Getting Very Fricking Frustrated! GRRRRRRRRR

Started by Buzzzzz, August 29, 2007, 09:23:45 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Buzzzzz

Thanks for your reply Matt. Looking forward to the update as I'm sure everyone is. I think what I'll do with this scene is ask my friend Bob if he would give it a go on his new machine. His is cutting edge so we might see if it's my machine or TG. I'll let you know the results if Bob has time?

jo

Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on August 29, 2007, 11:14:15 AM
Thanks for your reply Matt. Looking forward to the update as I'm sure everyone is. I think what I'll do with this scene is ask my friend Bob if he would give it a go on his new machine. His is cutting edge so we might see if it's my machine or TG. I'll let you know the results if Bob has time?

If you post the file(s) or email them to me at :

jomeder@planetside.co.uk

I'll set them running on one of my Macs over the weekend. It'll be interesting to see how the Mac version handles it. Not saying it will be any better, but it might give some different information if it crashes, and I haven't personally done much stress testing of the Mac version.

Regards,

Jo

Buzzzzz

Quote from: jo on August 29, 2007, 08:19:18 PM
Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on August 29, 2007, 11:14:15 AM
Thanks for your reply Matt. Looking forward to the update as I'm sure everyone is. I think what I'll do with this scene is ask my friend Bob if he would give it a go on his new machine. His is cutting edge so we might see if it's my machine or TG. I'll let you know the results if Bob has time?

If you post the file(s) or email them to me at :

jomeder@planetside.co.uk

I'll set them running on one of my Macs over the weekend. It'll be interesting to see how the Mac version handles it. Not saying it will be any better, but it might give some different information if it crashes, and I haven't personally done much stress testing of the Mac version.

Regards,

Jo

Thanks Jo, Lets see... the terrain I used is Hallowed Ground (32mb) which you can download from my site. http://buzzzzzart.com/downloads/Hallowed%20Ground%204097.zip I will email the tgd to the above address. You may want to crop the sky out as it rendered fine, however it took 13 hours. The crash happens in the first buffer of water.

Thanks Again,
Jay

su_liam

That is a really sweet sky you have there. Beautiful.

efflux

This must be very annoying.

Fortunately I've never had TG2 crash while rendering but I do get the constant UI freezes on the PC version which freezes Windows - a very annoying OS to test alpha software on. Not on Mac though. The MAC TG2 is far more stable but the UI is sluggish compared to the PC version. Why is this? I know the OSX desktop is generally a bit slower than Windows but TG2 is very sluggish.

jo

Hi efflux,

Quote from: efflux on September 02, 2007, 03:43:27 AM
The MAC TG2 is far more stable but the UI is sluggish compared to the PC version. Why is this? I know the OSX desktop is generally a bit slower than Windows but TG2 is very sluggish.

Can you please explain what you mean by sluggish? Specific examples would be a big help.

I don't find the Mac UI sluggish in general. There are some cases where it can be. One is when rendering, it can be sluggish when you want to change between windows, or even to other applications. I've never really tried editing settings and such during rendering, because I know that will be slow. This problem should be resolved when TG2 is threaded. I don't know if you use TG Mac v0.9, but there was a tremendous difference in the usability when I made the renderer run in a separate thread to the application. It was a lot easier to use other applications while TG Mac was rendering too, because you didn't have to wait for ages for the TG Mac to switch to other applications and vice versa.

The other time I've noticed some sluggishness is when you get to higher 3D preview detail settings with more complex scenes.

What sort of Mac do you have?

Regards,

Jo

efflux

#21
OK. Thanks for the reply jo.

I have a PowerMac G5 dual core 2.0 GHz with 2 gigs RAM. My PCs are P4 3.0 GHz 2 gigs RAM. With apps that are multi core enabled then obviously the Mac is faster. When not multi core enabled then the PCs are usually faster. However the OSX desktop is always a little slower than with Windows or Linux but nothing that really hampers work speed. As far as I know this is simply due to how OSX utilizes your graphics card for the desktop. It sends it to Open GL as far as I'm aware and I guess ultimately makes for better CPU usage for other tasks going on. My graphics card is a standard Geforce 6600 PCI Express. However TG2 UI is slow in feedback. Specifically when doing tricky things like hooking up nodes. I find myself having to delay to make sure things are hooked with the mouse. This gets fiddly compared to on the PC. Also, when I cancel a render it takes a while to take effect, maybe 5 to 10 seconds whereas on my PC this is almost instant. The complexity of the planet or preview or anything has little impact on these UI speeds. Rendering is fine. About the speeds I'd expect for one 2.0 GHz core.

As for stability, this is far superior on the Mac. I can't remember having to shut TG2 down or very rarely. On the PC, TG2 often crashes the whole system. Not always possible to even force quit an app which is just one of many things I hate with Windows.

By the way I haven't tested the latest TG2 release yet. Possibly some of the stability issues on the PC are resolved.

rcallicotte

Funny, I've always been able to force quit TG2 by using Task Manager.  Nevertheless, I still think the Mac OS is probably superior in many ways to Windows.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

efflux

I can never force quit it that way. I have to switch my system off.

jo

#24
Hi Efflux,

Quote from: efflux on September 03, 2007, 02:46:44 AM
I have a PowerMac G5 dual core 2.0 GHz with 2 gigs RAM. My PCs are P4 3.0 GHz 2 gigs RAM.

This is basically the same as my main work machines, except I have a dual 2.7 PowerMac G5.

QuoteHowever the OSX desktop is always a little slower than with Windows or Linux but nothing that really hampers work speed. As far as I know this is simply due to how OSX utilizes your graphics card for the desktop. It sends it to Open GL as far as I'm aware and I guess ultimately makes for better CPU usage for other tasks going on. My graphics card is a standard Geforce 6600 PCI Express.

I'm not sure that the graphics card is used as much as it could be yet, although you're right, OpenGL is used for certain things. I think this will be more widespread in OS X 10.5. I actually find my Windows machine to be a lot more sluggish than my Macs running OS X.

Quote
However TG2 UI is slow in feedback. Specifically when doing tricky things like hooking up nodes. I find myself having to delay to make sure things are hooked with the mouse. This gets fiddly compared to on the PC.

Have you tried unchecking the "Use line smoothing" checkbox in the Network View panel of the preferences? Does that improve things? I would say that the OpenGL stuff does seem to slow down a little more quickly on the Mac as opposed to Windows. One difference is that in the Mac version I've been experimenting with higher quality text rendering, and with more complex networks the higher quality text does slow things down. I have experimented with using a cache briefly, and it did speed things up although it also stopped working after a while. I will look into it further in the near future. If you have a project which seems particularly slow I would be interested in seeing it.

Quote
Also, when I cancel a render it takes a while to take effect, maybe 5 to 10 seconds whereas on my PC this is almost instant.

This should improve when things get threaded.

Quote
The complexity of the planet or preview or anything has little impact on these UI speeds.

I'd expect that because these are slightly different things to what I was thinking about originally :-).

Quote
Rendering is fine. About the speeds I'd expect for one 2.0 GHz core.

The Mac version generally seems to go pretty well. I have noticed that it seems a bit faster on an Intel Mac than a PPC one, for whatever reason.

Regards,

Jo

efflux

OK, thanks.

I'm testing the new TG versions. The PC one seems more stable. It crashed but only once.

I'm getting more used to the slower UI on the Mac. Initially I started using TG2 nearly always on the PC because it's faster at rendering. That got me used to the quicker UI so it felt frustrating using the Mac version. It's not a major issue. The thing that slows me down more than anything is the delay when canceling renders because I'm always canceling test renders.

I think, because OSX utilizes Open GL it actually hogs it a bit more than on the PC so Open GL use for other apps is not so quick on a Mac. However my Mac totally excells at audio production, probably because UI functions don't disturb other processes as much. Audio production has to maintain near realtime. Windows is not so good for audio. You can move a Window and get an audio glitch.

Matt

#26
Hi efflux,

Quote from: efflux on September 05, 2007, 02:19:07 AM
I'm getting more used to the slower UI on the Mac. Initially I started using TG2 nearly always on the PC because it's faster at rendering. That got me used to the quicker UI so it felt frustrating using the Mac version. It's not a major issue. The thing that slows me down more than anything is the delay when canceling renders because I'm always canceling test renders.

If your PC renders faster than the Mac then it is perhaps understandable that the UI is faster on your PC. Can you post some render time comparisons so we have an idea of the basic relative performance of your computers?

Quote
I think, because OSX utilizes Open GL it actually hogs it a bit more than on the PC so Open GL use for other apps is not so quick on a Mac. However my Mac totally excells at audio production, probably because UI functions don't disturb other processes as much. Audio production has to maintain near realtime. Windows is not so good for audio. You can move a Window and get an audio glitch.

I would agree that Windows has always seemed a little bit lame at audio (it still struggles with things that Amigas got right in the early 80s). However I've also found that there are big differences from one PC to the next, which I put down to the sound card and/or the audio drivers. Basic audio playback for example can get glitchy on my Acer laptop for no apparent reason, but my older Dell never had those problems. If you're doing heavy CPU-based audio synthesis and try to do a lot with the UI at the same time then you can have problems - that's to be expected because of Windows's reliance on the CPU for most of the UI. But if you have glitches while doing simple wav/mp3 playback then maybe you need a better sound card or updated drivers.

Apple have the advantage that they can develop the OS for a known range of hardware. And as a user you know exactly what you're buying.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

efflux

#27
Hi Matt.

I will do a render comparison but at the moment I have a render going. I'll do it when it finishes. I think the Mac does pretty well just on the single CPU though.

I use Logic Pro for music production so I had to buy a Mac whether I liked it or not due to Apple buying Emagic but I never regretted it.

Audio performance can be superb in Linux with a custom kernel but the apps aren't very good so it's no go really. Amiga's are probably still better for MIDI which is absurd. Even on my Mac I know timing is not rock solid. Interfacing is all pro stuff. Recently I bought an old 1960s all valve reel to reel tape recorder (in near unused condition) which has mind blowing beautiful sound quality literally making a mockery of digital sound interfaces at thousands of £. I have a valve hifi amp and various other valve units and amps, analog synth etc. I don't need central heating when all this is turned on. The hifi amp is a huge beast at 500 watts power consumption. I dread to think what my electricity bill will be like. Sadly this all valve and analog gear completely disintegrates digital in pure beauty of sound. When I convert to digital something is completely lost. Computers and audio don't mix too well but they are a brilliant necessity to edit stuff on.

I don't feel the same way about visual art though even although I come from a traditional art background. Computers are great for art. Analog photography for a start is a total pain. TG2 is an example. How else could you create an entire planet? Well there is (was) another app but I won't go there. For me this is a magical use of technology to create art. Music is more about a realtime performance, that's where computers screw it up.

I think my PCs actually perform very well considering I've had them for over five years and never a single problem. They are hyperthreading with 800 MHz FSB. Abit IC7-G motherboards. Previous motherboards I've used have had problems. Abit's seem to be rock solid.

efflux

By the way. The Mac version is the one I really want to use because my intention is to bin Windows. The dream scenario would be multi core enabled for Mac with Linux rendering.

old_blaggard

Well, when the app is threaded, it will be so on both Mac and Windows.  I'm not sure about Linux, though....
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.