Some weirdness with Xorg-Edgers

[HalationEffect]

So, I added the xorg-edgers PPA, and the intel-sna PPA. After a sudo apt-get update, a sudo apt-get upgrade, and a reboot, all seemed fine... until I tried running a game*. Blank screen! I could hear the game's sound, but couldn't see a thing. So I ctrl-alt-f1 and kill the game process, then ctrl-alt-f7 and I'm back at my desktop.

Next thing I try is to edit the game's config file to reduce the resolution and make it run windowed rather than full screen. This time, the game displays just fine. So, I adjust the in-game settings to tell it to run full screen in my monitor's native resolution of 1680x1050 (which requires restarting the game for the settings to take effect). It worked! But... the aspect ratio was wrong. Turns out I'd mis-clicked and selected 1920x1080 instead of 1680x1050. So I correct the setting, and restart the game again... blank screen!

Seems like running a 3D game full-screen @ 1680x1050 gives me a blank screen. My current workaround has been to set the game to 1440x900 fullscreen, which works, but (obviously) is sub-optimal. The game ran fine full-screen at my native res before I switched to the xorg-edgers PPA (I was using the x-swat PPA).

Graphics hardware is my Sandy Bridge Pentium dual-core G840's integrated graphics. In the motherboard's firmware, I've allocated the maximum of 1024MB for graphics memory.

Anyone have any thoughts? TBH this isn't a huge deal and I can live with running games at 1440x900, but it would be nice if I could make 1680x1050 work.

* the game in question is S.C.O.U.R.G.E.: Heroes of Lesser Renown.

[SteveRiley]

Try it without the Intel-SNA extra bit. I have noticed some unpredictability with that version of the Intel driver.

[HalationEffect]

Tried purging the intel-sna PPA, so that I was using the driver from xorg-edgers, but it made no difference - even rebooted to make sure. So I put the intel-sna PPA back in... I figure if it isn't the cause of the problem, then I'll happily take any performance boost it might be bringing to the party

I grabbed a few random 3D games from PlayDeb and Desura, etc., and while most are giving me blank screens when full-screen @ native res, one or two display just fine under those conditions - albeit with some occasional odd flickering. By 'flickering', I don't mean tearing or blanking out or anything like that... it's like every 1 or 2 seconds, the brightness sharply increases for a fraction of a second.

[SteveRiley]

I wonder if there might be changes to OpenGL in Xorg-Edgers that cause the game to behave strangely?

[HalationEffect]

I wonder if there might be changes to OpenGL in Xorg-Edgers that cause the game to behave strangely?

Quite possible. I see that I now have a fair few extra OpenGL extensions supported (for example, the number of supported compressed texture formats has jumped from 2 to 9 since using edgers). I'm going to give it some time and see how things shake out with the next few updates in the graphics stack.

I'm going with that plan mainly because removing xorg-edgers seems to be seriously problematic. PPA-Purge wanted to remove ia32-libs and every single i386 package that I have installed...

[The Liquidator]

I noticed a similar effect in 11.10 with a Windows Application running in wine- a windows-only interactive learning program.

It ran perfectly until I upgraded the graphics drivers to the xorg-edgers drivers in the ppa. It would then load to a white screen. Fortunately I ran it very shortly after I had upgraded so simply purging the ppa cured it. The x-swat ppa is fine though.

[SteveRiley]

The variation in experiences with Xorg-Edgers certainly is curious...

[HalationEffect]

The latest round of updates seems to have fixed the problem some games were having with full-screen 1680 x 1050 giving a blank screen, and the flickering problem is also gone

However, sometimes when my system puts the screen to sleep*, it won't wake it up again. Short of a hard reboot, the only way I've found to make it wake the screen up is to give it the old "three-finger salute" of CTRL - ALT - DEL to log out of my KDE session.

Ah well, I'm sure some update soon will fix that too.

* It does this even though I've disabled that function in System Settings -> Power Management.

[NoWorries]

Quite possible. I see that I now have a fair few extra OpenGL extensions supported (for example, the number of supported compressed texture formats has jumped from 2 to 9 since using edgers). I'm going to give it some time and see how things shake out with the next few updates in the graphics stack.

I'm going with that plan mainly because removing xorg-edgers seems to be seriously problematic. PPA-Purge wanted to remove ia32-libs and every single i386 package that I have installed...

I experienced the same problem with PPA-Purge on my Wife's computer which did not work after updating with the Xorg-Edgers packages. In the end I did a re-installation of 12.04 and then added the Xorg-Edgers packages and it all worked without a problem. I only have the default games and cannot comment on the performance with games.