protected]> > wrote: > Hi Lionel, > > AFAICT there's been no change in Pigment that can have > triggered such a > slowness problem in Elisa. It seems to me like your driver is > switching > to a software path. Did you recently update your Mesa/DRI open > source > driver? Were you using the proprietary ATI driver before? > > Regarding OpenGL ES, Pigment has a plugin to run over that API > but it's > only dedicated to embedded systems that are shipping most of > the time > without OpenGL support. For ease of development, memory > consumption and > speed reasons, people working in that market only ship > (proprietary) > OpenGL ES implementations. AFAIK there's no hardware > accelerated OpenGL > ES implementation for the desktop, apart from the Imagination > SDK > dedicated to developers. And anyway, OpenGL ES is not really > meant to be > used on the desktop. > > Regards. > > > On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 16:33 +0100, Lionel Dricot wrote: > > Hello, > > > > For a few weeks, my Elisa is unusable because of slowness > (rotating an > > icon take approximately 30 seconds) and display a lot of > garbage on > > the screen. It might be related (but I'm not sure) with the > fact that > > I use the free ATI driver (but it should provide reasonnably > good 3D > > performances and the few OpenGL applications I have work > perfectly). > > > > Has anybody else the same experience ? (Warning : I'm not > sure it is > > driver related at all. It's just an intuition) > > > > > > This also raise some question in my head about about > performances in > > Elisa and pigment. I've seen that pigment can use OpenGLES > but is it > > an option for Elisa, for example ? > > > > Thanks for sharing your experiences, > > > > Lionel -- Loïc Molinari <[email protected]>
