Sluggish Mouse Cursor Tracking

[John Scheffel]

One of our users just got a new Compaq nc6000 notebook PC. I realize this is not the best choice for 3D CAD, but this is our standard IT supported notebook.

The mouse cursor tracking in the 3D viewport is very sluggish. It trails the arrow by 1/4 to 1/2 inch. It is much worse when you perform operations with real time feedback such as placing a horizontal or vertical construction line, or using the new 2D Copilot functions.

Real time 3D manipulation seems OK. Response on panning, zooming, and rotation is fine. If I disable hardware acceleration using SDPIXELFORMAT=SOFTWARE, mouse tracking is much better, no perceptible lag. I've tried changing some of the Display and OpenGL settings, but so far nothing helps.

I know there are people at other sites in our company running Modeling on this model and they have not reported any problems. Any ideas on what might cause this behavior?

Here are some setup details.

- Windows 2000, SP 4
- Mouse pointer shadows disabled
- ATI Mobility Radion 9600
- Latest graphics driver from HP web site
- Modeling 12.1.3.0
- 1 GB RAM

[Gary Brauch]

John,
One simple thing you can try is to turn off "Enable pointer shadow" in the mouse menu. It's under the "pointers" tab.
See if this helps the performance.
Gary.

[John Scheffel]

Originally posted by Gary Brauch
John,
One simple thing you can try is to turn off "Enable pointer shadow" in the mouse menu. It's under the "pointers" tab.
See if this helps the performance.
Gary.

Thanks Gary, I tried this (in fact, listed in my setup above but not obvious). However, it made no difference.

[bfisher]

John,

There is another similar setting as I recall as well. Click off the option to "Show window contents when dragging" in the "System/Performance" dialog. Hope this helps.

Bruce

[John Scheffel]

Originally posted by bfisher
There is another similar setting as I recall as well. Click off the option to "Show window contents when dragging" in the "System/Performance" dialog. Hope this helps.

Thanks Bruce, but this setting was already off. Turning it ON did seem to make the problem a little worse, but the performance was still fine with SDPIXELFORMAT=SOFTWARE. It must be something related to the OpenGL driver or display of the 3D viewport. I don't see any problem in Drafting or Annotation. Unfortunately the HP web site only has one version of the graphics driver available, so it is hard to know if an older driver would work better.

[clausb]

Haven't heard about such a problem in quite a while. Is the behavior the same in various video resolutions? What kind of OpenGL settings does the driver offer?

From your description, I'm assuming that it is the crosshair cursor which OSDM draws which appears to lag behind, not the actual (2D) mouse cursor shape, right?

You might be able to download other driver versions at places such as http://drivers.softpedia.com/public/download/1/1-785.shtml or http://www.driverheaven.net.

Claus

[John Scheffel]

Thanks for the tips Claus. I don't have access to the laptop right now, but will try to get it back so that I can answer your questions and try some of the previous drivers.

[Mike Swartz]

Looks like the latest driver available for Windows2000 from ATI clicky here is version 6.14.10.6444.

How does that compare with the driver version you can get from HP?

[John Scheffel]

Originally posted by Mike Swartz
Looks like the latest driver available for Windows2000 from ATI clicky here is version 6.14.10.6444.

How does that compare with the driver version you can get from HP?

Thanks, but I tried that and the driver won't install. I don't think it works with notebooks. It stops with a message that it can't detect a supported graphics card.

[tony_tang]

You can available below setting way,
1. Access ATI graphic panel frame.
2. Click OpenGL button.
3. Click compatibility setting button.
4. The setting Z-buffer,choice 16 bit z-buffer
So,the mouse can't sluggish.

[John Scheffel]

Thanks Tony. The owner of the laptop tried your suggestion and it seems to have fixed the problem. I can't be 100% sure since I was not able to test it myself, but he is satisfied.

[John Scheffel]

We had this problem show up on another HP/Compaq NC6000 notebook and I had a chance to test Tony's fix myself. It does eliminate the sluggish mouse cursor on this notebook.