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Hello, could use a bit of general advice. I’m working on a C# program with Managed DirectX visualization. The main program window is divided into the visualization part and some generic controls from System.Windows.Forms for input – text boxes, drop down combos, grids and the like.
The DirectX visualization is quite complex so the typical frame rate is quite low especially on lower-end machines. My problem is that input becomes very sluggish and unresponsive as the frame rate drops. In extreme cases, pressing a key will cause a repeating string of characters to appear in the text box after significant delay. The frame rate I don’t really care about but the input has to stay responsive even on slower machines.
My guess is that the rendering is prioritised over the handling of control evens such as typing text. I have tried two solutions: one is peppering the main rendering loop with Application.DoEvents() to process the input control events. This had almost no effect.
Second is separating the rendering into a different thread to the main UI (essentially the render loop runs in a separate thread). However, even after setting the thread priority on the render thread to lowest and on the UI to highest I still get very sluggish input. I’ve removed all of the lock() statements to make sure the threads were not waiting on each other with no effect.
Didn’t have much luck finding a solution on the net – although surely this must be a very common problem. Can anyone suggest a solution - preferably one that doesn’t involve multithreading or writing DirectX input controls?
Thanks very much for any suggestions, apologies if I've posted in the wrong forum.
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We have a C# program that does 3D animation of using Managed DirectX 9. Like you we have a 3D visualization window and some other Windows Forms controls on the main application window. We have found our performace quite good with this setup.
Try rendering each frame on the UI thread. Try a tight game loop setup rendering a frame then w checking the message queue for mouse clicks, button pushes, etc. I would also recomment doing away with Application.DoEvents() and using P/Invoke to check the message queue. Application.DoEvents() leaks memory with each invocation. A loop looks like the following:
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public struct POINT
{
public int x;
public int y;
}
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public struct MSG
{
public IntPtr hwnd;
public uint message;
public IntPtr wParam;
public IntPtr lParam;
public int time;
POINT pt;
};
public class RenderLoop
{
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool PeekMessage( out MSG msg, IntPtr hwnd, uint wMsgFilterIn, uint wMsgFilterOut, uint wRemoveMsg );
public RenderLoop()
{
Application.Idle += new EventHandler( this.Application_Idle );
}
private bool AppStillIdle
{
MSG msg;
return (!PeekMessage( out msg, IntPtr.Zero, 0, 0, 0 ) );
}
public void Application_Idle( object sender, EventArgs e )
{
while( AppStillIdle )
{
RenderFrame();
}
}
}
So each time your application gets an idle message you will render frames until the next UI event comes to your message queue. The application will process this event, then go back into the Application_Idle method and continue rendering frames until the next mouse click, etc.
I hope this helps.
Deus caritas est
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Thanks. However - this is exactly the render loop I used to start with, from Tom Miller's blog. It works well down to 20-30 fps but the controls get sluggish when the frame rate drops below that and the whole thing grinds to a halt at 1-5 fps with input essentially no longer possible.
My understanding is that this is beacuse the whole thing is done in one thread - so once we start rendering, the next message is not processed until the rendering is complete. In other projects (where there was a background CPU intensive task running) I just separated the intensive task into a worker thread and the UI controls responded fine. I was wondering whether it was something DirectX specific that prevents threading from working correctly.
-- modified at 12:53 Thursday 11th May, 2006
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I don't believe there is something with DirectX that prevents threading from working correctly. You should have a worker thread doing your extensive math calculations between each frame and render on the UI thread.
Deus caritas est
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Thanks. Sorry - I wasn't entirely clear. If you put rendering and the UI on the same thread then no UI messages are processed while the rendering pass is going on. Yes, the rendering is not launched until all messages have been processed but once they have, the program waits until the rendering is done until processing the next batch. Thus the sluggish input for the cases when the rendering itself takes a long time (I think).
The idea was to put just the rendering in a separate thread to the UI. This causes all sorts of thread synchronization problems but once those are resolved you should be rendering and processing UI messages at the same time, making the controls respond instanteneously. This isn't happening, thus the question. Moreover, multithreading makes data management very tricky, which was why I was after a solution which would keep UI and rendering in the same thread but somehow give priority to processing UI control messages over rendering - not only between two render passes but also inside a single render pass.
Sigh, if only I could be sure that the users had a basic 20 pound AGP graphics card. But there's always those who want to run hi-res with all the fancy shaders on an integrated graphics chip. For these, I don't mind if the refresh rate on graphics is low as long as they can enter some data.
Cheers for any insight at all you can offer - utterly stuck for weeks now.
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Ok. Sorry for my confusion. You may want to look into profiling you application to see where you are spending all of your time in the rendering. This may provide some useful insight into areas where you can improve rendering efficiency. One optimization you can make is to reduce the amount of device state changes such as material colors, etc. For example, you could render objects grouped by colors so you will minimize the number of color changes. Also, if you have alot of line geometry you can combine all lines of the same color into a single vertex buffer for rendering, etc. I think if you profile the app you will find things that you could do more efficiently.
I wish you luck.
Deus caritas est
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Thank you. Optimisation is definitely high up on the list - especially for advanced features like shadows and fancy shaders. The vertex buffer number and material changes have already been cut to a minimum and framerate in full screen is hitting 300-400 fps on basic settings with a Radeon 9700 which hopefully will be almost minimum specification when the product comes out in a year.
Its the muppets with office computers and Intel's integrated graphics wanting to run it with all of the settings on. In any case, thanks for a second opinion - my current thinking is that putting UI and rendering in different threads will cause more problems that it would solve.
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Yeah, that is a problem. People want a cheap office computer and expect optimum graphics performance. At some point you run up against performance limitations.
Good luck!
Deus caritas est
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hi,
I have developed C# windows application, I need to build this application where there is .NET Framework v1.1 only. not having .NET IDE.
Can any one help me with step-by-step instructions.
Regards
KK
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C# Compiler Options[^]
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
www.troschuetz.de
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I need .NET IDE for .NET 2003 which the link you have shown is .NET 2005
Could you suggest me where .NET 2003 IDE available for free of cost.
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AFAIK the C# Compiler options haven't changed from version 1.1 to 2.0 of .NET framework. You get the compiler for free by downloading .NET framework SDK from Microsoft site. If you want to have a free IDE for Framework 1.0 and 1.1 try
Sharp Develop.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
www.troschuetz.de
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struct Test
{
int iCount;
}
static void main ()
{
Test T1;
Add objAdd=new Add(ref T1);
MessageBox.Show(Convert.ToString(T1.iCount));
}
class Add : Form
{
Test t;
public Add(ref t1)
{
t=t1;
}
public btnNext_Click(object sender,EventArgs e)
{
t.iCount++
}
}
In the main function, a structure of type Test is created . I am passing this as a ref to a Form class Add.
The form class has a button, a click on which will increment the iCount of the structure by 1.
When the form closes, control returns to main() , where the iCount is to be displayed.
The problem is this, in Class Add I need to store the reference of the structure for future use. But this is not happening, in the constructor of Add, the reference t1 is being assigned to t. But, the declaration of t in the class initializes a new instance of the structure and therefore any changes to the structure is not getting reflected in the structure T1, when control return to main().
What can be done here? I cannot change the design of the application.
Help would be deeply appreciated.
-- modified at 6:39 Thursday 11th May, 2006
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You have to make Test a class, or wrap it in a class before passing it to the Add function. Something like
struct Test
{
int iCount;
}
class TestWrapper
{
public Test test;
public TestWrapper(Test test) { this.test = test;}
}
class Add : Form
{
public Add(TestWrapper t)
{
t.test.iCount = 2;
}
}
static void Main()
{
TestWrapper w = new TestWrapper(new Test());
Add a = new Add(w);
Console.WriteLine(w.test.iCount);
}
Regards
Senthil
_____________________________
My Blog | My Articles | My Flickr | WinMacro
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Hello, i need to call c# dll on vb.6 program,
i try this:
using System;
c# class:
namespace COMInterop
{
public class TestCom
{
public TestCom()
{
}
public string Hello()
{
return "hello";
}
}
}
then i go to vb6 , i add the reference on my COMInterop.tlb
and i copy the dll on the working folder of vb6 program.
vb6 code :
Private Sub Form_Load()
Dim temp As New COMInterop.TestCom
MsgBox(temp.Hello)
End Sub
and it work properly.
but on this way i have to add the reference on my vb6 project.
how can i use my dll without doing this?
i try to do:
Private Sub Form_Load()
Dim temp As Object
Set temp = CreateObject(TestCom)
End Sub
but this give me an error:
Run-Time error '429':
ActiveX component can't create object
Some one can help me? thanks
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Cliffer wrote: but on this way i have to add the reference on my vb6 project.
how can i use my dll without doing this?
You can't. None of the Managed Code languages support exporting methods in a way that would allow you do this. You have to go through the COM reference to get at a Managed Code .DLL's methods.
Dave Kreskowiak
Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic
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As you have a MVC pattern it should definitely be handled by the view. I assume every game object has a view assigned to it which controls how it is displayed. This one should also decide what image to use.
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i am using vs2003 c# ,from couple of days i am facing
a strange problem,the problem is that
when iam trying to display message box
messagebox.show("some string","message");
the messagebox is showing the caption but
but displaying empty box,i.e main message
"some string" is not showing in message box.
and when i am showing combobox the selected item
is coming in combobox but while dropping down the list
from combobox the list of items is not displaying though
it is populating and when i am selecting blank item
after selection that item is displaying in combo text box.
same thing is happening with listbox also
please can any body help me out
rahul
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Very interesting !
Can you show us that string ?
I think, your problem is in encoding.
Best regards, Alexey.
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i am not using any special string iam just using
simple code to show message box
i.e messagebox.show("My message");
and blank message box is displaying
and i am binding combobox with
dataset it is pouplating but blank list
is coming on dropping down
i don't know why it is happening
becouse a week back every thing was working fine
rahul
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Try running your application on another computer.
If there is no bug - reinstall your system.
Best regards, Alexey.
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NHibernate.AssertionFailure: null id in entry (don't flush the Session after an exception occurs)
at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.CheckId(Object obj, IClassPersister persister, Object id)
at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.FlushEntity(Object obj, EntityEntry entry)
at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.FlushEntities()
at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.FlushEverything()
at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.Flush()
at NHibernate.Transaction.AdoTransaction.Commit()
I get this error when I'm deleting some items (and sub items) form my database, I'm using NHibernate for my Datalayer. Does anybody knows what's going wrong or where I have to start looking what's causing this error? 
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Hi,
I would like to ask if anyone could give me an advice.
I want to play a video file, but not from a file or url but from a stream.
I was looking for some examples but I only found smaples that are playing videos from a files.
-- modified at 4:39 Thursday 11th May, 2006
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