ReaScript GFX/defer: 60 FPS Refresh Rate

[puddi]

60 Hz would be very nice indeed.

Something I've noticed in the latest pre-releases (can't speak for the stable versions) is that the play cursor in the Arranger view moves much smoother than the cursor in the MIDI Editor. It's pretty clear if you zoom in a bit and let it play.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Originally Posted by puddi

60 Hz would be very nice indeed.

Something I've noticed in the latest pre-releases (can't speak for the stable versions) is that the play cursor in the Arranger view moves much smoother than the cursor in the MIDI Editor. It's pretty clear if you zoom in a bit and let it play.

Yeah, they have overhauled a lot in Reaper's UI-behavior on pre-6-versions of Reaper, with the smoother updating of the playcursor being one of them, if I remember correctly.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Bumparoooyoohoo

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Ok, after some tests by CFillion and me in this thread:
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=216679

it seems like my suggestion would not necessarily help boosting scripts.
Currently Reaper seems to update states(like GetPlayPosition) of its functions 30 times per second, which means, before a next GUI-update/all-defer-scripts-run-cycle.
My idea would work only, if it would be updated before every script/defer-cycle is run, to benefit from being scheduled more often within such a GUI-update/all-defer-scripts-run-cycle but I'm not sure, if this would eat up too many ressources.

Looks like 60 fps refresh-rate would need a bigger overhaul on the devs-side, so I wouldn't expect that from coming any time soon...
(not mentioning the gui-redraw itself, which I don't know much about)

[tack]

Even without comprehensive support from state APIs, there's value from a GUI responsiveness perspective. But, yeah, full benefit would come from broader internal support.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Gui-refresh itself seems to be tied to the same mechanism. It seems like the current refresh-timer is a core thing in Reaper, so changing it could lead to all things falling apart, at least gui and extension related.

If the devs manage to tackle this one without breaking anything, they'll grow even further to godlike-status.

[daniellumertz]

+1

[kartalex]

+1

[vitalker]

Still not possible to change refresh rate?

[daniellumertz]

Only JSFX can.

Justin, I think, said they might do it sometime so hopes is up, this would be FANTASTIC

[vitalker]

Originally Posted by daniellumertz

Only JSFX can.

Justin, I think, said they might do it sometime so hopes is up, this would be FANTASTIC

So sad... Actually I'd like to be able to decrease refresh rate.

[X-Raym]

decrease is possible in gfx, you just need to call gx.update only if necessary, or you can call only after a certain time interval by registering ime in each defer loop

[vitalker]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

decrease is possible in gfx, you just need to call gx.update only if necessary, or you can call only after a certain time interval by registering ime in each defer loop

The problem is I've removed gfx.update and it is updated using other functions like gfx.rect, gfx.set, gfx.setfont, gfx.drawstr. I've tried reducing a number of calls by

PHP Code:

if math.ceil(reaper.time_precise()*10)/10 % 0.5 == 0 then 


, but in this case buttons (the GUI has buttons) aren't highlighted neither they don't react to mouse clicks. Maybe I'll try again updating GUI only when the mouse is moved, but previously some things didn't work, so I need more conditions.
Hm, so you are suggesting use for example reaper.time_precise(), write its value to a new variable and when the difference between reaper.time_precise() and this new variable is bigger than X, update the GUI? Pretty nice idea, thanks! I already use something like this for showing tooltips.

[X-Raym]

@vitalker
indeed to take care of hover for button can require some adjustement about what to put in the functions called at slower speed.
Most if my script doesnt have this 'slow' mode, as reper is efficient enough to redraw GUI at normal speed even with complex functions in most cases

But are you sure ReaImgui wouldnt be better in your case ?

[vitalker]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

@vitalker
indeed to take care of hover for button can require some adjustement about what to put in the functions called at slower speed.
Most if my script doesnt have this 'slow' mode, as reper is efficient enough to redraw GUI at normal speed even with complex functions in most cases

But are you sure ReaImgui wouldnt be better in your case ?

The issue here is the GUI costs me almost 14% of CPU, that's why I want to improve it. Reaper is redrawing everything very fast, that's the problem.
It would be too much of unwanted learning and a new dependency, which I want to avoid. Currently I am using heavy-modified GUI from daniellumertz, which is a fork of eugen2777's (R.I.P.) GUI.
https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=101

[daniellumertz]

Originally Posted by vitalker

The issue here is the GUI costs me almost 14% of CPU, that's why I want to improve it. Reaper is redrawing everything very fast, that's the problem.
It would be too much of unwanted learning and a new dependency, which I want to avoid. Currently I am using heavy-modified GUI from daniellumertz, which is a fork of eugen2777's (R.I.P.) GUI.
https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=101

GFX GUI are much slower than IMGUI, if your concern is resource you should change to imgui. My demo script with just some sliders buttons and layers increase CPU usage in like 2% here. The ImGUI demo with all tabs open here dont take 1%, I dont know if they actually use GPU.

That being said. I wonder what are you doing to make a GUI that consumes 14%. How much CPU increase you notice in my demo? Aren't you calling some demanding function ? I find very hard that that is the GUI increasing that much CPU, unless you made a MEGA-ULTRA GUI.

Also if you concern is time learning a framework I think you should go to IMGUI seriously you can learn in one day or two the basics things and start using it. Much more easier than that fork.

About the dependency, well, I would say that most people will have it soon. And people that install scripts normally don't mind installing an extension.

That being said I really like the aesthetic of eugen library, so cool ! I would use it sometime just for that looking hahaha.

[X-Raym]

@vitalker
Maybe you have a bottleneck somewhere


On my own fork of Eugen script I use in my premium scripts, bottleneck was font resizing. When I figured it out it was about 15 times more quick :P


Anyway here we are definitely starting to do offtopic, cause this is just code optimization, not a missing thing,
Maybe open a thread with your script, let other inspect your code etc

[vitalker]

Originally Posted by daniellumertz

GFX GUI are much slower than IMGUI, if your concern is resource you should change to imgui. My demo script with just some sliders buttons and layers increase CPU usage in like 2% here. The ImGUI demo with all tabs open here dont take 1%, I dont know if they actually use GPU.

That being said. I wonder what are you doing to make a GUI that consumes 14%. How much CPU increase you notice in my demo? Aren't you calling some demanding function ? I find very hard that that is the GUI increasing that much CPU, unless you made a MEGA-ULTRA GUI.

Also if you concern is time learning a framework I think you should go to IMGUI seriously you can learn in one day or two the basics things and start using it. Much more easier than that fork.

About the dependency, well, I would say that most people will have it soon. And people that install scripts normally don't mind installing an extension.

That being said I really like the aesthetic of eugen library, so cool ! I would use it sometime just for that looking hahaha.

Interesting, didn't know. Well maybe it depends on CPU. I don't know dedicated GPU, so that's probably the reason.

I do nothing . It has some buttons and a few droplists, but here is an interesting thing: when I allow it to update only every 0.1 seconds, the usage decreases to 5%.

Okay, thanks. Then I'll try imGUI. I hope I'll remake it really fast, because the script took so much time.

Maybe you're right about installing the extension.

Yeah, it looks pretty good, but I don't use a lot of different elements, so imGUI should cover all my needs. Thanks again!

[vitalker]

Originally Posted by X-Raym

@vitalker
Maybe you have a bottleneck somewhere


On my own fork of Eugen script I use in my premium scripts, bottleneck was font resizing. When I figured it out it was about 15 times more quick :P


Anyway here we are definitely starting to do offtopic, cause this is just code optimization, not a missing thing,
Maybe open a thread with your script, let other inspect your code etc

Could be fonts, yeah. I don't know how to disable it, so maybe imGUI would be a better solution anyway.

Offtopic, but setting refresh rate would be still very cool.

[tack]

I'm interested in this for REAPER Toolkit (another GUI for Lua) as it supports animations, the most utilitarian of which is smooth scroll, and that would definitely benefit from a faster refresh. I'd just dial back the GUI update rate when not animating to conserve CPU.

[cfillion]

Made a quick proof of concept:
https://gist.github.com/cfillion/d4d...9a97edadf4bff9
some binaries at https://cfillion.ca/files/reaper/60fps/

This changes the rate of REAPER's "misc" timer to 60 Hz. That timer is responsible for many many internal things, running deferred scripts and extension timer callbacks being only two of them. Some things may break as a side effect, so no guarantees! Also it's still a low-priority Win32 timer so the firing rate remains approximate.

EDIT: Added a high-resolution mode that replaces the Win32 timer with a multimedia timer (reaper_60fps_hires.dll). (This is way overkill, but it'll reach that 60FPS no matter what!)

[daniellumertz]

hey cf thanks for making this extension test drive!

I notice (looking in imgui FPS) with your dll and the fps caps at 40FPS.
And with 1000/120 in the .cpp it caps at 60

Also notice something strange concerning monitors and FPS looking via IMGUI. When maind Dear Imgui Demo is in the same window than the Metric/Debugger the FPS decreases


(not bug reports just want to leave observation for further investigation)


EDIT:
More investigation

A fps counter script

function print(...) 
    local t = {}
    for i, v in ipairs( { ... } ) do
      t[i] = tostring( v )
    end
    reaper.ShowConsoleMsg( table.concat( t, "\n" ) .. "\n" )
end


start = reaper.time_precise()
fps = 1

function loop()
  local now = reaper.time_precise()
  if now - start >= 1 then
    print('FPS IS '..fps)
    fps = 1
    start = reaper.time_precise()
  end

  fps = fps + 1  
  reaper.defer(loop)
end

loop()

it seems it is the Metric window that makes the fps go lower, so test is better done with separate scripts (?)

[X-Raym]

@cfillion
The hi rez just freeze reaper somehow for me (make it extra extra slow) the other version I didn't noticed diff on my reateab hero script :S

Thanks for experimenting

[tack]

Cool PoC, Christian. Scrolling viewports in rtk is appreciably smoother. The smoother refresh rate exacerbates the GUI refresh slowness when the MIDI editor is open -- this is a long standing REAPERism, but it's much more noticeable when normal operation happens at 60fps

[daniellumertz]

sad bumping =)

[bFooz]

Bump.

[daniellumertz]

more options of defer would be really great for script running live ! (some would really appreciate more than 60fps if feasible )

[kartalex]

+1 for 60fps option.

[daniellumertz]

umpalumpa bumpalumpa

[Hipox]

+1 60 or more fps, please