Gnome slow, GLUT fast

[lesliev]

Hi!

I am having a frustrating time with Celestia. I installed Celestia 1.5.0-1 on Ubuntu 8.04, both Gnome and GLUT frontends. Both worked for a little while, then Gnome dropped to 0.3fps, with menus taking more than 5 seconds to display. GLUT stayed at 200fps. Thinking it was a config problem, I deleted the Celestia entry under ~/.gconf and suddenly the Gnome version was super fast again.

Then I decided to try compiling 1.5.1 . I compiled Gnome, GTK and GLUT versions. Only GLUT worked, Gnome and GTK were at 0.3fps, the same as before. This time there was nothing under .gconf to delete. There seems to be no way to set velocity or turn on comet orbits or run scripts in the GLUT version. Much documentation lists command-line options that don't exist. --url and -gldebug don't work with any of the versions and there seems to be no log file - OH, I just discovered a log file in /tmp/celestia-shaders.log using strace... but it's empty. I resorted to the 'strings' command to guess command line options but that was no help. I'll have to look at the source.

Strangely, as I type this, the GTK version is now fast (60fps). Gnome is still slow. A few minutes ago the GTK version was unusable. GLUT is still up at 200fps.

Its all very perplexing! I am downloading the latest SVN version to try that now.

I wouldn't mind using the GLUT version exclusively if I could just get some of the functions to work.

My system:
Compaq 6730b laptop with display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07). No other OpenGL programs have been slow (Oolite runs well) direct rendering is enabled.

Details (lspci -vvnn):
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device [103c:30dd]
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 0
Region 0: Memory at 98400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3
Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

I am willing to do detailed debugging if someone wants to help me with this.

[t00fri]

Since > 5 years I regularly compile and run Celestia-gtk, Celestia-gnome, besides Celestia-KDE that I mostly use with my OpenSuSE-10.3 Linux installation. being a Celestia developer, I always implement the latest SVN versions often on a daily basis. Both the gnome and gtk versions were always stable and run very well on my system.

Your problem is certainly not on the side of Celestia.

The sudden switching to very slow performance is probably indicating that because of a bug in your graphics driver, you were loosing your hardware graphics support, and the system switches to software (MESA) rendering (as a last resort). That can very well happen if your graphics driver is buggy. Celestia tickles out the last bit of hardware drivers! So it is paramount to always use the LATEST drivers from your vendor.

Fridger

PS: As far as I can say the GLUT version is not actively maintained anymore.

[lesliev]

Nope, it was in fact Celestia. It's the silly "Limit Frame Rate" option in the menu, which immediately makes the whole program (especially menus) almost unusable. I would guess there's some key command that changes this option that I manage to hit, or else it turns itself on somehow. I definitely never clicked it until just now when I discovered it produced the same slow-down effect.

Still, I LOVE this program! I have just compiled the SVN (needed autoreconf -iv before configure), but after that it went through without a hitch. The only problem I notice is the old "clouds look like bands" that everyone seems to get on Intel "3D cards".

BTW: is there any way to turn on the cockpit mentioned in the celestia-ed docs with this version?

Thanks for the amazing work everyone!