On Intel HD Graphics 3000, compositions that use 3D object filter nodes render extra slowly for the first few seconds

Steps causing the bug to occur

  1. Load a sample composition like f.e. "Make Rugged Terrain.
  2. The grid shows, displaced, then starts to move.
  3. However, for the first 2/3 seconds, the animation is not smooth. Until some things seem to be loaded or smtg.
  4. Then it runs smoothly.

How did the result differ from what you expected?

I would have expected Vuo either to calculate all the necessary stuff before starting to move (and move smoothly), or not to show any stuff at all before all is loaded and smoothly animates.

Have you found a workaround?

No.

Other notes

  • Vuo version: 1.1.0
  • macOS version: macOS

Hmm, we’ve tested on many different hardware and OS combinations here, but we haven’t seen the 2–3 second lag you mentioned.

Is this just happening for Vuo 1.1.0, or also for 1.2.0-alpha3?

On https://community.vuo.org/t/-/5133, the screenshot you posted says you have 4 GB system RAM. Maybe the problem has to do with insufficient RAM — the system might take a few seconds to clean out old data from system memory before it can fully focus on your Vuo composition. If you reboot your computer, then run Vuo without any other apps running, do you still experience the 2–3 seconds of lagging?

@smokris it’s happening for all Vuo Versions.

Rebooting the computer and launching the app does the same. Would there be a way to check how much it affects (loads and saturates) the RAM ?

I’m joining a video showing the lags on startup. It takes what, 4-5 seconds to be smooth. Hope you can see it.

Thanks for posting the video. We still haven’t been able to reproduce this. I’ll try to obtain hardware to reproduce it on, and then hopefully we can find a workaround.

OK, I purchased a laptop that has Intel HD Graphics 3000, and I’m able to reproduce the problem. The lag seems to be caused by the OpenGL drivers — for unknown reasons the driver concludes that the GPU isn’t capable of executing the composition, so it falls back to the software renderer, which takes a few seconds to get to the point where it can render quickly.

In my testing so far, this only happens for compositions that use 3D object filter nodes (Displace 3D Object with Image + the 11 nodes that show up when you search for “object filter” in the node library, which all use OpenGL Transform Feedback).

@bodysoulspirit, have you seen it happen for compositions that don’t use 3D object filter nodes? (If so, could you give some examples?)

@smokris great ! No I don’t remember on first thought of any composition doing this when not using 3D filters.

Just opened some random compositions to check it but didn’t strike any. Will let you know if I would find some in the feature.

With further investigation, we discovered that the problem is in the graphics driver for the Intel HD Graphics 3000. It affects any node that uses a geometry shader (Divide 3D Object, Explode 3D Object, Facet 3D Object, Quantize 3D Object, Spike 3D Object, Trim 3D Object, Make Wireframe Shader), and it affects rendering point and line meshes.

We reported the problem to Apple, through both their Developer Technical Support and a bug report. Unfortunately, they said they’re not going to fix it and they don’t have a viable workaround.

Sorry we can’t fix this, @Bodysoulspirit. We have started an FAQ of known issues with graphics drivers and added this one to the list.

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Thanks a lot for the deep debugging, it’s not a good GPU anyway !