1028033 - Intermittent flickering and composition errors since OMTC landed

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Katelyn Gadd (:kael)]

Since OMTC has landed on Windows I have been seeing intermittent flickering and composition errors. I originally observed them only in Nightly, while Aurora was fine, because OMTC was disabled on Aurora. Now that OMTC has moved down to Aurora I get the same problems (and Aurora is currently my primary browsing channel).

I observe a variety of problems, though I have not found any reliable reproductions for any of them. I will try to classify them here:

When tabs animate (mouseover, move, etc) there is a chance that I will see black flickering or a partially-painted tab (i.e. background without text) for a frame or so.


When scrolling a page, there is a chance that a portion of the screen will flicker black or appear partially painted (not all layers composited) for 1-2 frames, then correct itself. I *think* I have also seen cases where the layer composition is busted in this scenario - i.e. a particular image or block element containing garbled pixels but everything else fine - but these are such transient glitches that I cannot be sure I'm observing that.


When scrolling, sometimes portions of the page are rendered/composited incorrectly and remain incorrectly rendered until I manage to trigger recomposition (usually via dom changes or by scrolling further and then scrolling back up). The main way I observe this is on content that has transparent overlays on top of background images or text; sometimes when I scroll, chunks of the transparent overlays disappear until that region gets composited again. This lasts indefinitely unlike the other 1-2 frame glitches.

One site where I observed the 'missing content' issue is for tagged annotations on graphic novels/comments on Danbooru, like the below:
http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1485713
The yellow transparent boxes are dialogue annotations; mousing over them reveals a tooltip. Scrolling would often fail to paint the dialogue annotations in newly-revealed page areas, but if I invalidated those areas (by getting other danbooru content to cover them, like another tooltip), the annotation's transparent yellow would paint.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the partial repaints in other scenarios as well but that is the site where it was happening consistently for at least a few minutes.


Finally, while watching HTML5 videos I occasionally observe what appears to be a composition glitch in the rest of the page. It is hard to tell because it is usually outside the corner of my eye, but if I had to guess I would say that it looks similar to the first scrolling glitch I described (missing layers, possibly garbled pixels within a block element) except in this case no scrolling or page repaints should be happening - just new video frames and a composite.


I will be attempting to identify a reliable repro for at least some of these issues; if not, I will attempt to capture them with screen recording.


about:support follows:

Application Basics
------------------

Name: Firefox
Version: 32.0a2
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:32.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/32.0

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days
---------------------------------

Report ID: bp-1692609c-7989-4a9f-8b28-d67d22140620
Submitted: 2 hours ago

Report ID: bp-6e4d1162-6c15-4290-954a-76c6e2140620
Submitted: 2 hours ago

All Crash Reports

Extensions
----------

Name: Lazarus: Form Recovery
Version: 2.3
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: NoScript
Version: 2.6.8.28
Enabled: true
ID: {73a6fe31-595d-460b-a920-fcc0f8843232}

Name: Rikaichan
Version: 2.07
Enabled: true
ID: {0AA9101C-D3C1-4129-A9B7-D778C6A17F82}

Name: Rikaichan Japanese-English Dictionary File
Version: 2.01.130701
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: S3.Download Statusbar
Version: 2.15
Enabled: true
ID: s3download@statusbar

Name: about:telemetry
Version: 0.14
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Cookies Manager+
Version: 1.5.2
Enabled: false
ID: {bb6bc1bb-f824-4702-90cd-35e2fb24f25d}

Name: Default Full Zoom Level
Version: 7.0.5
Enabled: false
ID: {D9A7CBEC-DE1A-444f-A092-844461596C4D}

Name: Firebug
Version: 2.0
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Force CORS
Version: 1.4
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Gecko Profiler
Version: 1.13.4
Enabled: false
ID: jid0-edalmuivkozlouyij0lpdx548bc@jetpack

Name: JIT Inspector
Version: 0.5.0.0
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Logitech SetPoint
Version: 6.5
Enabled: false
ID: {F003DA68-8256-4b37-A6C4-350FA04494DF}

Name: Suspend background tabs
Version: 1.0.1
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Theme Font & Size Changer
Version: 8.3
Enabled: false
ID: {f69e22c7-bc50-414a-9269-0f5c344cd94c}

Name: WebPG for Mozilla
Version: 0.9.4
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Graphics
--------

Adapter Description: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Adapter Drivers: nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Adapter RAM: 2048
Device ID: 0x1189
Direct2D Enabled: true
DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.2.9200.16571)
Driver Date: 5-19-2014
Driver Version: 9.18.13.3788
GPU #2 Active: false
GPU Accelerated Windows: 2/2 Direct3D 11 (OMTC)
Vendor ID: 0x10de
WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote: true
AzureCanvasBackend: direct2d
AzureContentBackend: direct2d
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

Important Modified Preferences
------------------------------

accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0
browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 1
browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7
browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20140617004002
browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20140617004002
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 32.0a2
browser.tabs.onTop: true
browser.tabs.warnOnClose: false
dom.max_chrome_script_run_time: 40
dom.max_script_run_time: 0
dom.mozApps.maxLocalId: 1001
dom.mozApps.used: true
dom.w3c_touch_events.expose: false
extensions.checkCompatibility.29.0a: true
extensions.checkCompatibility.nightly: true
extensions.lastAppVersion: 32.0a2
font.internaluseonly.changed: false
gfx.direct3d.last_used_feature_level_idx: 0
network.cookie.cookieBehavior: 0
network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
places.database.lastMaintenance: 1403192694
places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858
plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf
plugin.importedState: true
plugin.state.java: 0
plugin.state.npauthz: 0
plugin.state.npdeployjava: 0
plugin.state.npgoogletalk: 0
plugin.state.npgtpo3dautoplugin: 0
plugin.state.npnv3dv: 0
plugin.state.npnv3dvstreaming: 0
plugin.state.npo1d: 0
plugin.state.nppdf: 0
plugin.state.nprun3d: 0
plugin.state.npspwrap: 0
plugin.state.npwebpg-ext-v0.6.5-winnt_x86-msvc: 2
plugin.state.npwpidetector: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_bgcolor: false
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_bgimages: false
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_colorspace:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_command:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_downloadfonts: false
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_duplex: 7602290
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_edge_bottom: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_edge_left: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_edge_right: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_edge_top: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_evenpages: true
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_footercenter:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_footerleft: &PT
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_footerright: &D
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_headercenter:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_headerleft: &T
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_headerright: &U
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_in_color: true
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_margin_bottom: 0.5
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_margin_left: 0.5
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_margin_right: 0.5
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_margin_top: 0.5
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_oddpages: true
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_orientation: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_page_delay: 50
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_data: 1
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_height: 11.00
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_name:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_size_type: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_size_unit: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_paper_width: 8.50
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_plex_name:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_resolution: 6619254
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_resolution_name:
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_reversed: false
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_scaling: 1.00
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_shrink_to_fit: true
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_to_file: false
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_unwriteable_margin_bottom: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_unwriteable_margin_left: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_unwriteable_margin_right: 0
print.printer_Canon_MP495_series_Printer.print_unwriteable_margin_top: 0
privacy.cpd.cookies: false
privacy.cpd.downloads: false
privacy.cpd.formdata: false
privacy.cpd.history: false
privacy.cpd.sessions: false
privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs: true
privacy.sanitize.timeSpan: 0
security.tls.version.max: 1
security.warn_viewing_mixed: false
storage.vacuum.last.index: 1
storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite: 1402089475
webgl.verbose: true

JavaScript
----------

Incremental GC: true

Accessibility
-------------

Activated: false
Prevent Accessibility: 0

Library Versions
----------------

NSPR
Expected minimum version: 4.10.6
Version in use: 4.10.6

NSS
Expected minimum version: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta
Version in use: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta

NSSSMIME
Expected minimum version: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta
Version in use: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta

NSSSSL
Expected minimum version: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta
Version in use: 3.16.2 Basic ECC Beta

NSSUTIL
Expected minimum version: 3.16.2 Beta
Version in use: 3.16.2 Beta

Experimental Features
---------------------

Comment 1

[Milan Sreckovic [:milan] (needinfo for best results)]

Good details.  We will be disabling OMTC on Aurora next week, but this will help us take care of the problems on the trunk before next Aurora.

Comment 2

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

Could you try switching gfx.direct2d.disabled to true? This is the first glitches we've heard of on NVidia hardware to the best of my knowledge, it could be a driver bug. There's also still the possibility of this being some kind of implementation bug, but we'd expect it to reproduce more consistently and on a wider range of hardware.

Comment 3

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

Could you test if the problems have reduced any on nightly? We know of an actual bug there that we fixed, there's definitely more in this report than can be explained by that, but it would still be nice to know.

Comment 4

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

One final note, to anyone else looking at this bug report, the website noted in the report contains a large amount of graphics which some people might find offensive.

Comment 5

[Katelyn Gadd (:kael)]

I will do some testing with latest Nightly, and if that doesn't help, try disabling D2D. I can roll back to an older NV driver if you think that would help, but I've been seeing the flickering in Nightly for a bit now.

And yes, as Bas said that website is not safe for work. I made sure the specific URL I provided is SFW, so you can safely load that for testing as long as you don't browse around the site. It doesn't run any JS or display any ads I'm aware of.)

Comment 6

[Nicolas Silva [:nical]]

I think that the landing of bug 1015718 should have fixed this one too. Can anyone still reproduce this on mozilla-central?

Comment 7

[Nicolas Silva [:nical]]

Closing this now that both bug 1015718 and bug 1041416 have landed, please reopen if the issue comes back.