1145987 - Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing (CMAA) causing blurness with HWA enabled

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[Jia Yuan Lo]

Attachment: Blur.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150320030211

Steps to reproduce:

Sorry if I filed for the wrong component because this is a UI problem (can't seem to find the exact thing) and this is my first time, so probably not a good report.

This is related somewhat to: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=612081
but maybe in the sense for Intel HD Graphics. Mine is Intel HD Graphics 4400.

    Name: Thunderbird
    Version: 39.0a1
    User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/39.0a1
    Application Build ID: 20150321030208
    
      browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
      browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported: 1
      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.use_new_backend: 1
      browser.display.use_system_colors: true
      dom.experimental_forms: true
      dom.forms.autocomplete.experimental: true
      dom.indexedDB.experimental: true
      extensions.lastAppVersion: 39.0a1
      font.name.sans-serif.x-western: Segoe UI
      font.size.inflation.disabledInMasterProcess: true
      general.useragent.locale: en-MY
      gfx.direct3d.last_used_feature_level_idx: 0
      gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.always_use_for_content: true
      gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled: true
      mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
      mail.winsearch.enable: true
      mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
      mail.winsearch.global_reindex_time: 1424592888
      mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: 2039e3b8-b543-443f-91a7-ac8b360fb16
      network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
      network.http.accept-encoding: xz, gzip, deflate
      network.http.spdy.enabled.v3-1: false
      network.predictor.cleaned-up: true
      places.database.lastMaintenance: 1426754285
      places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104318
      plugin.importedState: true
      security.csp.experimentalEnabled: true
      security.OCSP.enabled: 0

      Adapter Description: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
      Vendor ID: 0x8086
      Device ID: 0x0a16
      Adapter RAM: Unknown
      Adapter Drivers: igdumdim64 igd10iumd64 igd10iumd64 igdumdim32 igd10iumd32 igd10iumd32
      Driver Version: 10.18.14.4156
      Driver Date: 3-3-2015
      Adapter Description (GPU #2): NVIDIA GeForce 820M
      Vendor ID (GPU #2): 0x10de
      Device ID (GPU #2): 0x1140
      Adapter RAM (GPU #2): 1024
      Adapter Drivers (GPU #2): nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
      Driver Version (GPU #2): 9.18.13.4475
      Driver Date (GPU #2): 11-12-2014
      Direct2D Enabled: true
      DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.2.9200.16571)
      ClearType Parameters: Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 0
      WebGL Renderer: false
      GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 11

      AzureCanvasBackend: direct2d 1.1
      AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0
      AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
      AzureContentBackend: direct2d 1.1

It seems this problem does not happen on current Firefox Nightly 39.0a1 x64.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Go to Intel HD Graphics Control Panel > 3D
2. Under Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing, choose either Override Application Settings or Enhance Application Settings and Apply
3. Open Thunderbird Daily, texts become blurred after a few seconds.



Actual results:

Texts become blurred. However, when the cursor hovers an item to be selected, that particular section become clear instantly. And then blurred again after a few seconds.


Expected results:

Texts should be clear always.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Occurs only with HWA enabled, correct?

Comment 2

[Jia Yuan Lo]

Attachment: Blur WLM 2012 comparison

Yeah, only when enable Hardware Acceleration it will have blur effects.
That's why running Safe Mode without Hardware Acceleration can't reproduce it.

Interestingly,
Microsoft's Windows Live Mail 2012 from Windows Essentials suite also suffers from this problem...

From the screenshot,
You can see that the Asian words from above (CMAA enabled) is noticeably blurred compared to the bottom one (CMAA disabled).

This is also what was happening to Daily.

Comment 4

[Andrey ``Bass'' Shcheglov]

My 2 cents (Intel HD Graphices 4600, Windows 8.1 x64):

1. For the issue to manifest itself, not only CMAA, but also "Application Optimal Mode" needs to be enabled.
2. While disabling HWA in Mozilla (43.0) sets both gfx.direct2d.disabled and layers.acceleration.disabled flags, in order to work around the issue it's sufficient to only set layers.acceleration.disabled alone (gfx.direct2d.disabled has no effect).
3. Setting or clearing gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled has no effect at all. It seems it was last available in 42.0 and is gone in 43.0.
4. While font blurriness indeed goes away on mouseover, fonts are still slightly AA-ed even if system-wide setting for "Smooth edges of screen fonts" is "off". The effect is less compared to the standard full-pixel AA when "Smooth edges of screen fonts" is "on".

See <https://superuser.com/questions/1064589> for more details.

Comment 5

[u279076]

Is this still reproducible with all OS, driver, and application updates installed?