2.3.0.x - Office UI disappears after alt-tab, laggy UI vs 2.0/2.2

[JC_Denton]

I've been hesitant to report this one until I was sure I wasn't just imagining things, but comparing to 2.2 and 2.0 today, I'm confident that it's a real change in 2.3.

The most obvious symptom is if I alt-tab to, say, view the Vent forums, and alt-tab back, the office background disappears.  The buttons at the top still work, but the friendly office is gone.  I've also had the city icons disappear on the world map, and the research area background disappear.  Sometimes these will come back after a few turns of simulation (the seasons changing causing it to reload?), sometimes it needs a restart.

The UI is also much laggier, even on the main menu, noticeable when hovering over the buttons in the lower-left.  In 2.0/2.2, the "highlighted" effect applies nearly instantly, but it's visibly laggy in 2.3.

Finally, the world map and office backgrounds seem to be "shimmering" a bit, almost as if the texture is being compressed by 1% or so and then un-compressed as I move the map around or highlight the reports area/door/grandfather clock/phonograph in the office.  This doesn't happen in 2.0/2.2, and I wouldn't be surprised if the cause of this is also causing the lag and perhaps the alt-tab issues.

I'm on Windows 10 with a Radeon RX 6600 (mobile, drivers version 23.5.2, May 2023), using the DirectX 9 renderer, full screen, shadows set to low, hardware mouse yes, shaders yes, everything else below that no.

If I switch to OpenGL, the lagginess goes away, but the "shimmering" effect remains, and alt-tabbing doesn't actually take me out of the game.

I realize this may be Windows-specific or AMD specific, or difficult to pin down, but thought I should note it as even if it's only Windows+AMD, that's probably 10%+ of the audience, and it's a significant downgrade in terms of user experience.  Although it didn't prevent me from playing long enough to go bankrupt in 1902 in my "real" game... might need to adjust my difficulty settings a bit.

[Eric.B]

DirectX9 doesn't play nicely with alt-tab. It never has in 20 years years. Driver vendors are the ones who implement OpenGL, and OpenGL2 is old enough that driver vendors don't pay it much thought.

With newer libraries, developers often remove hacks for old APIs in favor of doing things properly for newer rendering APIs. So, by upgrading Ogre3d from ~2015 to 2024 libraries, many of the hack fixes for DirectX9 were removed.

So there isn't much I can do. It's all third-party code and has nothing to do with anything I've written. As mentioned in the library update bounty, it will cause more stability but unexpected behaviors. This is how the standards for DirectX9 are and the current state of OpenGL in modern Windows with bog standard Ogre window creation systems.

I recommend using OpenGL in windowed mode. Bounty 96 will likely resolve the OpenGL2 fullscreen alt-tab issue. Bounty 147 may play better with Alt-Tab in Windows.

[Eric.B]

I forgot to mention.

You can disable the hardware mouse. That should fix the "shimmering" issue. Be sure to update your video drivers. If I recall, RX6X00 should have 2024 drivers. The 2022 drivers typically shipped by Windows 10 by default do not work well with the game.

When I set up the 32-bit builds, I will upgrade to Ogre14.2. I will use FreeImage instead of STB_Image codecs. The other two iterations of this engine are using FreeImage. That could resolve the shimmering issue and maybe the performance issue. But it's highly unlikely to solve the DX cache reload issue, and it will not fix OpenGL fullscreen windowing issues. I will likely set up the 32-bit builds during Milestone #4 voting.

Finally, borderless window should be working well from the In-game settings now. You may try that (be sure to set full screen off) in DirectX. That is how most games did full-screen DirectX9 in that interim period between Alt-Tab becoming a thing and DX10/Vista.

[JC_Denton]

Hmm... disabling the hardware mouse does fix the shimmering issue, but it makes the mouse move too fast but also be quite laggy, which is highly distracting (I know it sounds like a contradiction, but it moves much faster across the screen, but not smoothly). I think I prefer the shimmer to the laggy mouse.

Non-fullscreen borderless does solve the alt-tab issue with DX9, hooray! That was probably the most irksome of the issues.

I hadn't thought about the libraries now being newer than my video drivers. I'll see if upgrading them makes a difference. I've also added #96 followed by #147 to the top of my FBS wishlist. I might stick with 2.2 until they eventually get funded, removing the ratings limit is cool but I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoffs for me.

Still to test: OpenGL in borderless fullscreen/software mouse.

Update: OpenGL in non-fullscreen (borderless is only an option with DX9) solves the performance issue. That's a nice improvement. And while like in DX9, the software mouse moves too quickly, it is not laggy in OpenGL. I can adjust the mouse speed with my mouse's DPI button, so overall, OpenGL + non-fullscreen + software mouse + lower DPI setting results in a decently usable system. Still not as good as 2.2, but maybe the driver update will fix that.

Hopefully this is helpful for anyone else who encounters the same issue. I wouldn't have figured it out without those pointers either, especially disabling the hardware mouse.

Update 2: No differences detected after an update to the latest drivers, other than perhaps slightly improved responsiveness on DirectX9 (but OpenGL and DX9 on 2.2 remain much snappier).

[Eric.B]

There is a mouse sensitivity setting for software mouse in the settings.