I just started one of the new Famous WU’s with the new Sony graphics and all I can say is WOW!!! They blow the old graphic displays right out of the water.

Are they (the graphics) still as resource intensive as the old graphics? Running the old graphics for long periods would seriously slow down the calculations, sometimes by almost 50% on slower less powerful machines.

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Hmmm... the new graphics are a bit "Emperor's New Clothes" for me. Click on the "Show Graphics" button and... nothing.

The version 10 graphics were OK. (This is linux.)

At least this way I don't waste time watching my models run. ;-)

Greg, thanks for the report.

You have Boinc 6.10.17 (I think from looking at the details of a previous model)?. I assume the Show graphics button isn't greyed out while the model's running?

I don't think anyone complained during FAMOUS beta-testing that the graphics wouldn't display. Ideas, anyone?

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I didn't have any trouble with 6.11 graphics in Beta or here. That's running Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 12.

If starting boincmgr in a terminal window, is there any error written to the terminal when you click on the "Show graphics" button?

Mo-- No, the 'show graphics' button is not greyed out.

Geophi-- you're right, I should have tried that. Installing 32-bit libjpeg6 and libpng12 has fixed it. Yes, the new graphics are nice.

Fixed. Thanks for your help!

Glad that's fixed, Greg.

Jim, I hope you don't mind that I've added the word FAMOUS to your thread title as it will make the discussion more easily searchable.

Back to your question. You asked: 'Are they (the graphics) still as resource intensive as the old graphics?'.

When we first tested the new graphics on the Beta project we were shocked at the intensive CPU usage which slowed down the model processing a lot. The CPU usage was particularly high when one looked at the Clouds view. Task manager also showed intermittently high values for PF Delta; this indicates high memory usage. That was for FAMOUS Beta v.6.10; the CPDN v.6.10 had the Classic graphics.

I'm inventing this Classic name for the traditional graphics.

Peter Hanappe of Sony Labs said they'd look again at the new graphics in the hope of making them less resource-intensive before releasing them on CPDN.

I've looked again at the new graphics resource usage for two FAMOUS 6.11 models: one from Beta on my Intel C2D and one from CPDN on my older AMD.

On the Intel with its Beta FAMOUS, looking at Task manager I see almost no CPU usage for the new graphics even in Clouds view. No PF Delta usage at all, so the graphics are now, after Sony's improvements, no longer grabbing lots of memory. The model crunching hardly seems to be slowed down at all.

In fact, the Classic graphics for a Beta regional model also on my C2D (not yet released on CPDN) use more CPU than the new graphics for FAMOUS and do slow the model crunching down by a variable intermittent amount.

On my slower AMD the new graphics for CPDN FAMOUS 6.11 do show some CPU usage of about 2 or 3%; it's never more than 5% and the Clouds view uses no more than the other views. No sign of PF Delta extra memory usage at all. So on this computer the model crunching is slowed down from its usual 99 or 100% CPU to about 97% on average.

My AMD is older but not ancient. Perhaps other computers that are older than it, or have less than its 1Gb RAM, would find their model-crunching significantly slowed by the new graphics.

I'm very pleased to see this and think we'd better tell Peter Hanappe that Sony's improvements have worked.

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Dear Mo:

No problem with the name change. Thanks for the info. Its nice to know that I can leave the graphics running without slowing the crunching down by much.

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Its nice to know that I can leave the graphics running without slowing the crunching down by much.

I didn't test the CPU usage when the new graphics are used as a screensaver, which may be how you want to run them. However, I did maximise the graphics from the Boinc manager to full-screen and didn't notice greater CPU or memory use (there must be slightly more). That was probably equivalent to running them as a screensaver.

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I think the graphics resource requirements are very dependent on the graphics adapter.

My C2Q Q6600 XP system has an Intel GMA 3100 (G31/G33 Express Chipset Family) adapter. Performance is the same for temperature, pressure, rainfall and clouds but varies depending on the refresh rate and sphere/map view option:

• at the normal refresh rate:
  
  
  
  • the sphere view uses between 7% and 8.5% of CPU time (i.e. 28% to 34% of 1 core).
    
  • the map view uses between 2% and 3.5% of CPU time (i.e. 8% to 14% of 1 core).
    

  
  

• at the reduced refresh rate:
  
  
  
  • the globe view uses between 1.5% and 2.5% of CPU time (i.e. 6% to 10% of 1 core).
    
  • the 2-D view uses between 1% and 2% of CPU time (i.e. 4% to 8% of 1 core).
    

Then there's also the animated cloud view (which only displays the normal cloud view on that system). It work as expected on my C2D T7300 Vista system (which has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 adapter). That's running a v6.09 task on CPDN Beta and fully uses one core for the graphics. Don't put too much reliance on that, though, because v6.11 has graphics major performance changes.

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Further experience with the new Famous graphics:

On my Core i3 with only integrated graphics, it uses between 3 and 35% of one core, with an average of about 17%. Suspending the other three tasks reduces the variability a bit, to between 7 and 26%; same average.

The graphics display is very slow to respond to key presses and mouse clicks - two to several seconds. It's running at normal priority, so extra 'niceness' isn't the problem.

Can anyone tell me how to stop the rotation of the globe, and/or how to change my POV to be over either pole? The arrow keys described in the help don't seem to do anything (although the page up/page down keys work as described). Dragging the globe with the mouse, as one does in 'classic' graphics, doesn't seem to do anything either.

I haven’t been able to stop the globes rotation, but, to tip it so that you get a polar view use the up and down scroll arrow keys.

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Can anyone tell me how to stop the rotation of the globe, and/or how to change my POV to be over either pole? The arrow keys described in the help don't seem to do anything (although the page up/page down keys work as described). Dragging the globe with the mouse, as one does in 'classic' graphics, doesn't seem to do anything either.

I'm sure somebody reported that as a problem on Linux during beta testing, but I can't find the post. It wasn't regarded as a show-stopper.

I think the only other outstanding graphics problem from beta testing which hasn't been mentioned so far is the effect of pressing 'C' in the cloud view. According to the help menu it should switch between the cloud layers but it has the same effect as pressing 'L' (i.e. it toggles the smoothed/gridded effect). Clicking on the cloud mini map does switch between the cloud layers.

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

So these are better graphics? Why does this world have all the continents 8 times then? It's 4 at any side of the equator. And all 8 are positioned the same way, with the continents showing south to north when looking up to down. Even those 4 on the south side of the equator show south to north.

There isn't anything about multiplicity in the project preferences.

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Jord.

Ageless
They are being moved around to improve our weather. If you are moved to the right place you will have summer all year long......... No snow, just lots of sun and some rain for the plants........

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Keep on crunching Pizza@Home

I suppose the CPU consumption of the new graphics really depends on what GPU you have. On my AMD Phenom2 X4 with Ati HD4850 the graphics use only 0 - 1% of CPU (or 0 - 4% of one core).

On my linux machine, I can see the pretty graphics. But on my Windows 7 x86_64 machine, the graphics are all white. Any ideas why? Graphics seem fine in other applications (e.g., games).

DJ, do you by chance mean the graphs on FAMOUS models' web pages? They've always worked for Linux and Mac and Tolu has now fixed something to make them work for Windows too, for example with my FAMOUS 6.11 still in progress. Before Tolu's fix there was just a white space instead of the graphs when viewed in Windows.

Or do you mean the globe graphics that we open from the Boinc manager View graphics button? Is this window just a white space?

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I mean the graphics in the BONIC manager are all white. I dunno why.

As far as the website, the new graphics looks really professional to me.

Windows graphics problems are usually caused by old versions of drivers, or the lack of needed 32 bit drivers if running 64 bit OS/BOINC.

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Backups: Here

Yes, I am running 64bit OS + 64bit BOINC. So, do I need a 32-bit opengl driver? I guess I'll just install the NVIDIA drivers; I was using the built-in Win7 driver, which seems to be fine except for this.