visualpython-users

[Visualpython-users] From newbie: compile beta error

[Jiang Q. <jq...@ph...>]

Hi all:
	I'm new to this list. I installed the stable visual-3.2.9 and it 
worked great. But I really would like to to get the transparency to 
work.  So I installed visual 4.beta16. I jumped through all sorts of 
hoops, and finally got it to work. The transparency works quite well. 
But I have serious performance issue.
	I mainly use visual to visualize packed spheres, and small 
particles inside the spaces between them. In visual 3.2.9, a system with 
a few hundred spheres packed inside a cube works very smoothly: I can 
rotate, zoom at will with middle and right button. By combining the two, 
I can essentially "walk" into the sphere packs.(The spheres rendered are 
not perfectly smooth, but I manually changed some lines in the source 
code to make the smoothness ok). It all works fine, the only thing I 
miss is transparency.
	However, in visual 4.beta16, using identical code(with *no* 
transparency yet), I get a spectacularly smooth and well lit spheres, 
but the tradeoff seem to be heavy performance penalty: I can barely zoom 
and move, the rotation is slow. Interactive zooming and rotation is the 
key reason why I use visual: otherwise I can just render things in 
povray. Needless to say, I would like to find a way to trade away some 
of the more spectacular visual effects to have better interactive 
performance.
	I tried to look through the documentation of beta, but there 
aren't too much info about performance tuning. The only thing I found is 
to set shininess to 0, which helps marginally at best.
	What other tricks can I use to improve interactive performance?  
For example, can I tune the smoothness of the spheres? Sometimes my cpu 
usage is not even fully 100%, but dragging, rotating and zooming the 
image is still very slow.
	It'll really be a shame if I have to revert to the old version 
due to performance issue.  There must be a way to balance performance 
and effects.
	In a related issue. I also need to render particles between the 
spheres in the pack. In the old version, I basically render them as 
smaller spheres. But in the new version, there's a mention of point 
objects, which seems to be just for that purpose. However, there's not 
too much documentation of the point objects. How do I use them? Do they 
offer a lighter overhead than the render spheres? Can I give them 
colors?
	On the final note, a word about my system: I have a thinkpad 
T43, with Pentium M Dothan 1.86MHz, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, ATI X300 mobile 
discrete graphics(M22) with 64MB of VRAM, and 60GB 7200rpm disk. It's 
not a powerful machine by today's standard, but it runs the old version 
of visual just fine. Also, runs other 3D accelerated openGL programs 
like googleearth and stellarium just fine(glxgears score, which I know 
is not a benchmark, is around 1750 FPS).
	The software environment is an outdated ubuntu(5.04), with 
custom compiled 2.6.18 kernel, gcc version 3.3.5, python 2.4, fglrx 
proprietary driver 8.42.3(latest).  Numpy 1.0.3, the latest gtkglxtmm I 
compiled and installed from source.  If you want to know more, let me 
know what more relevant info I can give.
	If there's a simple patch for the stable version 3.2.9 that 
enables transparency, I'll be very happy to use that, too. Because 
really the stable version satisfies all my need except for 
transparencies.
	Thank you all for any hint/help you can give.
								Jiang

[Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Jiang Q. <jq...@ph...>]

Hi:
	Sorry about the confusing subject line of my last email. I did 
manage to compile the beta, I just have major performance problem.
	I took a look at the code of sphere.cpp, and notice there's 
discussion about levels of details. I wonder, however, are all that 
exposed to the user? Is there anyway I can reduce the level of details 
from my script? Or if that's not possible, is it possible to in fact 
change the code manually and recompile?
	Another issue that may or may not have anything to do with my 
performance woes. There are several demos in the example directory does 
not run properly in my installation. Drape shows only a rod. Double 
pendulum is way slower than in 3.4, Hanoi shows artifacts whenever I 
move a ring. I'm beginning to think there might be something wrong with 
my beta installation. How can I check?
	Thanks in advance for your help.
								Jiang

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 01:35:57AM -0500, Jiang Qian wrote:
> Hi all:
> 	I'm new to this list. I installed the stable visual-3.2.9 and it 
> worked great. But I really would like to to get the transparency to 
> work.  So I installed visual 4.beta16. I jumped through all sorts of 
> hoops, and finally got it to work. The transparency works quite well. 
> But I have serious performance issue.
> 	I mainly use visual to visualize packed spheres, and small 
> particles inside the spaces between them. In visual 3.2.9, a system with 
> a few hundred spheres packed inside a cube works very smoothly: I can 
> rotate, zoom at will with middle and right button. By combining the two, 
> I can essentially "walk" into the sphere packs.(The spheres rendered are 
> not perfectly smooth, but I manually changed some lines in the source 
> code to make the smoothness ok). It all works fine, the only thing I 
> miss is transparency.
> 	However, in visual 4.beta16, using identical code(with *no* 
> transparency yet), I get a spectacularly smooth and well lit spheres, 
> but the tradeoff seem to be heavy performance penalty: I can barely zoom 
> and move, the rotation is slow. Interactive zooming and rotation is the 
> key reason why I use visual: otherwise I can just render things in 
> povray. Needless to say, I would like to find a way to trade away some 
> of the more spectacular visual effects to have better interactive 
> performance.
> 	I tried to look through the documentation of beta, but there 
> aren't too much info about performance tuning. The only thing I found is 
> to set shininess to 0, which helps marginally at best.
> 	What other tricks can I use to improve interactive performance?  
> For example, can I tune the smoothness of the spheres? Sometimes my cpu 
> usage is not even fully 100%, but dragging, rotating and zooming the 
> image is still very slow.
> 	It'll really be a shame if I have to revert to the old version 
> due to performance issue.  There must be a way to balance performance 
> and effects.
> 	In a related issue. I also need to render particles between the 
> spheres in the pack. In the old version, I basically render them as 
> smaller spheres. But in the new version, there's a mention of point 
> objects, which seems to be just for that purpose. However, there's not 
> too much documentation of the point objects. How do I use them? Do they 
> offer a lighter overhead than the render spheres? Can I give them 
> colors?
> 	On the final note, a word about my system: I have a thinkpad 
> T43, with Pentium M Dothan 1.86MHz, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, ATI X300 mobile 
> discrete graphics(M22) with 64MB of VRAM, and 60GB 7200rpm disk. It's 
> not a powerful machine by today's standard, but it runs the old version 
> of visual just fine. Also, runs other 3D accelerated openGL programs 
> like googleearth and stellarium just fine(glxgears score, which I know 
> is not a benchmark, is around 1750 FPS).
> 	The software environment is an outdated ubuntu(5.04), with 
> custom compiled 2.6.18 kernel, gcc version 3.3.5, python 2.4, fglrx 
> proprietary driver 8.42.3(latest).  Numpy 1.0.3, the latest gtkglxtmm I 
> compiled and installed from source.  If you want to know more, let me 
> know what more relevant info I can give.
> 	If there's a simple patch for the stable version 3.2.9 that 
> enables transparency, I'll be very happy to use that, too. Because 
> really the stable version satisfies all my need except for 
> transparencies.
> 	Thank you all for any hint/help you can give.
> 								Jiang
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/visualpython-users

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

The beta version is called the beta version because there are problems 
with it, and it's helpful to have your report of what doesn't work; 
there have been almost no reports from Linux users. I normally work on 
Windows but have tested the Linux beta version against a variety of 
applications. I had concluded that the beta version mostly works okay on 
Linux, while there are serious bugs on Windows. You're reporting that it 
isn't okay even on Linux, which I was not aware of.

My own testing was done on a more recent version of Ubuntu, though that 
seems an unlikely issue, and your hardware is certainly adequate 
(presumably your 1.86MHz processor is a typo; it must be 1.86GHz).

Because I'm trying to get into working on the problems with the beta 
version myself, it could be helpful if you would send me an example of a 
program where interactivity is compromised, to add to my suite of test 
programs.

There isn't a simple patch to make the production version have 
transparency. There was a major change in the fundamental architecture 
of Visual to make transparency a possibility.

As stated in the description of the points object, these are circles or 
squares, not spheres, of particular use in plotting graphs. They may or 
may not be of any use to you. I would think that they're a lot faster 
than spheres.

The late Arthur Siegel did experiment a bit with specifying the level of 
detail for the rendering of spheres. There is an undocumented attribute 
of the "display" object:

scene.lod = -3 # range is -6 (low level of detail) to 0 (high)
sphere()

I don't like having negative values for "level of display" (lod), so 
think of this as very experimental, but it will let you try some things. 
Alternatively, since you evidently have a lot of experience, you could 
make changes of your own to the internal workings of Visual to 
experiment with the issues. Thanks much for your report.

Bruce Sherwood

Jiang Qian wrote:
> Hi:
> 	Sorry about the confusing subject line of my last email. I did 
> manage to compile the beta, I just have major performance problem.
> 	I took a look at the code of sphere.cpp, and notice there's 
> discussion about levels of details. I wonder, however, are all that 
> exposed to the user? Is there anyway I can reduce the level of details 
> from my script? Or if that's not possible, is it possible to in fact 
> change the code manually and recompile?
> 	Another issue that may or may not have anything to do with my 
> performance woes. There are several demos in the example directory does 
> not run properly in my installation. Drape shows only a rod. Double 
> pendulum is way slower than in 3.4, Hanoi shows artifacts whenever I 
> move a ring. I'm beginning to think there might be something wrong with 
> my beta installation. How can I check?
> 	Thanks in advance for your help.
> 								Jiang
> 
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 01:35:57AM -0500, Jiang Qian wrote:
>> Hi all:
>> 	I'm new to this list. I installed the stable visual-3.2.9 and it 
>> worked great. But I really would like to to get the transparency to 
>> work.  So I installed visual 4.beta16. I jumped through all sorts of 
>> hoops, and finally got it to work. The transparency works quite well. 
>> But I have serious performance issue.
>> 	I mainly use visual to visualize packed spheres, and small 
>> particles inside the spaces between them. In visual 3.2.9, a system with 
>> a few hundred spheres packed inside a cube works very smoothly: I can 
>> rotate, zoom at will with middle and right button. By combining the two, 
>> I can essentially "walk" into the sphere packs.(The spheres rendered are 
>> not perfectly smooth, but I manually changed some lines in the source 
>> code to make the smoothness ok). It all works fine, the only thing I 
>> miss is transparency.
>> 	However, in visual 4.beta16, using identical code(with *no* 
>> transparency yet), I get a spectacularly smooth and well lit spheres, 
>> but the tradeoff seem to be heavy performance penalty: I can barely zoom 
>> and move, the rotation is slow. Interactive zooming and rotation is the 
>> key reason why I use visual: otherwise I can just render things in 
>> povray. Needless to say, I would like to find a way to trade away some 
>> of the more spectacular visual effects to have better interactive 
>> performance.
>> 	I tried to look through the documentation of beta, but there 
>> aren't too much info about performance tuning. The only thing I found is 
>> to set shininess to 0, which helps marginally at best.
>> 	What other tricks can I use to improve interactive performance?  
>> For example, can I tune the smoothness of the spheres? Sometimes my cpu 
>> usage is not even fully 100%, but dragging, rotating and zooming the 
>> image is still very slow.
>> 	It'll really be a shame if I have to revert to the old version 
>> due to performance issue.  There must be a way to balance performance 
>> and effects.
>> 	In a related issue. I also need to render particles between the 
>> spheres in the pack. In the old version, I basically render them as 
>> smaller spheres. But in the new version, there's a mention of point 
>> objects, which seems to be just for that purpose. However, there's not 
>> too much documentation of the point objects. How do I use them? Do they 
>> offer a lighter overhead than the render spheres? Can I give them 
>> colors?
>> 	On the final note, a word about my system: I have a thinkpad 
>> T43, with Pentium M Dothan 1.86MHz, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, ATI X300 mobile 
>> discrete graphics(M22) with 64MB of VRAM, and 60GB 7200rpm disk. It's 
>> not a powerful machine by today's standard, but it runs the old version 
>> of visual just fine. Also, runs other 3D accelerated openGL programs 
>> like googleearth and stellarium just fine(glxgears score, which I know 
>> is not a benchmark, is around 1750 FPS).
>> 	The software environment is an outdated ubuntu(5.04), with 
>> custom compiled 2.6.18 kernel, gcc version 3.3.5, python 2.4, fglrx 
>> proprietary driver 8.42.3(latest).  Numpy 1.0.3, the latest gtkglxtmm I 
>> compiled and installed from source.  If you want to know more, let me 
>> know what more relevant info I can give.
>> 	If there's a simple patch for the stable version 3.2.9 that 
>> enables transparency, I'll be very happy to use that, too. Because 
>> really the stable version satisfies all my need except for 
>> transparencies.
>> 	Thank you all for any hint/help you can give.
>> 								Jiang
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
>> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
>> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
>> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Visualpython-users mailing list
>> Vis...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/visualpython-users
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> _______________________________________________
> Visualpython-users mailing list
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/visualpython-users

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Jiang Q. <jq...@ph...>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:11:32AM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> The beta version is called the beta version because there are problems 
> with it, and it's helpful to have your report of what doesn't work; 
> there have been almost no reports from Linux users. I normally work on 
> Windows but have tested the Linux beta version against a variety of 
> applications. I had concluded that the beta version mostly works okay on 
> Linux, while there are serious bugs on Windows. You're reporting that it 
> isn't okay even on Linux, which I was not aware of.
In addition to the testing I reported to be not working properly, the 
stonehenge example crash the beta immediately after launch. And hanoi.py 
shows a lot of artefacts and becomes slow and pretty much unusable.
> 
> My own testing was done on a more recent version of Ubuntu, though that 
> seems an unlikely issue, and your hardware is certainly adequate 
> (presumably your 1.86MHz processor is a typo; it must be 1.86GHz).
Yes of course that's a typo. Now one worry about my ancient ubuntu is 
that my libboost version is still 1.31. Would that be a problem?
> 
> Because I'm trying to get into working on the problems with the beta 
> version myself, it could be helpful if you would send me an example of a 
> program where interactivity is compromised, to add to my suite of test 
> programs.
Please find in this URL a program of visualizing 9288 spheres in a 27 
unit cell random non-overlapping distributions. Colors marks the grain 
boundaries. It the stable version, I can rotate the pack at will, zoom 
in, etc. This is so even when I improve the sphere rendering smoothness 
by decreasing the two if(size <0.02) if(size<=0.125)... lines to 0.004 
and 0.125 respectively. The stock stable 3.2.9 presumably would be even 
faster.

However, in the beta version, I cannot rotate the pack at will, 
interactivity becomes inadequate.
> 
> There isn't a simple patch to make the production version have 
> transparency. There was a major change in the fundamental architecture 
> of Visual to make transparency a possibility.
> 
> As stated in the description of the points object, these are circles or 
> squares, not spheres, of particular use in plotting graphs. They may or 
> may not be of any use to you. I would think that they're a lot faster 
> than spheres.
Too bad.
> 
> The late Arthur Siegel did experiment a bit with specifying the level of 
> detail for the rendering of spheres. There is an undocumented attribute 
> of the "display" object:
> 
> scene.lod = -3 # range is -6 (low level of detail) to 0 (high)
> sphere()
> 
> I don't like having negative values for "level of display" (lod), so 
> think of this as very experimental, but it will let you try some things. 
> Alternatively, since you evidently have a lot of experience, you could 
> make changes of your own to the internal workings of Visual to 
> experiment with the issues. Thanks much for your report.
Unfortunately I really kind of need to actually use visual to help me 
intuitively grasp some problems in my research, so I can't afford to 
play it too much. So I decided to forgo transparency for now and revert 
back to the stable version. Thanks for the help, though.
Jiang
> 
> Bruce Sherwood
> 
> Jiang Qian wrote:
> >Hi:
> >	Sorry about the confusing subject line of my last email. I did 
> >manage to compile the beta, I just have major performance problem.
> >	I took a look at the code of sphere.cpp, and notice there's 
> >discussion about levels of details. I wonder, however, are all that 
> >exposed to the user? Is there anyway I can reduce the level of details 
> >from my script? Or if that's not possible, is it possible to in fact 
> >change the code manually and recompile?
> >	Another issue that may or may not have anything to do with my 
> >performance woes. There are several demos in the example directory does 
> >not run properly in my installation. Drape shows only a rod. Double 
> >pendulum is way slower than in 3.4, Hanoi shows artifacts whenever I 
> >move a ring. I'm beginning to think there might be something wrong with 
> >my beta installation. How can I check?
> >	Thanks in advance for your help.
> >								Jiang
> >
> >On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 01:35:57AM -0500, Jiang Qian wrote:
> >>Hi all:
> >>	I'm new to this list. I installed the stable visual-3.2.9 and it 
> >>worked great. But I really would like to to get the transparency to 
> >>work.  So I installed visual 4.beta16. I jumped through all sorts of 
> >>hoops, and finally got it to work. The transparency works quite well. 
> >>But I have serious performance issue.
> >>	I mainly use visual to visualize packed spheres, and small 
> >>particles inside the spaces between them. In visual 3.2.9, a system with 
> >>a few hundred spheres packed inside a cube works very smoothly: I can 
> >>rotate, zoom at will with middle and right button. By combining the two, 
> >>I can essentially "walk" into the sphere packs.(The spheres rendered are 
> >>not perfectly smooth, but I manually changed some lines in the source 
> >>code to make the smoothness ok). It all works fine, the only thing I 
> >>miss is transparency.
> >>	However, in visual 4.beta16, using identical code(with *no* 
> >>transparency yet), I get a spectacularly smooth and well lit spheres, 
> >>but the tradeoff seem to be heavy performance penalty: I can barely zoom 
> >>and move, the rotation is slow. Interactive zooming and rotation is the 
> >>key reason why I use visual: otherwise I can just render things in 
> >>povray. Needless to say, I would like to find a way to trade away some 
> >>of the more spectacular visual effects to have better interactive 
> >>performance.
> >>	I tried to look through the documentation of beta, but there 
> >>aren't too much info about performance tuning. The only thing I found is 
> >>to set shininess to 0, which helps marginally at best.
> >>	What other tricks can I use to improve interactive performance?  
> >>For example, can I tune the smoothness of the spheres? Sometimes my cpu 
> >>usage is not even fully 100%, but dragging, rotating and zooming the 
> >>image is still very slow.
> >>	It'll really be a shame if I have to revert to the old version 
> >>due to performance issue.  There must be a way to balance performance 
> >>and effects.
> >>	In a related issue. I also need to render particles between the 
> >>spheres in the pack. In the old version, I basically render them as 
> >>smaller spheres. But in the new version, there's a mention of point 
> >>objects, which seems to be just for that purpose. However, there's not 
> >>too much documentation of the point objects. How do I use them? Do they 
> >>offer a lighter overhead than the render spheres? Can I give them 
> >>colors?
> >>	On the final note, a word about my system: I have a thinkpad 
> >>T43, with Pentium M Dothan 1.86MHz, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, ATI X300 mobile 
> >>discrete graphics(M22) with 64MB of VRAM, and 60GB 7200rpm disk. It's 
> >>not a powerful machine by today's standard, but it runs the old version 
> >>of visual just fine. Also, runs other 3D accelerated openGL programs 
> >>like googleearth and stellarium just fine(glxgears score, which I know 
> >>is not a benchmark, is around 1750 FPS).
> >>	The software environment is an outdated ubuntu(5.04), with 
> >>custom compiled 2.6.18 kernel, gcc version 3.3.5, python 2.4, fglrx 
> >>proprietary driver 8.42.3(latest).  Numpy 1.0.3, the latest gtkglxtmm I 
> >>compiled and installed from source.  If you want to know more, let me 
> >>know what more relevant info I can give.
> >>	If there's a simple patch for the stable version 3.2.9 that 
> >>enables transparency, I'll be very happy to use that, too. Because 
> >>really the stable version satisfies all my need except for 
> >>transparencies.
> >>	Thank you all for any hint/help you can give.
> >>								Jiang
> >>
> >>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> >>Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> >>Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> >>Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Visualpython-users mailing list
> >>Vis...@li...
> >>https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/visualpython-users
> >
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> >Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> >Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> >Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> >_______________________________________________
> >Visualpython-users mailing list
> >Vis...@li...
> >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/visualpython-users

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

The URL to the program was omitted from the previous note:

	http://physics.harvard.edu/~jqian/vector.py)

I don't see any of the crashes on Ubuntu that you see. You might try 
updating your graphics card driver, a frequent source of problems of the 
kind you describe.

I do however see the slowness (even with shininess=0 and the 
experimental scene.lod=-6), and this is one of the issues in the beta 
version that needs to be addressed. I'm stunned that in the production 
version of Visual rotation is smooth, as there are more than 9000 spheres!

I'm particularly grateful to have this example program, because it has 
uncovered a bizarre bug. I modified all the spheres to have shininess=0, 
in the hopes that this would improve performance. To my great surprise, 
the spheres continued to have specular highlights. Then I found that 
only if I comment out the initial lines that create boxes, the spheres 
lose their shininess. This is a very strange interaction.

Bruce Sherwood

Jiang Qian wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:11:32AM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>> The beta version is called the beta version because there are problems 
>> with it, and it's helpful to have your report of what doesn't work; 
>> there have been almost no reports from Linux users. I normally work on 
>> Windows but have tested the Linux beta version against a variety of 
>> applications. I had concluded that the beta version mostly works okay on 
>> Linux, while there are serious bugs on Windows. You're reporting that it 
>> isn't okay even on Linux, which I was not aware of.
> In addition to the testing I reported to be not working properly, the 
> stonehenge example crash the beta immediately after launch. And hanoi.py 
> shows a lot of artefacts and becomes slow and pretty much unusable.
>> My own testing was done on a more recent version of Ubuntu, though that 
>> seems an unlikely issue, and your hardware is certainly adequate 
>> (presumably your 1.86MHz processor is a typo; it must be 1.86GHz).
> Yes of course that's a typo. Now one worry about my ancient ubuntu is 
> that my libboost version is still 1.31. Would that be a problem?
>> Because I'm trying to get into working on the problems with the beta 
>> version myself, it could be helpful if you would send me an example of a 
>> program where interactivity is compromised, to add to my suite of test 
>> programs.
> Please find in this URL a program of visualizing 9288 spheres in a 27 
> unit cell random non-overlapping distributions. Colors marks the grain 
> boundaries. It the stable version, I can rotate the pack at will, zoom 
> in, etc. This is so even when I improve the sphere rendering smoothness 
> by decreasing the two if(size <0.02) if(size<=0.125)... lines to 0.004 
> and 0.125 respectively. The stock stable 3.2.9 presumably would be even 
> faster.
> 
> However, in the beta version, I cannot rotate the pack at will, 
> interactivity becomes inadequate.
>> There isn't a simple patch to make the production version have 
>> transparency. There was a major change in the fundamental architecture 
>> of Visual to make transparency a possibility.
>>
>> As stated in the description of the points object, these are circles or 
>> squares, not spheres, of particular use in plotting graphs. They may or 
>> may not be of any use to you. I would think that they're a lot faster 
>> than spheres.
> Too bad.
>> The late Arthur Siegel did experiment a bit with specifying the level of 
>> detail for the rendering of spheres. There is an undocumented attribute 
>> of the "display" object:
>>
>> scene.lod = -3 # range is -6 (low level of detail) to 0 (high)
>> sphere()
>>
>> I don't like having negative values for "level of display" (lod), so 
>> think of this as very experimental, but it will let you try some things. 
>> Alternatively, since you evidently have a lot of experience, you could 
>> make changes of your own to the internal workings of Visual to 
>> experiment with the issues. Thanks much for your report.
> Unfortunately I really kind of need to actually use visual to help me 
> intuitively grasp some problems in my research, so I can't afford to 
> play it too much. So I decided to forgo transparency for now and revert 
> back to the stable version. Thanks for the help, though.
> Jiang
>> Bruce Sherwood
>>
>> Jiang Qian wrote:
>>> Hi:
>>> 	Sorry about the confusing subject line of my last email. I did 
>>> manage to compile the beta, I just have major performance problem.
>>> 	I took a look at the code of sphere.cpp, and notice there's 
>>> discussion about levels of details. I wonder, however, are all that 
>>> exposed to the user? Is there anyway I can reduce the level of details 
>> >from my script? Or if that's not possible, is it possible to in fact 
>>> change the code manually and recompile?
>>> 	Another issue that may or may not have anything to do with my 
>>> performance woes. There are several demos in the example directory does 
>>> not run properly in my installation. Drape shows only a rod. Double 
>>> pendulum is way slower than in 3.4, Hanoi shows artifacts whenever I 
>>> move a ring. I'm beginning to think there might be something wrong with 
>>> my beta installation. How can I check?
>>> 	Thanks in advance for your help.
>>> 								Jiang
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 01:35:57AM -0500, Jiang Qian wrote:
>>>> Hi all:
>>>> 	I'm new to this list. I installed the stable visual-3.2.9 and it 
>>>> worked great. But I really would like to to get the transparency to 
>>>> work.  So I installed visual 4.beta16. I jumped through all sorts of 
>>>> hoops, and finally got it to work. The transparency works quite well. 
>>>> But I have serious performance issue.
>>>> 	I mainly use visual to visualize packed spheres, and small 
>>>> particles inside the spaces between them. In visual 3.2.9, a system with 
>>>> a few hundred spheres packed inside a cube works very smoothly: I can 
>>>> rotate, zoom at will with middle and right button. By combining the two, 
>>>> I can essentially "walk" into the sphere packs.(The spheres rendered are 
>>>> not perfectly smooth, but I manually changed some lines in the source 
>>>> code to make the smoothness ok). It all works fine, the only thing I 
>>>> miss is transparency.
>>>> 	However, in visual 4.beta16, using identical code(with *no* 
>>>> transparency yet), I get a spectacularly smooth and well lit spheres, 
>>>> but the tradeoff seem to be heavy performance penalty: I can barely zoom 
>>>> and move, the rotation is slow. Interactive zooming and rotation is the 
>>>> key reason why I use visual: otherwise I can just render things in 
>>>> povray. Needless to say, I would like to find a way to trade away some 
>>>> of the more spectacular visual effects to have better interactive 
>>>> performance.
>>>> 	I tried to look through the documentation of beta, but there 
>>>> aren't too much info about performance tuning. The only thing I found is 
>>>> to set shininess to 0, which helps marginally at best.
>>>> 	What other tricks can I use to improve interactive performance?  
>>>> For example, can I tune the smoothness of the spheres? Sometimes my cpu 
>>>> usage is not even fully 100%, but dragging, rotating and zooming the 
>>>> image is still very slow.
>>>> 	It'll really be a shame if I have to revert to the old version 
>>>> due to performance issue.  There must be a way to balance performance 
>>>> and effects.
>>>> 	In a related issue. I also need to render particles between the 
>>>> spheres in the pack. In the old version, I basically render them as 
>>>> smaller spheres. But in the new version, there's a mention of point 
>>>> objects, which seems to be just for that purpose. However, there's not 
>>>> too much documentation of the point objects. How do I use them? Do they 
>>>> offer a lighter overhead than the render spheres? Can I give them 
>>>> colors?
>>>> 	On the final note, a word about my system: I have a thinkpad 
>>>> T43, with Pentium M Dothan 1.86MHz, 1GB PC2-4200 memory, ATI X300 mobile 
>>>> discrete graphics(M22) with 64MB of VRAM, and 60GB 7200rpm disk. It's 
>>>> not a powerful machine by today's standard, but it runs the old version 
>>>> of visual just fine. Also, runs other 3D accelerated openGL programs 
>>>> like googleearth and stellarium just fine(glxgears score, which I know 
>>>> is not a benchmark, is around 1750 FPS).
>>>> 	The software environment is an outdated ubuntu(5.04), with 
>>>> custom compiled 2.6.18 kernel, gcc version 3.3.5, python 2.4, fglrx 
>>>> proprietary driver 8.42.3(latest).  Numpy 1.0.3, the latest gtkglxtmm I 
>>>> compiled and installed from source.  If you want to know more, let me 
>>>> know what more relevant info I can give.
>>>> 	If there's a simple patch for the stable version 3.2.9 that 
>>>> enables transparency, I'll be very happy to use that, too. Because 
>>>> really the stable version satisfies all my need except for 
>>>> transparencies.
>>>> 	Thank you all for any hint/help you can give.
>>>> 								Jiang
>>>>
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Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Jiang Q. <jq...@ph...>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:46:36PM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> The URL to the program was omitted from the previous note:
> 
> 	http://physics.harvard.edu/~jqian/vector.py)
> 
> I don't see any of the crashes on Ubuntu that you see. You might try 
> updating your graphics card driver, a frequent source of problems of the 
> kind you describe.
I'm using the latest proprietary graphic driver fglrx. At the end of the 
email the I'll put the output of my glxinfo. As I said, all the crazy 
openGL 3D stuff like stellarium, googleearth and the stable version of 
visual runs just fine. So I'm skeptical that my openGL implementation is 
at fault---so far the beta version of visual is the only openGL 
application that does not work on my rig.
> 
> I do however see the slowness (even with shininess=0 and the 
> experimental scene.lod=-6), and this is one of the issues in the beta 
> version that needs to be addressed. I'm stunned that in the production 
> version of Visual rotation is smooth, as there are more than 9000 spheres!
Well, I'll have to say 9000 spheres are not a good measure for the 
rendering, because after all what we see is a two dimensional projection 
of a 3D pack, and if we view from the outside, we see around 9000^(2/3) 
of about 400 spheres on the surface as the spheres are packed pretty 
tightly and cover each other. But still, it's quite when we see the 
surface.  However, what really helps me is the fact that I'm able to 
zoom into the system and rotate to maneuver and "walk" inside the 
system. When I do that, my system is slower but still usable in the 
production version. So I'm happy about it, no doubt, and it'll really be 
wonderful if I can deliver transparency with an acceptable performance 
cost. 

BTW, is there a way to install both the production and beta version and 
to choose them from runtime? I set the directory of the production 
system to be /usr/local and the beta to be /usr when configuring, but it 
seems that the beta doesn't like the presence of production system and 
crash if I don't remove the /usr/local packages.
Jiang
> 
> I'm particularly grateful to have this example program, because it has 
> uncovered a bizarre bug. I modified all the spheres to have shininess=0, 
> in the hopes that this would improve performance. To my great surprise, 
> the spheres continued to have specular highlights. Then I found that 
> only if I comment out the initial lines that create boxes, the spheres 
> lose their shininess. This is a very strange interaction.
> Bruce Sherwood



glxinfo

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
    GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
    GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_OML_swap_method, 
GLX_SGI_make_current_read,
    GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
    GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, 
GLX_EXT_import_context,
    GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, 
GLX_MESA_allocate_memory,
    GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_swap_control,
    GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method, 
GLX_OML_sync_control,
    GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
    GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
    GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
GLX extensions:
    GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, 
GLX_EXT_import_context,
    GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_OML_swap_method,
    GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6958 Release

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

I should have commented about your question about boost. Here are the 
relevant comments from INSTALL.txt, included in the source package:

The Boost C++ libraries version 1.31 and higher (1.33.1 reccomended) 
(www.boost.org). Note that 1.31 is required if you are using Python 2.3 
or higher, and is recommended in any case due to getting much better 
error messages. 1.32.0 or higher is required if you want to use GNU G++ 
3.4.0 or higher to build the suite.

Bruce Sherwood

Jiang Qian wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:11:32AM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> Now one worry about my ancient ubuntu is 
> that my libboost version is still 1.31. Would that be a problem?

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Jiang Q. <jq...@ph...>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:51:17PM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> I should have commented about your question about boost. Here are the 
> relevant comments from INSTALL.txt, included in the source package:
> 
> The Boost C++ libraries version 1.31 and higher (1.33.1 reccomended) 
> (www.boost.org). Note that 1.31 is required if you are using Python 2.3 
> or higher, and is recommended in any case due to getting much better 
> error messages. 1.32.0 or higher is required if you want to use GNU G++ 
> 3.4.0 or higher to build the suite.
Yes I read that, I take that to mean my boost 1.31 will work, but is not 
optimal, as I have gcc 3.3.4. However I'm confused by the sentence that 
you required boost 1.31 or higher, but in the next sentence "Note..." 
you said again boost 1.31 is required. Does that mean only this version 
is good?
Jiang
> 
> Bruce Sherwood
> 
> Jiang Qian wrote:
> >On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:11:32AM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> >Now one worry about my ancient ubuntu is 
> >that my libboost version is still 1.31. Would that be a problem?

Re: [Visualpython-users] From newbie: major performance woes

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

Yeah, I guess that note isn't well written at that. I think the "Note" 
refers to an earlier version of this description that may have said 1.30 
was the minimum required, but not if you were using Python 2.3 or 
higher. I should dig back in the archives and correct this prose. Thanks.

Bottom line: 1.31 is supposed to be okay, but later should be better.

Bruce Sherwood

Jiang Qian wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:51:17PM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>> I should have commented about your question about boost. Here are the 
>> relevant comments from INSTALL.txt, included in the source package:
>>
>> The Boost C++ libraries version 1.31 and higher (1.33.1 reccomended) 
>> (www.boost.org). Note that 1.31 is required if you are using Python 2.3 
>> or higher, and is recommended in any case due to getting much better 
>> error messages. 1.32.0 or higher is required if you want to use GNU G++ 
>> 3.4.0 or higher to build the suite.
> Yes I read that, I take that to mean my boost 1.31 will work, but is not 
> optimal, as I have gcc 3.3.4. However I'm confused by the sentence that 
> you required boost 1.31 or higher, but in the next sentence "Note..." 
> you said again boost 1.31 is required. Does that mean only this version 
> is good?
> Jiang
>> Bruce Sherwood
>>
>> Jiang Qian wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:11:32AM -0500, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>>> Now one worry about my ancient ubuntu is 
>>> that my libboost version is still 1.31. Would that be a problem?