The problem is we don't know if it's safe to back-port : we can't change the GUI appearance on the release unless we're sure it will work for everybody. Whereas the current font is slow for some people, but it's been that way forever, so it's lower risk.
So safest is for people with bad performance to opt-in to the other GUI theme, this is an intentional decision. If we make the change for everybody, then we have to be 99.99% sure it's not going to break anybody existing, and that is very difficult.
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James, we know it is currently broken for Intel and AMD users. We know this fix the issue for AMD and Intel users and we know it makes no different for NVIDIA users.
So I really don't understand what you are talking about.
We can keep the very same style, very same font, just use a newer and more flexible format of it.l It's a no brainer.
👎
1
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I'm a bit confused: the screenshots attached are of two totally different GUI styles, and the fonts have different sizes. If we swap the fonts, won't all the sizes and positions of everything in the UI be 'off'? That's what I am asking about.
I'm also not understanding the urgency here: what has changed in the past week/month that suddenly makes this worse than it was before? I understood, that we had lived with this compromise for years - has something changed that I have missed? I'm on macOS, so likely get different performance, but was there some driver update/release that made this get worse for people?
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Sorry if I wasn't clear, I will try to explain better.
The whole FPS drop issue boils down to using bitmap fonts. The style on itself is not the issue.
The fix is simple, switch from bitmap to texture based font.
The style switch was because the other style doesn't use bitmap fonts.
@mike402 Already have a nice fix for the anthrax style using an already built in font.
I'm working too on the issue, but I created yet another style that I'm its not worth talking about.
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I had recently catastrophic fps drop with 2020.3.* on nvidia (GTX1080) even lowering LOD to almost vanishing values.
The culprit was personal settings in .fgfsrc with tuning on rough-delta, bare-delta, aux-max-vis-range, zfar, and, max-vis-range (as inspired by the X-15 recommended settings). Although these were fine for previous versions, they end up being killing fps on 2020.3.* (for reasons I can't explain).
cheers.
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The proposal is to change the font used by Anthrax, for everyone, on all platforms? I'm a bit worried that the screenshots still look different to the old bitmap font; not by much, but, people (and dialogs) are pretty senstive about fonts.
Can we get a TXF font that's closer in sizing+appearace to the original bitmap font, or is that difficult? (The current TXF font seems heavier weight, and boxier, than the bitmap font - it looks much 'blacker', the bitmap font was a more neutral grey)
If we do this for 2020.3 and something goes wrong, unfortunately it's probably me who will get yelled at (a lot....) for breaking the stable release, so I'm kind of cautious here. We could try the font change on next, and get people to check as many dialogs and aircraft menus as possible, that everything still works okay? Or is there another way to test this, you want to propose? Especially we need be able to test Windows as well, on different GPUs.
And, I still don't understand the timing around this: we've been using a Bitmap font forever, and Michael reported the Mesa performance issue back in the summer, correct? So did something else change this week? If we were going to change the GUI becuase of this bug, we could have done it before 2020.3.0 and avoided a lot of potential anxiety for me. Or did the issue get worse recently?
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Anonymous
-
2021-01-12
We've checked all txf's in the dir, and unfortunately accid.txf is the only readable font at this size. There is Helvetica.txf, but is too blurry, I'm afraid there is no way to use it without size change.
There is no problem with keeping the change out of 2020.3 for now. And it can be reverted if people on next dislike it?
I have to admit this timing is unfortunate. The issue with bitmap fonts hogging the perf is not new (and for that matter has not got any worse lately) and existed since at least 2018, and probably well into 2016. I just reported it way too late because I didn't even know it was the fonts and not something else in PUI. And only very few Intel users ever listened to my preaching about the fonts and tried changing GUI style so there is only so much data. But then over last year there was a few AMD users on Discord who had menubar corruption, for whom the change of font fixed that issue.
I could never get anyone with proper video card to check if the perf issue exists for them but I just posted on Discord the following test just in case:
Set "Debug / Configure Development Extensions / OSG Statistics" to "4 - Viewer Scene"
Also bear in mind that the person who adds this is going to have to take responsibility for the complaints about the significantly worse looking GUI scheme. Without a clear benefit it hardly makes much sense.
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Anonymous
-
2021-01-12
personally, accid.txf is not that bad. But if it looks bad for others...
Does FG have some kind of caveat list where one can add something like "If you are experiencing FPS drop because of PUI on Intel cards, or menubar corruption on AMD card, add --prop:sim/gui/current-style=0 to your FG arguments"? Then we could go without touching the default theme?
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Right, that's what I'm considering for 2020.3: we add a check / message which says:
'some users have reported performance problems using the current font. Check here [x] to use an alternaitve font, which may help'
This would be opt-in, but easy to point users at. And it would be low risk, and hopefully not annoy anybody.
BTW for 'next', PUI should be gone in < 3 months (if people stop finding bugs in 2020.3...) so like Fernando said I don't think it's such a big deal.
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Anonymous
-
2021-01-12
Yes, indeed this one should work even better!
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Duplicate of https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/codetickets/2213/
The PUI interface will be gone soon so I wouldn't bother too much with this. I'd mark it as 'Won't fix' but maybe James has something to add.
As I understand, the proper fix would be simply editing anthrax.xml and swapping bitmap fonts by non bitmaps, isn't it?
May some code dev please do that change, if it's so simple and would change the visuals and backported it to previous/current releases?
The problem is we don't know if it's safe to back-port : we can't change the GUI appearance on the release unless we're sure it will work for everybody. Whereas the current font is slow for some people, but it's been that way forever, so it's lower risk.
So safest is for people with bad performance to opt-in to the other GUI theme, this is an intentional decision. If we make the change for everybody, then we have to be 99.99% sure it's not going to break anybody existing, and that is very difficult.
James, we know it is currently broken for Intel and AMD users. We know this fix the issue for AMD and Intel users and we know it makes no different for NVIDIA users.
So I really don't understand what you are talking about.
We can keep the very same style, very same font, just use a newer and more flexible format of it.l It's a no brainer.
I'm a bit confused: the screenshots attached are of two totally different GUI styles, and the fonts have different sizes. If we swap the fonts, won't all the sizes and positions of everything in the UI be 'off'? That's what I am asking about.
I'm also not understanding the urgency here: what has changed in the past week/month that suddenly makes this worse than it was before? I understood, that we had lived with this compromise for years - has something changed that I have missed? I'm on macOS, so likely get different performance, but was there some driver update/release that made this get worse for people?
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I will try to explain better.
The whole FPS drop issue boils down to using bitmap fonts. The style on itself is not the issue.
The fix is simple, switch from bitmap to texture based font.
The style switch was because the other style doesn't use bitmap fonts.
@mike402 Already have a nice fix for the anthrax style using an already built in font.
I'm working too on the issue, but I created yet another style that I'm its not worth talking about.
Just a comment, in case it might help:
I had recently catastrophic fps drop with 2020.3.* on nvidia (GTX1080) even lowering LOD to almost vanishing values.
The culprit was personal settings in .fgfsrc with tuning on rough-delta, bare-delta, aux-max-vis-range, zfar, and, max-vis-range (as inspired by the X-15 recommended settings). Although these were fine for previous versions, they end up being killing fps on 2020.3.* (for reasons I can't explain).
cheers.
LOD is yet another can of worms, unfortunately in here that is not the culprit. We do however have other tickets opened for LOD!
Just fyi, I would be willing to take responsibility and maintain the changes to PUI themes until they are no longer necessary.
https://gitlab.com/mdanil/flightgear-hax/-/blob/master/gui/styles/anthrax-txf.xml
and https://gitlab.com/mdanil/flightgear-hax/-/blob/master/gui/styles/fly-txf.xml
The proposal is to change the font used by Anthrax, for everyone, on all platforms? I'm a bit worried that the screenshots still look different to the old bitmap font; not by much, but, people (and dialogs) are pretty senstive about fonts.
Can we get a TXF font that's closer in sizing+appearace to the original bitmap font, or is that difficult? (The current TXF font seems heavier weight, and boxier, than the bitmap font - it looks much 'blacker', the bitmap font was a more neutral grey)
If we do this for 2020.3 and something goes wrong, unfortunately it's probably me who will get yelled at (a lot....) for breaking the stable release, so I'm kind of cautious here. We could try the font change on next, and get people to check as many dialogs and aircraft menus as possible, that everything still works okay? Or is there another way to test this, you want to propose? Especially we need be able to test Windows as well, on different GPUs.
And, I still don't understand the timing around this: we've been using a Bitmap font forever, and Michael reported the Mesa performance issue back in the summer, correct? So did something else change this week? If we were going to change the GUI becuase of this bug, we could have done it before 2020.3.0 and avoided a lot of potential anxiety for me. Or did the issue get worse recently?
We've checked all txf's in the dir, and unfortunately accid.txf is the only readable font at this size. There is Helvetica.txf, but is too blurry, I'm afraid there is no way to use it without size change.
There is no problem with keeping the change out of 2020.3 for now. And it can be reverted if people on next dislike it?
I have to admit this timing is unfortunate. The issue with bitmap fonts hogging the perf is not new (and for that matter has not got any worse lately) and existed since at least 2018, and probably well into 2016. I just reported it way too late because I didn't even know it was the fonts and not something else in PUI. And only very few Intel users ever listened to my preaching about the fonts and tried changing GUI style so there is only so much data. But then over last year there was a few AMD users on Discord who had menubar corruption, for whom the change of font fixed that issue.
I could never get anyone with proper video card to check if the perf issue exists for them but I just posted on Discord the following test just in case:
So far only one user has replied, and it seems that on NVIDIA raster fonts are slower than txf ones as well, but not as much as on Intel:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/269552670744903680/798469174610362368/fgfs-20210112083121.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/269552670744903680/798469176212848640/fgfs-20210112083142.png
Last edit: Anonymous 2021-01-12
Also bear in mind that the person who adds this is going to have to take responsibility for the complaints about the significantly worse looking GUI scheme. Without a clear benefit it hardly makes much sense.
personally, accid.txf is not that bad. But if it looks bad for others...
Does FG have some kind of caveat list where one can add something like "If you are experiencing FPS drop because of PUI on Intel cards, or menubar corruption on AMD card, add
--prop:sim/gui/current-style=0to your FG arguments"? Then we could go without touching the default theme?Right, that's what I'm considering for 2020.3: we add a check / message which says:
'some users have reported performance problems using the current font. Check here [x] to use an alternaitve font, which may help'
This would be opt-in, but easy to point users at. And it would be low risk, and hopefully not annoy anybody.
BTW for 'next', PUI should be gone in < 3 months (if people stop finding bugs in 2020.3...) so like Fernando said I don't think it's such a big deal.
Yes, indeed this one should work even better!