I'm seeing a massive delay in the viewport catching up with my mouse movements. So when I zoom, pan or tumble about 3 seconds later the model stops zooming, panning and tumbling. I've tried turning off materials which helps for simple models but for ones with high poly counts it's just no good.
With materials on it's more like a 10 second delay.

Nvidia Quadro FX 570
Driver - 6.14.11.6926 and also tried 6.14.12.5912
Win XP 64

Any ideas how to switch it back to H10 speedy mode?

There's currently a bug logged with similar symptoms, but with a Quadro 1700. I haven't been able to reproduce it on a Quadro 3800, though. Could you check if there are any warnings/errors in the Display Options info button (lower-right corner info/warning/error icon)?

In the meantime, you can probably turn off material shaders in the Effects tab to restore interactivity.

Simon
I'm seeing a massive delay in the viewport catching up with my mouse movements. So when I zoom, pan or tumble about 3 seconds later the model stops zooming, panning and tumbling. I've tried turning off materials which helps for simple models but for ones with high poly counts it's just no good.
With materials on it's more like a 10 second delay.

Nvidia Quadro FX 570
Driver - 6.14.11.6926 and also tried 6.14.12.5912
Win XP 64

Any ideas how to switch it back to H10 speedy mode?

Sounds similar to a bug I'm experiencing (reported to support)
I do wish I could flip a switch and use good old but reliable H10 GL…

> It seems the Gold release and up are buggered on my system from a Gl
> pov. Viewport display is extremely sluggish when more than one
> geometry is displayed, sometimes this manifests as a massive lag, when
> you drag the mouse to move the view it hangs then plays back your
> mouse movements a few seconds later.
> The sluggishness seems to momentarily spill outside Houdini to mundane
> apps.
>
> Doing a few things seem to exchange functionality for normal
> interactivity levels:
> - Turning off Display flag of all but one object.
> - Assigning a different type of shader, such as a “Material Shader
> Builder”. Which leads me to guess its some sort of GL shader compiler
> issue which only manifests when the same shader is applied to multiple
> objects.
>
> Tried updating to latest drivers to no avail.
>
> My system is:
>
> Windows XP 64bit
> Quadro FX1700, Driver Version 259.12.
> Running Dual Monitors in “Dual View” mode.
>
> Thanks
>
> Sergio
>

Yep, that was the bug report I was referring to. The “H10 switch” you are referring to is “Material Shaders”. Practically all other effects are dependent on it, so turning it off pretty much reverts to H10 viewport mode.

Edit: I'm also running W7 64b, which may make a difference, but I can also try Vista 32b or 64b as well. I no longer have access to an XP system.

twod
There's currently a bug logged with similar symptoms, but with a Quadro 1700. I haven't been able to reproduce it on a Quadro 3800, though. Could you check if there are any warnings/errors in the Display Options info button (lower-right corner info/warning/error icon)?

In the meantime, you can probably turn off material shaders in the Effects tab to restore interactivity.

ah beat me to it.
didnt know about turning off material shaders. though will try it when I get back to that machine. I assumed switching to a low tech mode like wireframe or solid would bypass all that (it doesnt).

S

Hm, it should bypass shading in wireframe or hidden line mode. Perhaps it's something else.

You could also try setting the environment variable HOUDINI_OGL_DISABLE_FBO = 1 and see if that has any effect, if Material Shaders doesn't.

The small amount of VRAM on the FX 570 may also be partly responsible (256MB). Check the Display Options info popup (lower-right corner of the Display Options) to see an estimate of how much framebuffer memory the viewport is currently using (for the current viewport, if more than one are visible). If you're driving a high-res display (>1920x1080) or more than one display, this could be a problem.

We've recently updated our graphics card requirements to more closely match what H11 requires, listed here (http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=415&Itemid=269 [sidefx.com]). However, there may be another reason why it's so sluggish, as the ATI 2600XT 256MB that shipped with my MacPro doesn't exhibit this behaviour, in either OSX or Linux.

I am running a dual monitor setup, but that is fine with H10.
As I mentioned in my first post turning off material effects improves things a little but not to a workable level.
No warning messages visible.

What does work is using logmein.com to remotely log in….. why would that help? Is the viewport getting too many mouse events?

From the info panel

Free VRAM: 90Mb
Texture use: 0Mb
Frame buffer: 31Mb (1084 x 772)

Ah, I think I know why this is happening - it has to do with the absence of a composited window manager (Aero on Vista & W7 hides the problem). Try tomorrow's build (11.0.466).

ps - I wouldn't recommend turning on Scene AA, and possibly HDR rendering, with the FX 570. With the 1700, you'd likely have to stick to 2x AA, and not in conjunction with HDR rendering.

That fixed it! excellent.

466 seems to run fine on a previously badly lagging 1700, too.

Thanks for the confirmation.

twod
With the 1700, you'd likely have to stick to 2x AA, and not in conjunction with HDR rendering.

Is that why my 1700 driver crash completely when using HDR rendering and anything over 2xAA? Or are you talking from a performance point of view?

Windows 7 64bit.

Cheers
Nick

It shouldn't crash in that case, but I suppose different drivers can do different things when overwhelmed. The framebuffer has an adaptive AA setup on it, so that if a framebuffer of a certain AA level can't be created, it divides by 2 and tries again (8,4,2,1). High Quality Lighting also requires multiple framebuffers to work. However it could be that the framebuffer is being created at 4x, but other memory allocation calls are failing elsewhere. Do you have a crashlog from that crash?

But, yes, I'd expect performance to suffer greatly from VRAM thrashing regardless at levels beyond 2x on a 512MB card.