White flicker on moving through UI after update to 4.2.3

josete2k

As you can see, flickering only appears after nuning a game. And it disapears when rollo back to the first system.

TMNTturtlguy

@josete2k from what I see your system is running perfectly normal. If you don't like the slight flicker you see you can switch to fade transitions instead of slide. Changing your vram will have no effect because you don it have any memory or image loading issues. The slight change you may see is because the white screen of death has been fixed. There is no need to modify or update as you won't see a difference. I am not at home with my pi so I can't show you, but the white flash we see with heavy themes is a lot more noticeable than what you are experiencing.

pjft

Yeah, that used to happen to me in the past with carbon as well, after loading a game. I suspected it would/could be related to the textures being unloaded from the GPU cache because of playing the game, and so they need to be loaded again on demand afterwards.

I didn't think much of it, to be honest, even though I admit it is not ideal. Someone may look into it one day. Or maybe whatever I'm working on may help with that, unsure.

pjft

Yeah, can easily replicate it in Carbon. Unsure why that is the case. I have a suspicion, but need to confirm.

Anyways, to replicate this, in Fade transition, open a MAME game, then return to the system view and scroll.

In my PR with changes to mitigate these white issues, choosing to re-use SVGs across the theme seems to fix this, so that's good news. It derives from the fact that the system logos in Carbon are SVGs, and not PNGs, and that SVGs aren't especially well dealt with in the current iteration of the texture manager. So yes, my changes should help.

If you want to test it, I'll provide a build shortly.

pjft

Ok.

I've uploaded a build for you to test here:

https://github.com/pjft/EmulationStation/releases/download/0.9/emulationstation

Instructions:
1 - Download it and copy it to your Pi
2 - Run, via SSH, chmod +x emulationstationin the same folder.
3 - Run ./emulationstation

You don't need to have it in the actual ES folder to run as a one off. If you want it to be your permanent ES, just copy it to /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation.

But right now, anyone who's having white flashes and such, you'd do everyone a great service if you test this out so that it can be merged into the main ES after testing and confirming that the experience is better overall.

Thanks.

josete2k

@pjft yeah, I've set your newest emulationstation as permanent and no flickering issue.

pjft

@josete2k wow, that was quick. Great to hear!

Let me know if you encounter any unpleasant side effects from using it.

josete2k

I see new settings

Multithreaded image load
Re-use theme images

Both ON, is this correct?

pjft

@josete2k oh. I thought the build I had shared didn't have those options visible. :)

Anyway, yes, both on will be how it'll be in the main build. So don't change them :)

josete2k

I don't know why but there is one controller.svg that doesn't show properly.

Fisrt time it was the arcade controller, but now is the SNES controller...

TMNTturtlguy

@josete2k after testing out you should add comments to @pjft pull request on github verifying you tested and if it works! github PR

pjft

@josete2k OK, well that's a problem. :)

I'll look into that. Any steps to replicate/video would be helpful.

If you disable both options, then, it should work for you, though that's not ideal.

Thanks for testing!

josete2k

@TMNTturtlguy I don't have github account, but I'll di. Thanks for the tip.

images:
before
http://i.imgur.com/87N2Ltv.jpg

after
http://i.imgur.com/fO2tIbn.jpg

With both options disabled all controllers are shown properly, but flickering returns (of course)

pjft

Oh, I see.

Correct, I can replicate it as well, as you leave the game. It happens because Carbon uses the SVGs in two different sizes, and when it gets back the first one it renders is the smaller version. Well caught.

I didn't expect you to have flicker with both options, in that the case, though.

Back to looking into this.

pjft

@josete2k If you turn both options off, and restart ES, surely you shouldn't see a flicker, do you?

You may see a slight stutter, as the images are now loaded before they're shown, but not a flicker as before. Do you confirm?

Also, what transition are you using - slide or fade?

josete2k

@pjft yes sorry, the white flickering was becuse I updated ES from the retropie menu.

Now, with both options in OFF the SVG loads a little slow than ON but is not noticeable.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft do you suspect that is because the .svg has the same name? If it used two different names it would not be the case at it would "remember" them each independently?

Does this happen only within the same system you entered a rom in? Or all systems after entering a rom, exiting, and then switching systems?

pjft

@josete2k Correct. It should low slightly slower first time around (instead of flickering, it ensures it's loaded).

@TMNTturtlguy If the theme used two different names, that would likely work, but that would kind of subvert the purpose of having a SVG in the first place, which is to be able to resize it at will without quality loss - and if you can re-use it in the same theme, that should still be supported. Not to mention that it would take up double the memory, which is what the "re-use" option attempts to fix :)

I'll see what I can do about this.

I like to know that ON/ON and OFF/OFF are suitable solutions for different kinds of problems people have with themes, but I'd like to avoid OFF/OFF, precisely because of the performance hit.

Thanks a lot everyone! I'm calling it a night.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft thanks for your hard work! Get some rest and have a nice night!

RedBatman

I'm just glad people here are so helpful