Yes, using 1liner. I also check X log myself I definitely know that Metacity don't use composite and I always think that KWin use it. So I also was wondered when doesn't find it in Xorg logs, but on "kwin --replace" i get excepted notices: So it's seems like some problem with my configuration. I need to notice that I'm not long term KDE-user, I only start to use it because it's more easy to play PA full screen there.
I'm able to play PA today with no flickering or tearing. I installed xcompmgr and launched it with: Code: xcompmgr -c & I launched that before i launched PA. This made the flickering better so that i could navigate to begin a game. What removed the tearing completely was setting Tear Free to on in catalyst control center. Just setting v-sync to always on did not correct the issue, i had to enable tear free as well. I'm only getting about 15-20 FPS on medium settings but at least its working. I get 30 FPS with xcompmgr process killed but the screen will not update at all when my cursor is in the window.
I'm using compiz and running the line from eeyrjmr's form printed "no", so I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with it (compiz without compositing? I don't thinik that's even possible).
really? using the grep /var/log/Xorg.0 .... command ... mmm I can refine it a bit, but greping the xorg log for Extension "Composite" is enabled is the most reliable method. So far tho a few more mouse issues but only one entry for no mouse issue. Its looking like a windowmanager thing more than anything When I use openbox I can actually use my taskbar (tint2) but in cinnamon I cannot click on it. Its something todo with how PA is drawn on the screen, like even though it is its own window its being drawn in something that is already full screen. openbox takes pride in being std compliant so its either the other wm are non-std compliant to such a degree (i doubt) or its downto a windowmanager being composite aware. For the record metacity is composite capable and out of the list of wm being used openbox is the only one that isn't and its the only one that works flawlessly I might install another wm to try it or even just use twm
After reading this thread I decided to try a few things to see if I could get rid of the flickering issue on my system. I was successful in doing so and these are the results of my tests on Linux Mint 15 KDE with a Mobility Radeon 5870. All options below can be found in desktop effects under the advanced tab except tear free which can be found in the options for your drivers. Compositing Type | Qt graphics system | Tear Free | fps | ui response | flickering XRender........... | Native............... | On......... | 12 | slow......... | None XRender........... | Native............... | Off......... |12 | slow.......... | Cursor only XRender........... | Raster............... | On......... | 12 | Medium..... | None XRender........... | Raster............... | Off......... | 12 | Fast......... | Cursor only OpenGL............ | Native............... | On......... | 30 | N/A.......... | No Refresh OpenGL............ | Native............... | Off......... | 30 | slow......... | Box near cursor OpenGL............ | Raster............... | On......... | 30 | N/A.......... | No Refresh OpenGL............ | Raster............... | Off......... | 30 | fast......... | Box near cursor FPS is about what the fps steadied at when looking at a 10 million poly planet on low settings. Although I did my best to keep the planet consistent across tests I also noticed that on smaller planets that the fps did not increase and that while building things fps remained remarkably consistent. UI response was determined by how quickly the all the structures were displayed when selecting a new builder unit. This ranged from a couple milliseconds on the fast side to a couple seconds on the slow side. Flickering describes how much flickering was present. None means everything was working as expected. Cursor only means just the cursor and no other part of the screen was flickering. Box near cursor means that a box around the cursor was flickering. No Refresh means that when the cursor was on the window that the window would not update. Based on these observations I believe the main problem here is the compositor and the graphics driver fighting over who gets to refresh the screen but that is more speculation than anything. I would recommend using XRender, Raster, and tear free on @eeyrjmr: When I initially filled out your form I was getting flickering with a box near the mouse but now that I am getting no flickering the results of your form are identical. I think you are on the right track but it may be necessary to dig deeper into the compositor stuff. Hope this helps, Tyler Seacrest
If you're using Ubuntu & Nvidia... The most stable graphics for me have been using metacity as a window manager with composite enabled for metacity. The fast way to set metacity to do compositing is with: Code: dconf write /org/gnome/metacity/compositing-manager true As for starting a session with metacity, choose "GNOME Flashback (No effects)" as your session (for Ubuntu 13.04 with Gnome 3 PPA, ). In this configuration I have no mouse tearing, flickering, or disappearing problems. A compact recipe for this (without messing up your normal user to much) is, do the following once: Code: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-shell gnome-session-flashback sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo adduser uber # choose "GNOME Flashback (No effects)" as your session & login as "uber" # open a term and: dconf write /org/gnome/metacity/compositing-manager true # maybe run nvidia-settings to tweak your card From then on, just login as "uber" and run PA.
I concur with tylerseacrest & jflemer. With Xcompsite enabled seems to resolve cursor and refresh problem. However I have LXDE & Openbox which does not support compositing so I installed xcompmgr to enable compositing for X for those of you that don't have a WM that supports compositing. LibXComposite must also be installed build is Archlinux with AUR AMD Catalyst 13.4-4 :mrgreen:
As for tweaking the Xcomposite ATI catalyst seems to F$%#k things up so enabling tearing will smooth out mouse refresh but drop your frame rate, so with compositing enabled it seems best to turn off vertical refresh and disable Catalyst AI if possible mine it will keep renabling it so I just have catalyst ai set to standard. newest AMD drivers removed alot of options use to be more in older driver versions for opengl :shock:
I looked for these settings on my Kubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS (Ubuntu with KDE). I have an Nvidia Geforce GTX 580 card. I don't know what size planet you use, but on a fairly large planet, I viewed it full size and at different zoom levels during building units, etc. I don't have some of these settings, but here is my resultant solution based on yours: Compositing Type | Qt graphics system | Tear Free | fps | ui response | flickering OpenGL............ | No options.............| No options | 60 | fast......... | Box near cursor XRender........... | No options.............| No options | 60 | fast......... | None Since this XRender change solved my flickering cursor problems, I then checked other games, including Steam games, and so far all seems fine with them too. Thanks for the testing and the details, which helped me to solve my problem. System specs: i7 980X Extreme cpu Geforce GTX 580 gpu (1.5 GiB) 24 GiB ram SSD (6 Gbps) Kubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS 64-bit Linux kernel 3.2.0-43-generic Xorg 11, version 1.11.3 Nvidia driver version 319.17 OpenGL version 4.3.0
I can confirm that. But to test it without relogging you could just type in a terminal: Code: metacity --replace -c But you may have to start your default wm afterwards(or logout/login)
I've just installed PA on my computer that runs Ubuntu 12.04 and I’m experiencing the flickering mouse cursor with an box that seems to be an image of the previous rendered picture beneath it. Can I safely go around this problem somehow without ******* up my computer performance in other games? How? (I'm a Linux novice)
Still not resolved. I've posted my specs via the google form just for stats. I also found a nice new compositing manager called compton which removes tearing in flash/HTML5 videos and works fine with Awesome WM and (I guess) with any other window manager. Anyway, it doesn't help to resolve the issue with the cursor so the compositing theory may not be true for everyone (I read it helps on AMD cards but I have NV560Ti). The game is basically unplayable until this is resolved and it's very wrong to require compositing to be enabled in order to play the game without glitches. Each and every Linux game I played until now worked well with just Awesome WM.
Why? The problem is with the game. Moreover, I have nothing to give them, the game is in alpha so it's not available for everyone. It's the game developers who should contact driver developers if they're sure it's a driver bug and not theirs. I don't see any cursor glitches in other games, just in PA. And they weren't there from the very beginning, I played one game before and everything was fine. Then after some update it started happening.
Cursor glitch is related with Vsync working wrong. It's mostly okay on open source drivers for me. I totally sure Uber already report it to Nvidia, but it's always useful to have reports from users. No users reports == no bugfixes, it's usually true for any bugs in any software products. There was no glitches because there was no cursor, e.g game doesn't use own cursors in first Linux builds.
That's strange, didn't hear about something like this before. So are there any simple demos with hardware cursor which suffer from the same issue? I tried Spring RTS which has HW cursor support and it seems to work ok. That may be the point, I haven't paid much attention to the cursor shape.
Actually cursor problem related to how UI works. Every element include cursor rendered by Coherent UI as HTML page: Code: 7898 08:05:11.972183 D | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.919662 Creating view for file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/cursor_atlas.html 7898 08:05:11.972334 I | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.920080 Navigating view 1 to file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/cursor_atlas.html 7898 08:05:11.972368 D | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.924117 Creating view for file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/icon_atlas/icon_atlas.html 7898 08:05:11.972402 I | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.924424 Navigating view 2 to file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/icon_atlas/icon_atlas.html 7898 08:05:11.972440 D | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.934960 Creating view for file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/special_icon_atlas/special_icon_atlas.html 7898 08:05:11.972474 I | PID: 7900 | 7900 08:05:11.935202 Navigating view 3 to file:///home/i/PA/media/ui/alpha/special_icon_atlas/special_icon_atlas.html Then it's all combined somehow with actual game output. I might be incorrect here, but as long as I understand issues with flickering or invisible cursor happen when system can't handle this output correctly because each element actually have own refresh rate. PS: Also Coherent itself should be able to handle cursors like normal Chromium, interesting if there some specifics and why Uber don't go this way.
sure this is an nvidia issue rather than something specific with the UI used? I have never seen this with anything else. Im not saying it isn't nvidia, just a bit surprised if it is
On R600g driver I have a bit flickering, but cursor is always visible. On latest Catalyst beta cursor working perfectly, no flickering at all. So I think it's Nvidia issue. Also it's obvious that issue related to PA-specifics, but it's doesn't mean that Uber doing something wrong, it's only mean that on part of configurations it's working fine. As we know (^_^) most Uber GPU's are Nvidia, so I totally sure they check Linux builds on Nvidia card. Do you often play windowed games which replace cursor? Also does any of these games render cursor dynamically? Don't think so. PS: You can just check this file: media/ui/alpha/cursor_atlas.html and see how cursor handled, it's actually 100x100 image.
