Delay issue with 3D playback

[webalizer-dev]

I noticed this problem a few revisions back, and it still persists. The issue is when playing the 3D rendering animation to determine the tool path. Hitting 'play' results in the slider jumping approx 1/4 to 1/3rd of the way over without any change to the 3D view, then pausing for a significant amount of time before actually displaying the 'laser' and showing movement.

For an example, I refer back to my dehydrator sheet cutting project with just two circles... one in the middle of 55mm centered inside a larger 295mm one. In 3D view to preview the operation, clicking on 'play' results in the slider at the bottom of the display moving over about 1/3 of the way and stopping. It then stays there without any action before finally showing the animated laser and it's path. I timed it, and it sat in that paused state for ~30 seconds before beginning. Once the inner circle finally gets completed, it then pauses again for ~20 seconds before continuing on to the outer circle. Changing the playback speed reduces the delay, so if 2X is selected, the initial delay reduces to ~15 seconds for example.

I am not exactly sure when this started, but I noticed in at least 1.9.0 I believe (maybe 1.9.3)... and is still present in the current version.

Currently running 1.10.3, Linux Mint on a 3.6Ghz quad core Xeon PC. Perhaps it is a setting somewhere that I am not aware of, but I have not changed anything and it used to work perfectly before (ie: in 1.8.0).

[knipknap]

I see this issue in very small jobs, where the preamble makes for a substantial amount of the commands in the job, The issue is that these commands execute instantly because they do not affect the visual output, which moves the slider because a % of the commands were executed.

Does this match with the behavior you are seeing?

[webalizer-dev]

That may explain the initial slider movement, but the delay is something that is new. I tried at least 3 different projects. Besides the simple 2 circle cutting job, I also tried a multi-layer logo project as well as a fairly complex variable-power image engraving. They all exhibited the initial ~30 second delay before starting, and delays between individual steps.

In my logo example, it is held in 5 layers that I can selectively turn on/off depending on the project it's being used for... 4 are engravings (a name, logo, date and a 'rope' circle around them), and one is a cut operation w/3 passes. The cut operation not only displays the same ~30 second delay, but also exhibits some other unusual behavior. It is set for 3 passes, yet goes around the circle in the 3D animation roughly 6 times and jumps around strangely. It's action is to start at the top, go around a full circle, then jump to the bottom, go around a full circle, jump immediately back up to the top and do another circle and so on. The funny part is that while it shows the laser moving around the circle, the cut path on the circle (where it goes from a light to darker color indicating the cut) runs well behind it - so that once the laser has made a full circle, the cut path is only about half way through - which is probably why it appears to go around 6 times. After the first pass, you can't tell where the cut is as it's all the same color by that time, but I can only assume that the same behavior is going on.

Once it finally finishes, it delays again for a bit, then continues on with the rest of the project as in all my examples. I ran a system monitor during the process, and it does show some modest increase in CPU usage during the pause, so it is doing something - I just don't know what!! There is no increase in memory usage or disk usage during that time either. Again, this only started recently, so it must be due to a change somewhere. I know that in 1.9.0, the circle motion in the 3D animation was not fluid or circular, but that is now fixed - so maybe it has something to do with whatever changes were made regarding that.

[knipknap]

Thanks! Any chance you can test with PR #372? This should fix the issue.

[webalizer-dev]

Unfortunately, I'm not set up to do so... but it looks like you did identify the problem based on the description of the fix. As soon as a v1.10.4 flatpak becomes available, I will grab it and test.

[knipknap]

debug_timelasp.zip