Low frame rates

bill_daniels

A problem has suddenly appeared with my system.  As you can see below, the FPS is just 24.5.  Nothing in the hardware has changed and the problem surfaces on all browsers.  Nothing other than Onshape seems to be affected.
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Paul_J_Premakumar

@bill_daniels : Can you try this link : https://www.testufo.com/refreshrate ?. What is the frame rate and refresh rate you are getting?

bill_daniels

Paul, As the system check shows, 25.4 FPS  The refresh rate is very slow.

henry_feldman

I am also seeing incredibly low frame rates and regen times for operations.

Paul_J_Premakumar

bill_daniels said:

Paul, As the system check shows, 25.4 FPS  The refresh rate is very slow.

Hi Bill, Testing out https://www.testufo.com/refreshrate , will eliminate the possibility that this is an issue with the code in the performance check page. If testufo.com also reports low refresh rates for all browsers, then the issue is likely a result of some change in the system.

brian_jordan

I have similar issues on, my already pedestrian, Dell desktop. The testufo site shows 60fps. The system check gives 41.3fps (Chrome), 43.7fps (Firefox) and 27.3fps (Edge). Until recently I was seeing around 90fps on all browsers.

philip_thomas

Somehow, Paul's words of wisdom didn't quite hit the mark. He and I spoke about this and here is my understanding.

That message is a warning - it is saying that because of the low refresh rate, any performance numbers could be error prone. The error in reporting for 30Hz is twice that for a 60Hz refresh rate. End of story - it's a warning. This does not mean that you will (necessarily) have bad performance.

Next - why are you only getting 30Hz?
Depending on the power of your graphics card and the number of pixels being pushed, it may not be able to refresh all of them at 60Hz. Got a 4K monitor? What about an 8K monitor? Think just how many bazillion pixels that it! Paul has a 4K monitor driven off his macbook. The monitor refreshes at 30Hz and his laptop screen at 60Hz. That's it. The performance test will run on the laptop screen and not the monitor.

I hope this clears things up 

Paul_J_Premakumar

The performance test is designed to maximize the information we can provide, while minimizing the amount of time we take to run the test.

The performance test is structured as follows: 

1. We render a bunch of triangles,

2. Measure the FPS

3. If the FPS stays above 45, we increase the number of triangles and repeat step 1 - 3

The 45 FPS is an arbitrary number to avoid putting unnecessary load on the browser. Some systems refresh the browser at 30 FPS. In the past, this would cause the test to stop early, because the very first measurement was well below 45 FPS. This would result in an incorrect report that only a small number of triangles that could be rendered by the system. 

To avoid producing misleading results, we start by creating a few empty frames.  We are trying to gauge the maximum refresh possible for the browser by rendering empty frames. If we detect that the empty frames are below 60 FPS, we avoid running any further tests.

The refresh rate provided by the browser can change over time. Sites like UFO Tester performs a longer test to get a more consistent result.  Given that people are hitting false positives for slow refresh rates, this indicates we can do a better job finding the balance between speed and accuracy.

philip_thomas

Again - for all people reading this thread - this is warning only to say that we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the performance test. 
That's it, nothing bad is happening and you don't need to do anything!!

bill_daniels

OK, I understand.  But, this computer has not been changed in any way other than normal operating system security patches.  Prior to this problem, the frame rate was closer to 100FPS - varying, of course, with the complexity of the model.  Also, It previously gave this error then returned to 100FPS for a few days then the problem returned.

bill_daniels

The slow frame rate is getting worse.  In some cases involving large assemblies I'm getting no more than 1fps which makes work almost impossible.  Perhaps related, a telephone call with a collaborator had to be abandoned because an assembly took almost 15 minutes to open.  My computer passes all graphics speed tests with ease.

Paul_J_Premakumar

Hello Bill, Can you open a support ticket, please?  This will help us diagnose where the performance issue is.

philip_thomas

@bill_daniels (and others) - in the 'nothing changed' category, would you please check that the tesselation resolution of the parts is set to 'auto' in both the part studio AND in the assembly? Sometimes we see users who for various reasons (eg hi-res screenshots), turn the part resolution up to max (even though there is a warning) and then set the assembly resolution to 'best available'. This will significantly lengthen the open times (as very high resolution facets need to first be generated and then passed to the browser).
Just trying to eliminate possible causes

bill_daniels

Now, the FPS is acceptable but still slow. (30-ish)

bill_daniels

Some large assemblies do have "best tessellation" invoked for selected parts (and I accept they will be slow) but the part studios and drawings which gave me trouble do not.

Michael_Coffee

I have consistently had issues with Onshape loading just about anything. Models won't react to any input within the first five minutes and when it does, it tries to catch up to what I did and might end up flying the parts all over the place. To "time" myself for when it loads, I'll go to the drawing and open the sheets tab. Initially, nothing will appear, and after the time lapse, they will be there, and I know then it is safe to manipulate the model/drawing.

I submited a ticket through the company account and have been going back and forth with support since Monday. There is something going on between this computer and their servers, but we aren't sure yet what the issue is. I realized that Firefox has a performance recorder, so I sent them the JSON file for it this morning, so hopefully we can determine if it's on my end, or somewhere along the way. A month ago, everything worked great. After this last update, something is causing a hicup somewhere. Instead of 60 fps, I'm averaging around 35. Not bad, but this is also with 16 GB of RAM and 2 GB dedicated for graphics, so 18 total, which is way overkill for Onshape. Along with this, every test site I can find where it tracks pings from here to the server cannot seem to keep track of the data packets. They "lose" them after going through a few routers and just stop. Makes it frustrating.

I am not sure if it's the last update either that might be the source of the problem. On their end, everything works great. I suspect the problem is a latency issue and I cannot improve that any more than I already have on my end.