[GRASSLIST:8608] Re: NVIZ not working properly in GRASS 6?

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 01:26:50PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <rbeyer at arc.nasa.gov> flavor, containing:
> Thank you for your suggestions, but I still can't get the NVIZ window
> to display anything but junk.
> 
> On Tuesday 11 October 2005, Ing.Peter Misovic wrote:
> > -> I removed old Mesa libraries
> > --> I installed version : 6.3.2-1.mdk10.2
> > libMesaGL1-6.3.2-1.mdk10.2.mde
> > libMesaGLU1-6.3.2-1.mdk10.2.mde
> > libMesaGLU1-devel-6.3.2-1.mdk10.2.mde
> > 
> > and now everything is working fine
> 
> My system didn't have any Mesa libraries installed, and when I tried
> to add them, I got this message:
> 
> 	MesaGL is unnecessary because libGL and libGLU come with
> 	XFree86 4.0 and higher
> 
> I'm running X.org 6.8.2 which also has these libraries.  So I'm guessing
> that's not it, but I don't know much about these things, maybe it is?

I have Grass 6(cvs) installed on my home FreeBSD 5.4 machine (also running
X.org 6.8.2), my office FreeBSD 4.11 machine (running XFree86 4.3.0) and my 
laptop FreeBSD 4.11 machine (also running XFree86 4.3.0).  Both the home and 
office machine use NVIDIA video card with NVIDIA drivers --- these replace 
MesaGL with an accelerated set of GL libraries specific to NVIDIA cards.  
NVIZ works beautifully on both of those machines.  On the laptop, which has 
only its built-in ATI Mobility video card and uses MesaGL, NVIZ gets the black 
rectangle instead of the 3-D scene and is useless.  All the controls in NVIZ 
act like they're working, but the actual rendered scene never shows up.

I saw this once before several years ago in Grass 5.0.3 before I abandoned the 
Grass 5.0 line and went to what was then called Grass 5.1.  A machine that 
showed this behavior with Grass 5.0.3 worked great with Grass 5.1's NVIZ and 
continued to work with Grass 5.7 when 5.1 changed names.  Sometime since then 
the 6.0 NVIZ has stopped working in the same way.  I have not yet upgraded my 
laptop's OS, X and GL to see if doing that fixes it, but it sounds from your 
experience that it would not.  The fact that my home machine with its 
NVIDIA-provided GL works Just Fine does make it sound like MesaGL is the 
culprit, even the most recent one.

I know that's not very helpful --- I have NO idea how to move forward other
than to replace Mesa, and since Mesa is part of X and you're using the latest 
X, I don't see where to go from there.  When I first saw this in 5.0.3 I
tried several things like adding dri (from /usr/ports/graphics/dri) to no
avail.  Back then moving to Grass 5.1 on the laptop was the only thing that
healed NVIZ, and of course now it's back to not working in the same way.  Since
I have other machines to use it on and never saw anyone else complain about it
I just chalked it up to cockpit error or some problem with Mesa on BSD and
forgot about it.

> On Wednesday 12 October 2005, Stefan Istvan wrote:
> > I also had problem with NVIZ, though a bit different kind. I solved the
> > problem by using tcl/tk version 8.3 instead of newer versions.
> > Maybe it would help you too.
> 
> Okay, I installed tcl/tk 8.3, and rebuilt GRASS to use them.  However, the
> results are still the same, nothing but "snow" or graphics buffer
> junk in the NVIZ visualization window, but the window with the
> controls is fine (its just that none of the buttons really do
> anything).
> 
> Any additional help or suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks.
> 
> 
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I just installed GRASS 6.0.1 from source on my FreeBSD 5.4 system,
> > > and things seem to mostly be working just fine.  However, when I
> > > start NVIZ with some sample SPEARFISH data like so:
> > >
> > > GRASS 6.0.1 > nviz elev=elevation.dem vect=roads
> > >
> > > the GUI comes up, but the visualization window has "snow" in it
> > > (looks like junk from the graphics buffer or something).  It
> > > compiled okay, and I think that I have the most recent versions
> > > of the required software.
> > >
> > > I'm kinda stumped as to what the problem is.  Searching through
> > > the mailing list archives didn't turn up anything that seemed
> > > similar.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 
 "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly
  worth the effort." -- Norton Juster