Firefox testing - offscreen surfaces and OMTC

[Alexander Ploumistos]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Martin Stransky <stransky at redhat.com> wrote:
> - Install Firefox 40 on Fedora 22,23,Rawhide (you'd need Gtk3 build)
> - go to about:config, click to any key and add a new one, boolean type. The
> new key name is "layers.use-image-offscreen-surfaces" and set it to true.
> - enable "layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled" which may be disabled
> now.

What about "layers.acceleration.force-enabled"?

> And you're set now. Please report any oddity (different than the usual ones
> :)) at #BZ.

On my desktop (f22), with a GeForce 9800 GT and the 340.76 driver from
nVidia I am getting a lot of flickering when I scroll through some
pages (e.g. MDN, Ars Techinca, gmail) especially when they contain
fixed or sticky elements or elements whose background image is
repeated along the x and y axes. If you can get your hands on similar
hardware, scroll through this:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/position

On a recent laptop (f22), with nVidia and Intel dual graphics, there
is no such problem on either adapter.

I have been unable to reproduce the crashes we were investigating so
far, so perhaps enabling "layers.use-image-offscreen-surfaces" could
be a solution (and I should get a newer graphics card - anyone cares
to get me a late birthday present?).


This is the graphics information provided by firefox for the desktop:

Adapter Description    NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce 9800 GT/PCIe/SSE2
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom    none
Device ID    GeForce 9800 GT/PCIe/SSE2
Driver Version    3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.76
GPU Accelerated Windows    0/1 Basic (OMTC)
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding    false
Vendor ID    NVIDIA Corporation
WebGL Renderer    NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce 9800 GT/PCIe/SSE2
windowLayerManagerRemote    true
AzureCanvasBackend    cairo
AzureContentBackend    cairo
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend    none
AzureSkiaAccelerated    0


and for the laptop:

Adapter Description    NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce GTX 860M/PCIe/SSE2
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom    none
Device ID    GeForce GTX 860M/PCIe/SSE2
Driver Version    4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.21
GPU Accelerated Windows    0/1 Basic (OMTC)
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding    false
Vendor ID    NVIDIA Corporation
WebGL Renderer    NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce GTX 860M/PCIe/SSE2
windowLayerManagerRemote    true
AzureCanvasBackend    cairo
AzureContentBackend    cairo
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend    none
AzureSkiaAccelerated    0


Adapter Description    Intel Open Source Technology Center -- Mesa DRI
Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom    none
Device ID    Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
Driver Version    3.0 Mesa 10.6.3 (git-ccef890)
GPU Accelerated Windows    0/1 Basic (OMTC)
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding    false
Vendor ID    Intel Open Source Technology Center
WebGL Renderer    Intel Open Source Technology Center -- Mesa DRI
Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
windowLayerManagerRemote    true
AzureCanvasBackend    cairo
AzureContentBackend    cairo
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend    none
AzureSkiaAccelerated    0