Serious bug with Mac OS X Flickering - found the cause

[fabrizio.giudici]

A few weeks ago I found that in certain cases putting UserFacingIcons on the Earth model caused severe flickering with Mac OS X.

After some investigation, I can confirm that the problem happens only with Mac OS X, and in particular only with icons larger than 16x16 (this is why the original code by Pat Murris worked).

If the icons are just a bit larger (e.g. 17x17), in the method:

private Point drawIcon(DrawContext dc, OrderedIcon uIcon)

the call to

dc.drawUnitQuad(texCoords);

instead of taking 0ms (as usual), lasts up to 200-250ms. This clearly produces the flickering.

For my demo of Tuesday I've applied a quick-and-tragic workaround, that is I've reduced my photo icons to 16x16. But it's really small :-( even though it wouldn't severely impact my demo. Any quick hint?

[patmurris]

Could it be related to non power of two texture sizes ?
Does it flicker with say 64x64 ?

[fabrizio.giudici]

YES!! :-) 128x128 works and now I can make a workaround that won't have any visual impact. :-)))

I definitely have to pay you a beer! I'm not sure yet if you live in Canada or Côte d'Azur - in the latter case I could pay my debit somewhat quickly...

[fabrizio.giudici]

Ok, my fix works. This makes me happy for a while.

Now, do you believe it's a WWJ bug or a JOGL bug? I'd like to file a bug, so I will be able to remove my fix in future.

[pred]

Patmurris is the man ! I will try to add 'photos point' like gEarth with your advices.

[patmurris]

Originally Posted by fabrizio.giudici

I definitely have to pay you a beer! I'm not sure yet if you live in Canada or Côte d'Azur - in the latter case I could pay my debit somewhat quickly...

I live in Montreal, Canada, but i will be visiting family in Nice most of july and august... so i wont be very far. BTW : a grappa would be more appropriate

Originally Posted by fabrizio.giudici

Now, do you believe it's a WWJ bug or a JOGL bug? I'd like to file a bug, so I will be able to remove my fix in future.

I'm not sure what the status is regarding JOGL and non power of two (NPOT) textures. It has been a long time issue that should be resolved by now... but obviously is not.

Having all your textures with POTs dimensions is certainly the safest way.

[fabrizio.giudici]

Originally Posted by patmurris

I live in Montreal, Canada, but i will be visiting family in Nice most of july and august... so i wont be very far. BTW : a grappa would be more appropriate

Drop me a line when you're going to go to Nice...

[maemigh]

I just started seeing this problem as I'm doing tests on MacBooks and MacBook Pros. It seems that the flickering problem occurs on the Pro but not on the normal MacBook.

no, it occurs on the macbook also.
I've had a flickering problem while using java based games.