Driver/CCK AC freezing and screen blackout

KatieWoe commented 2 years ago

For https://github.com/phetsims/qa/issues/752, this issue has been quite hard to pin down. Paired with @samreid for quite awhile trying to work it out. This morning, I updated my graphics driver. When testing RC.2 for CCK AC, if the sim sits for even a small amount of time (10 seconds), trying to drag an object causes the sim to freeze for a bit. If it sits for long enough (say 2 minutes) the window blacks out for awhile. This was seen in RC.2 and I was able to reproduce in RC.1, though I didn't see it during those tests (which leads me to believe part of this is due to the driver). It occurs on Chrome and Edge, but not on Firefox. I have also not seen it on other sims so far, such as CCK DC and Density. My driver info from this morning's update is shown bellow.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/41024075/145651691-4a961a8e-023b-4b3a-8619-8c5b6f39f030.MOV

freeze2 freeze

samreid commented 2 years ago

In my opinion, the next step for this issue is to wait for another graphics driver update and see if the problem changes. But also, if this behavior is too bothersome and/or @KatieWoe wants to investigate more, it would be possible to roll back to a prior graphics driver to see what happens. That has some risks (such as inadvertently installing undesirable system utilities, or making it harder to auto-upgrade in the future) but could help us get answers and avoid this bad behavior if we want.

KatieWoe commented 2 years ago

I checked other sims on master on the problem platform and only CCK AC and AC VL showed the issue.

KatieWoe commented 2 years ago

Also noting that, if the sim sat and something was moving, such as the electrons on the circuit, this didn't seem to happen.

phetsims / circuit-construction-kit-common

Driver/CCK AC freezing and screen blackout #806