Graphical glitches under Ubuntu

General Discussion
#1

Has anyone noticed any graphical issues when using Panda under Ubuntu 11.10?

I’ve been experiencing some graphical issues under Ubuntu. For the most part these have been confined to Windows programs running under Wine, and, given successes with games running natively, I would likely consider the problem to be a bug in Wine, save for one thing: I seem to have occasional issues in Panda as well.

While my issues in Wine are varied, I seem thus far to have experienced only one issue in Panda: distorted or improperly-rendered triangles.

Thankfully the problem asserts itself only occasionally; it seems to depend on what geometry is showing at the time, as it seems to disappear when the on-screen geometry changes, and appear when geometry is introduced. Once conditions do produce it, it seems to be reasonably replicable: if, for example, showing a GUI causes it to appear, hiding the GUI tends to remove the issue while showing the GUI again brings it back - until the other geometry present is changed, at which point it tends to disappear until it chooses next to strike.

My system:
Gigabyte Q2005 (a netbook)
CPU: Intel Atom N550
Graphics: Intel GMA 3150
Memory: 2GB
OS: Ubuntu 11.10

I’m using this driver, I believe; if my reading of my Xorg log file is correct, said driver does appear to be being loaded.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[edit]
On further thought, it occurs to me that it may be specific to DirectGUI: I don’t seem to recall an instance of this issue appearing without DirectGUI elements on-screen.

Some illustrative screenshots:
Before glitch

After glitch

Note the corrupted GUI elements, including the text at top-left, and the untouched geometry (cards and a grid, I believe) behind.

#2

I’m not a huge fan of bumping my posts (and I intend to bump this thread only this once), but I could really use some insight into this issue.

Any thoughts on this problem that I’m having, anyone?

#3

It sure does sound like a graphics driver bug; and if it is, there’s not a lot we can do about it from the Panda side.

The first question that comes to mind is, does it happen if you run tinydisplay? If so, then it’s certainly a bug in Panda, and we can fix it. If it never happens in tinydisplay, then it’s probably a driver bug.

David

#4

Well… I noticed some glitches when activating Multithreaded Render Pipeline. It blinks all elements of the interface. Maybe it’s the same issue?

I’ll record one video to show what happens. =)

#5

Hmm… It doesn’t sound quite the same, and I don’t think that I have the Multithreaded Render Pipeline active, but thank you - I’d be interested in seeing the video, if you get around to it. :slight_smile:

Well, it’s difficult to be greatly confident without a longer test, but a quick experiment with tinydisplay didn’t include the glitch, so it looks as though it may very well be a driver issue.

I don’t know whether it’s at all relevant, but I noticed that my usual display is “pandagl”; attempting to use “pandagles” results in the game running, then locking itself in apparently endless errors, apparently stemming from an invalid enumerant in “glGraphicsStateGuardian_src.cxx”, leading eventually to repetitions of:

:display:gsg:glesgsg(error): EXT_framebuffer_object reports non-framebuffer-completeness:
:display:gsg:glesgsg(error): FRAMEBUFFER_INCOMPLETE_ATTACHMENT_EXT for surface buffer

Narg, that’s a nuisance. Thankfully it’s an intermittent issue in Panda, but it looks as though Ubuntu doesn’t like my graphics card, and I’ve thus far had very little aid from the Ubuntu forum… :confused:

Thank you both for your help! It’s appreciated!