[Paraview] crash when setting opacity on Paraview 3.0

[Francois Bertel]

Hi Adrian,

Does it freeze also if you just create a simple sphere (menu Sources->Sphere) and try to change the opacity?

Paraview 3.0 use depth peeling by default (if the card supports it) to deal with translucent polygonal geometry when ParaView 2.6 use only alpha blending.
You said you have an ATI card. It sounds bad for depth peeling because so far, the following ATI cards are not working with depth peeling:
* Radeon X1600 or X1900 on Mac with driver versions 1.4.40, 1.4,52, ,1.456
* FireFL V3330 with driver 2.0.6237 on Windows
* Radeon 9600XT on Mac with driver 1.4.18

In the implementation itself, depth peeling is bypassed for those configurations.

Can you follow those steps:

1. With your current driver version, run the following test:
$ ctest -R TestOpacity -V
Check if the test passed or not and also if the output contents either
this line: "depth peeling was used" or this line: "depth peeling was not used (alpha blending instead)"

2. Save the output of the following test in a text file:

$ ctest -R LoadOpenGLExtension -V &> output_old.txt

3. If there is a new driver version, update your driver

4. Do step 1 again

5. Do step 2 with output_new.txt instead of output_old.txt

6. Try Paraview again with a simple sphere and change opacity value.

7. Send me your results.

Regards.

Adrian Croucher wrote:
> hi
> 
> I've just installed Paraview 3.0.2 on Win XP- very nice update to
> version 2.6 which I've been using up to now.  Thanks to all involved.
> 
> However whenever I set the opacity of any object, Paraview freezes- the
> CPU usage goes to 100% and Paraview is non-responsive.  This didn't
> happen with version 2.6.
> 
> Is this a known problem- are there any settings I can change to stop it
> happening?
> 
> (If it's any use, details of my setup are: Pentium 4 3.8 GHz,  2 GB RAM,
> Win XP Pro SP2, ATI Radeon X550 graphics card.)
> 
> Regards, Adrian
> 


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François Bertel, PhD  | Kitware Inc. Suite 204
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