[Fix 11.2.4] 11.2.3 GUI Flicker and cut off text

[David Kirkpatrick]

Hi,

I'm a new SCS user and have run into a few issues I'm hoping you can help with.

1) The SCS GUI has a bad case of flicker / rapid screen re-painting on my laptop. It is most evident when I'm resizing windows but also when I open a new window, click on a cue in either the standard or editor windows, or even just move my mouse cursor around in the editor window without clicking anything. Eg. I click on a cue to load it causing the whole screen to flash a couple of times (including the grey background).

2) Some field info text in the edit window is obscured or cut off regardless of how large I resize the window. I have included a few screenshots of this issue.

I am running a Metabox P150EM Laptop
Windows 7 64 bit
Core i7
16GB RAM
GeForce GTX 670MX with latest drivers
1920 x 1080 display

Thanks very much for your help.

David K

[Eric Snodgrass]

Make sure the screen resolution is proper for your laptop display.
Try turning off the Windows Aero GUI enhancement by going into Control Panel>Display>Personalization and change the theme to Windows Classic. Then see if this redraw problem persists.
Are there any other programs running in the background that start during the laptop's startup process? If so then I suggest turning off any unnecessary programs.
nVidia just came out with a driver update. Is this the driver you are using? Did this problem start after updating to this driver? If so then try rolling back the driver to the previous version.

[Mike Daniell]

The text being cut off does seem like a font size issue. If you still have this issue after following Eric's suggestions, try changing the SCS Font / Font Size - see 'Font' under General Options.

If still an issue, could you email me a diagnostic dump file? You can create this file by starting SCS and selecting 'Create Diagnostic Dump File' from the drop-down menu displayed when you click the Help button in the main window. The file will be saved in a folder named "SCS Dumps" under "Documents" or "My Documents".

[David Kirkpatrick]

Hi Eric and Mike,

I've tried all the things you've suggested and I have a bit more info for you now, but no solutions.

GUI Flicker

I tried all of Eric's suggestions and none of them had any effect on the problem. Mike - I will email you a Diagnostic Dump File now.

Obscured text

My screen is set to 1920 x 1080, which is its native resolution. I found that the obscured text is caused by SCS not seeming to like the Windows 7 'Make text and other items larger or smaller / set custom text size (DPI)' settings. I have this set to 140%, which works well with all my other programs. When I set it to 100% SCS looks good and no text is obscured, however outside SCS the rest of my program windows and desktop icons are microscopic.

With 'Make text and other items larger or smaller / set custom text size (DPI)' set to 140% if I reduce the SCS font size the font gets smaller but the obscured text is not revealed.

Also, prior to messing with the SCS font size settings, the default size was 5pt. After messing with the settings SCS now thinks its default font size is 8pt.

[Mike Daniell]

Thanks for the diagnostic dump file. I will need to do more work on making SCS fully DPI-aware. The font scaling factor shown in the dump file appears to be incorrect for font sizing of 140%, so I'll look into that. Unfortunately I can't promise a quick solution.

[Mike Daniell]

I confirm that the DPI issue is a bug and that currently SCS requires the Windows display setting to be 100%, not higher (eg not 125%). To correct this bug, SCS needs to be modified to use the scaling factor in determining window sizes, and individual text and control positions and sizes.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for looking into the scaling problem. Hopefully it's not too much of a pain to fix.

Do you have any ideas about the re-painting issue? It seems to be unrelated to the scaling problem, as when I set the windows display setting to 100% the screen still flickers.

So far the core software is working brilliantly and I'm looking forward to using it on an upcoming project.

[Mike Daniell]

Don't know about the GUI flickering issue, David - you're machine certainly seems well-spec'd for SCS. Do you have any screen capture software (eg Camtasia) that you can use to show this flicker? Alternatively, just a video taken using a smart phone or camera will do.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Hi Mike,

I'll email you a link to a short clip later today.

Thanks,

[Mike Daniell]

Text being cut-off has been fixed in 11.2.4 with the addition of DPI-aware processing.

Flickering seems to be somehow related to the PC being used, even though this is a high-spec PC. Flickering occurs (on that PC) when tooltips are displayed, so in 11.2.4 there is now an option to turn off tooltips. Some other flickering scenarios were also reported by David, and some of these may be minimized by other changes in 11.2.4.

[simonegiusti]

I click on a cue to load it causing the whole screen to flash a couple of times (including the grey background).

I have the same problem with scs (latest version).
I have Windows 8 Nvidia and Intel graphic board (double ... I think ...).

I tried all hints you recommend, with no luck.

[simonegiusti]

[/quote]I click on a cue to load it causing the whole screen to flash a couple of times (including the grey background).
[quote]

Same problem with latest version and Windows 8.

Nvidia and Inter graphic board (double ... I think)