The screen is flicking after calling out the bottom bar in the DirectX window (swapchainpanel).

Question

Hello, Dear all,

 

So far we've encountered a serious issue: the screen will be flicking if the bottom bar is called out in the DirectX window. The window is using a SwapChainBackgroundPanel control. The flicking will be mainly in the area of the bottom bar and the nearby. The top of the screen has no flicking. However, if the bottom bar is dismissed (hidden), the flicking will disappear. If then we call out the bottom bar again, there would be no flicking.

 

The reproducing ration is very low (no more than 5%). Just creating a C++ Windows Store App example with VS2013/Win8.1 will be OK. But once the issue occurs, it will be very boring.

 

We don't know how this happen. There is no tricky processing or rendering for the DirectX window. We've had no special/abnormal processing for the bottom bar or the buttons in it.

 

I don't know whether this issue is caused by the control SwapChainBackgroundPanel. Did you guys ever encounter this issue?

 

On the other hand, I've checked that I could replace SwapChainBackgroundPanel with the new control SwapChainPanel without compiling error, and the running is also OK. But I still need more tests. Would you please help confirm whether the replacement would be OK?

BTW: Unless there is great potential issue, we will not replace SwapChainBackgroundPanel with SwapChainPanel in the near future as there is much work to do..

Thank you all!

Answer 1

I'll have our DirectX experts check this out.

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Matt Small - Microsoft Escalation Engineer - Forum Moderator
If my reply answers your question, please mark this post as answered.

NOTE: If I ask for code, please provide something that I can drop directly into a project and run (including XAML), or an actual application project. I'm trying to help a lot of people, so I don't have time to figure out weird snippets with undefined objects and unknown namespaces.

Answer 2

Hi, Matt, really thank you very much! Looking forward to the response...

Answer 3

The documentation for SwapChainBackgroundPanel notes that it is deprecated and that you should use SwapChainPanel instead: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.xaml.controls.swapchainbackgroundpanel.aspx . Doing so will avoid the compositing issues that SwapChainBackgroundPanel has (and the flickering problem is probably some sort of compositing issue). It should also help future-proof your application. The only catch is that SwapChainPanel requires Windows 8.1 (any version, including the ARM version) or Windows Server 2012 R2; it doesn't exist in 8.0. But since you are developing using Visual Studio 2013 and 8.1 is a free upgrade for 8.0 users, it doesn't seem like that would be a problem for you.

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Visual C++ MVP | Website | Blog | @mikebmcl | Windows Store DirectX Game Template

Answer 4

OK. Thank you very much, Mike. We will make an estimation on the impact to decide whether using SwapChainPanel or not at present or in the near future...