1352081 - Google Maps experiences flickering when ending the GPU Process

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Alexandru Simonca [:asimonca], Release Desktop QA]

[Affected versions]:
- All

[Affected platforms]:
- All Windows

[Steps to reproduce]:
Preconditions:
Make sure e10s is enabled and there are 2-3 "Nightly" Background processes in the Task Manager.
1. Go to Google Maps.
2. Go to Street View in Google Maps. (Drag the little yellow man from the lower-right corner to a street)
3. End the GPU Process task from Task Manager (it usually is the last one of the 2 or 3 "Nightly" tasks that are shown in Task Manager)

[Expected result]:
- The screen flickers once but the site does not lose it's functionality.

[Actual result]:
- The screen flickers anytime I interact with it, even when just moving the mouse or clicking inside the black area.

[Regression range]:
- Not a regression

[Additional notes]:
- You can see a screencast of the issue following this link: https://goo.gl/XODCVf

Comment 1

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Anthony, fyi, gpu bug with Maps.

Comment 2

[u279076]

Thanks Liz, and thanks Alexandru for filing this. 

I think this may be expected for Canvas content which is what Google Streetview (GSV) is built on. I suspect GSV only uses the compositor for the transitions when you click/drag to move around. When the compositor process dies GSV loses its context to the compositor and so all you get is the static content with black in place of the transition. Reloading the page should get you a new compositor context with the main browser process.

Alex, if you reload the page does it come back to normal? 

David, can you please confirm if this is expected behaviour?

Comment 3

[u279076]

(In reply to Anthony Hughes (:ashughes) [GFX][QA][Mentor] from comment #2)
> Alex, if you reload the page does it come back to normal? 

Sorry, forgot to flag you.

Comment 4

[Alexandru Simonca [:asimonca], Release Desktop QA]

Yes, if I refresh the page, the functionality of the page is restored.

Comment 5

[u279076]

(In reply to Alexandru Simonca, QA (:asimonca) from comment #4)
> Yes, if I refresh the page, the functionality of the page is restored.

Thanks Alexandru. As noted in comment 2 I believe this is expected behaviour (at least in this version). I'll leave it to David to decide what he wants to do with this. I suspect it's wontfix for 53 and not a blocker.

Comment 6

[David Anderson [:dvander] - inactive, e-mail if emergency]

Yes, this is expected. When you kill the GPU process in Chrome, WebGL content is lost as well (the STR in comment #0 yields a black screen for them). Maybe their UX is a better since they pop up a "reload the page" notification, but I don't think this is a blocker.

Comment 7

[u279076]

Thanks David. Do you think this is something we'd ever fix or is it just not architecturally possible? I think there's definitely a UX improvement here to ask the user to reload the page, maybe by infobar or something else, but I think that probably deserves it's own bug as part of future GFX feature improvements.

Comment 8

[David Anderson [:dvander] - inactive, e-mail if emergency]

It's architecturally not possible to fix. We should probably aim to have an info bar or notification like Chrome does (for when WebGL content is visible on the page).

Comment 9

[u279076]

(In reply to David Anderson [:dvander] from comment #8)
> It's architecturally not possible to fix. We should probably aim to have an
> info bar or notification like Chrome does (for when WebGL content is visible
> on the page).

Thanks David, I'm going to go ahead and close this bug.

Alexandru, feel free to file a new bug (not blocking any release) that seeks to improve the UX for this scenario as described above.