Hi Michael,

You're welcome, glad if it helps.


Hi Burr,

Not sure if I understand what you're asking.

I'm using fraps to benchmark the viewport (http://www.fraps.com/ ), with the autorotate2 script here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1001.1 .

Using time display script in MoI....

1000 Spheres in Array (cube arrangement), mesh=5 deg.

2000 ms in prior version.
1069 ms in new version.

2x increase.

So it's good for larger shear quantity of surfaces. - when its more about large amounts of poly data being processed.

Not as much noticeable with simpler models. - when it's more an issue of the bottleneck with the PC communicating with the vid card.
In one case, when I was using a smaller number of objects. I noticed that the newer version was slower than the older.

Hi Mike,

> In one case, when I was using a smaller number of objects. I noticed
> that the newer version was slower than the older.

By very much or were they pretty close? But also with a small number of objects things are probably going at a fast enough pace that you probably would not be able to tell the difference if the numeric readout was not there, or was that not the case?

- Michael

Hey PaQ,

"""""""""Not sure if I understand what you're asking. I'm using fraps to benchmark the viewport """"""""""""""""""""

Ok, my bad... I thought you were doing it with the script Michael posted. we only got "ms" with the script. I didnt know how you were getting "frames per second."

Thanks.

Very cool... Thanks Michael... I'll announce this new beta an my forum as well.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Great job Michael G. on the tapered extrude! Good for folks like me that do injection molded plastic part designs!

Michael T.

Is this new cpu optimization working on the mac version??

Hi ed,

> Is this new cpu optimization working on the mac version??

Yup, the same thing is working on the Mac too. I only have dual-core macs over here, and I saw about a 30% improvement, a quad-core should probably see better than that.

- Michael

Michael, I'm seeing a possible bug with the new version:

==========================
FreeForm curves (control point, Through Points, and Sketch) are not allowing you to highlight them or select them in one ortho view if you created them in another one.
==========================
Regardless of how they were drawn in one view, it seems to happen when they appear "planar" in another view.
It appears to be intermittent and is random in occurrence. (So if you try, try a few different times)
Scrolling in and out seems to bring this problem on and off.

I've drawn some FreeForm curves while in "Front" view, I go to "Top" view and Moi is not highlighting them for selection.
Nor am I able to move them.
This is also happening in the same view I draw it in. But it will sometimes work again, then not work if I zoom.

It doesn't seem to be a problem with non-planar curve objects.
Also strange, I don't seem to be able to snap things to it's ends or other parts... almost like it is invisible when seen in planar.
Even if I select it with a window selection, I still can't move them.
Oh, and some (objects planar in view) are highlightable/selectable and some will not.
And those invisible objects do not have the preview-to-snap "x"'s within the tolerance circle, not show up either.

The same effect is happening with shapes, lines and anything else planar, like a Planar box. I've rebooted just to clear up that possibility.
I also set the thread limit to 1, just to rule that out.

Just for comparison I've opened up the older version and pasted the same things into it...
Of course, No problem in the older one. The older version seems to have less lag when moving things, and everything highlights with a mouseover just fine.

Anyone else have this issue? Draw a FreeForm curve with a few points in one flat view, (in a straight fashion (no curving)) and go to another flat view and see if it is not selecting.

 
I just noted that this doesn't seem to be a problem between views in Split View, it's just the full version single views of each viewport.

===================================
Also, there seems to be a little lag time when I try to move control points over the previous version.
Also a lag when I am using box selection. The box is somewhat behind in catching up to the cursor.

Curious all that works fine for me!
Have you a little video of this ?

Of course not. ;-)

If no one else is able to reproduce this, I'll try at work tomorrow and thus determine that my home PC truly sucks.

Look at MoI-options-snaps and read the numbers there.

Hi Mike, I can't seem to repeat anything like what you are describing over here.

Can you repeat this problem when loading in a saved 3DM file instead of only just drawing a new curve? If so then if you could post a 3DM file where you do see it, that would be an easier thing for me to test with over here rather than just drawing random curves because maybe you have some tendency to draw a particular shape of curve that is more likely to trigger the problem or something like that.

Do you have other objects in the model like solids that the curves may be behind?

You say it only happens to you with a full screen view and not in split view? What method are you using to switch between views, any kind of script or just the view tab buttons on the bottom command bar?



> Also, there seems to be a little lag time when I try to move control points over the previous version.
> Also a lag when I am using box selection. The box is somewhat behind in catching up to the cursor.

Do these also persist if you set DisplayThreadLimit=1 ?

- Michael

Hi Mike, my guess is probably what happened with the new version is that you have adjusted some driver settings for it and turned anti-aliasing on. When anti-aliasing is forced on at the driver level it will entirely mess up MoI's selection mechanism.

You probably have some app-specific settings for each different MoI.exe, or an app-specific setting that is only getting applied to the new one and not the old one.

Try going in and removing all special video driver settings for the new MoI.exe, especially anything related to forcing anti-aliasing on and then likely your problem will go away at that point.

- Michael

Wonderful... :-/

I checked my vid settings and there are not specific applications set up to run special 3d setting cases.
My Snap settings are set to factory default.
I do know that this is NOT happening in a parallel opened version of Apr beta. (or so I thought - it is more based on the physical arrangement in the display... see below the pics).

http://www.k4icy.50webs.com/tutorials/selection_test_01.3dm
Here is my test file, but from the sounds of it, anything out of the ordinary is only happening to me... "I saw it, it took a bite out of my boat" he says. ;-)






This strange selectivity changes with the scale at which I zoom in and out.


I took further measures to rule in/out the anti-aliasing setting in the Invidia setup.
(NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE)

With anti-aliasing turned completely off, selection works fine!

--you have to re-load MoI after changing--
With it set to something called 2xQ, I am NOT ABLE TO SELECT ANYTHING!
Something called "4x" is its highest setting, this is where I was currently set at.

I am able to achieve this 'selectivity' with the older version too.

By the way, it all seems to work fine when the anti-aliasing option for the Invidia card is set to "Application Controlled".
Which means that there is no card-forced anti-aliasing to the operation of MoI.

(the above pics are kinds moot now)

Thanks for the quick advice Michael... Knock on wood, I think this may be it.

I changed these settings to "default 'Quality' " when I was messing with it the other night. It changed it to "4x" anti-aliasing from "Application Controlled"

Since I can control this effect that I was experiencing by changing these setting, we must assume that this was the issue.

The other two issues with the lagging seems to have cleared up too.

:-) Whew! (for now)

Hi Mike that's great, so from what I understand you're all set now with the driver anti-aliasing setting put on "application controlled" which probably was originally the default, before you must have done a few tweaks to see if things like "threaded optimization" would help with performance, is that correct?

So it sounds like you are all back in working order now?

And yes, if antialiasing is forced on at the driver level it will definitely mess up MoI's selection mechanism, it basically ends up anti-aliasing and therefore mutating some selection data. With it back to the default "application controlled" you should be back in action now.

Also having antialiasing turned on makes the card do quite a bit of extra work so with an older card that's also not unusual that it would have some performance penalty along with that as well.

- Michael

Great! it works on the mac too!!

Hi Ed, do you see a noticeable improvement on your Mac?

You can get some actual numbers by setting up the following on a shortcut key, then pressing that will show the redraw time in the upper-left corner of the viewport window:
script: /* Toggle redraw time display */ moi.ui.showViewportDisplayTime = !moi.ui.showViewportDisplayTime;

Then with an actual number on the old one and a new number it's easier to tell exactly how much improvement there has been.

Also, what kind of CPU and video card do you have on your Mac?

- Michael

Drew a sphere (mesh angle 5 degrees), Array grid/cube 10x10x10 (1000).
Centered in view and rotated.

My home PC took is 1060 ms average per redraw frame.
That was over the 2000 ms it took with the older version.

Come to work using my newer card:
70 ms redraw! (mesh angle 5 degrees)
162 ms redraw (mesh angle 1 degrees)

I still have to look into what it already splitting up the threads with MoI.

Same objects.
The screen capture on the LEFT is from the April beta, the one to the left is from the July beta.

I have a few curve objects nested within each other, I noticed that there are flickering (or shimmering) patterns that change as you do anything from highlighting different objects to hovering over buttons.
The view image is unchanging and consistent in the April beta. Same .ini file, same graphic.
It's as if there is some random variation in the opacity of the anti-aliased fringes, and it appears to change as the viewport is refreshed.
But since the previous version does not have this effect, then it has something to do with the way MoI's multi-thread thing works.

NOTE: this does not happen when the DisplayThreadLimit=1

Michael, BTW, my NVIDIA GeForece GTX 560 has had it's driver updated to the newest release.
On a slightly related note, the strange behavior with the thread distribution I was dealing with since the released is the same today.

For now, It may be best to leave the DisplayThreadLimit set to 1, which Win still shows that at least four cores are still sharing a % the load.
The speed wasn't increased to much of a noticeable level anyways. Though, in my case, it looks like I'm already enjoying some type of multi-thread emulation in the first place.
It might have something to do with the PC's Hyper-Threading.
If that's the case, then I must be enjoying the advantage to the Hyper-Threading (in my experience with it so far) is that I've had a very stable system that rarely crashes or locks up as I'm in full-boar operation with Photoshop, Corel a software RIP processor and the myriad of other things that are going on. Unlike this work PC's predecessor that crashed all the time, I have to remember to reboot every few days just to clear Photoshop and Corel's heads. ;-)

I post this just for curiosity's sake with this beta release.

So with my card on my particular system, I get some kind of random inconsistency with anti-aliasing rendering when MoI is set to use more than one thread.
I would have to be the 'odd-ball' with the system that exhibits the strange behavior.

Didn't one guy complain of "shimmering" triangles?