JavaFx 8 command line options

I have been struggling with an “interesting” javafx render problem. In BpmDj, given enough updates, the rendertree would partially stop updating. It was clear this was a concurrency bug, yet one that was not my fault. As a preliminary solution to fix this I would grab a screenshot everytime I would add a node. Recently however that solution no longer worked and the dirty logic would be so fucked up that elements which should be visible were not visible. It was even possible to have a font change its color halfway through its rendering.

So I started to look around for javafx options, and there are a few of them that proved to be useful.

What Flag Default
VSync prism.vsync true
Dirty region optimizations prism.dirtyopts true
Occlusion Culling prism.occlusion.culling true
dirtyRegionCount prism.dirtyregioncount 15
Scrolling cache optimization prism.scrollcacheopt false
Dirty region optimizations prism.threadcheck false
Draws overlay rectangles showing where the dirty regions were prism.showdirty false
Draws overlay rectangles showing not only the dirty regions, but how many times each area within that dirty region was drawn (covered by bounds of a drawn object). prism.showoverdraw false
Prints out the render graph, annotated with dirty opts information prism.printrendergraph false
Force scene repaint on every frame prism.forcerepaint false
disable fallback to another toolkit if prism couldn’t be init-ed prism.noFallback false
Shape caching optimizations prism.cacheshapes complex
New javafx-iio image loader prism.newiio true
Verbose output prism.verbose false
Prism statistics print frequency, <=0 means “do not print” prism.printStats 0
Debug output prism.debug false
Trace output prism.trace false
Print texture allocation data prism.printallocs” false
Disable bad driver check warning prism.disableBadDriverWarning” false
Force GPU, if GPU is PS 3 capable, disable GPU qualification check. prism.forceGPU false
Skip mesh normal computation prism.experimental.skipMeshNormalComputation false
Which driver to use prism.order
prism.forcepowerof2 false
prism.noclamptozero false
Try -Dprism.maxvram=[kKmMgG] prism.allowhidpi true
prism.maxvram 512 * 1024 * 1024
Try -Dprism.targetvram=[kKmMgG]|<double(0,100)>% prism.targetvram
prism.poolstats false
prism.pooldebug false
prism.maxTextureSize
prism.minrttsize
prism.disableRegionCaching
prism.disableD3D9Ex false
prism.disableEffects false
prism.glyphCacheWidth 1024
prism.glyphCacheHeight 1024
Enable the performance logger, print on exit, print on first paint etc. sun.perflog
sun.perflog.fx.exitflush
sun.perflog.fx.firstpaintflush
sun.perflog.fx.firstpaintexit
prism.supershader true
Force uploading painter (e.g., to avoid Linux live-resize jittering) prism.forceUploadingPainter false
Force the use of fragment shader that does alpha testing (i.e. discard if alpha == 0.0) prism.forceAlphaTestShader false
Force non anti-aliasing (not smooth) shape rendering prism.forceNonAntialiasedShape false
Set Single GUI Threading quantum.singlethreaded false
Print quantum verbose quantum.verbose false
JavaFx framerate in FPS javafx.animation.pulse 60

FX thread collision with Render thread ?

When running with the prism.threadcheck option I got the following error:

ERROR: PrismPen / FX threads co-running: DIRTY: false
FX: java.lang.Thread.getStackTrace(Thread.java:1559)
FX: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.QuantumRenderer.checkRendererIdle(QuantumRenderer.java:247)
FX: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.QuantumToolkit.checkFxUserThread(QuantumToolkit.java:424)
FX: javafx.scene.Scene$MouseHandler.process(Scene.java:3680)
FX: javafx.scene.Scene$MouseHandler.access$1500(Scene.java:3485)
FX: javafx.scene.Scene$MouseHandler$1.run(Scene.java:3521)
FX: com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$null$173(PlatformImpl.java:295)
FX: java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
FX: com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$174(PlatformImpl.java:294)
FX: com.sun.glass.ui.InvokeLaterDispatcher$Future.run(InvokeLaterDispatcher.java:95)
FX: com.sun.glass.ui.gtk.GtkApplication._runLoop(Native Method)
FX: com.sun.glass.ui.gtk.GtkApplication.lambda$null$49(GtkApplication.java:139)
FX: java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGCanvas.getStroke(NGCanvas.java:777)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGCanvas.setupStroke(NGCanvas.java:785)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGCanvas.handleRenderOp(NGCanvas.java:1212)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGCanvas.renderStream(NGCanvas.java:1097)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGCanvas.renderContent(NGCanvas.java:606)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGGroup.renderContent(NGGroup.java:235)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGRegion.renderContent(NGRegion.java:576)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGGroup.renderContent(NGGroup.java:235)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGRegion.renderContent(NGRegion.java:576)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGGroup.renderContent(NGGroup.java:235)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGRegion.renderContent(NGRegion.java:576)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGGroup.renderContent(NGGroup.java:235)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGRegion.renderContent(NGRegion.java:576)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGGroup.renderContent(NGGroup.java:235)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGRegion.renderContent(NGRegion.java:576)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.doRender(NGNode.java:2053)
QR: com.sun.javafx.sg.prism.NGNode.render(NGNode.java:1945)
QR: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.ViewPainter.doPaint(ViewPainter.java:477)
QR: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.ViewPainter.paintImpl(ViewPainter.java:330)
QR: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.PresentingPainter.run(PresentingPainter.java:91)
QR: java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
QR: java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:308)
QR: com.sun.javafx.tk.RenderJob.run(RenderJob.java:58)
QR: java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
QR: java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
QR: com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.QuantumRenderer$PipelineRunnable.run(QuantumRenderer.java:125)
QR: java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Of course how that related to my problem wasn’t clear, allthough maybe it could explain why the dirty flags were all ****ed up.

Overdraw and dirty draws

overdraw

The option -Dprism.showoverdraw=true is interesting because it shows us which area we drew once (red), which twice (green), and so on. This showed me that the areas that didn’t update were not even marked as ‘dirty’. Suggesting that the problem was indeed with the setting and tracking of the dirty flag in the renderer. Therefore we tried the option -Dprism.dirtyopts=false and hooray all problems disappeared. Of course the app ran slightly slower, but at least it worked now.

9 thoughts on “JavaFx 8 command line options”

    1. javafx.animation.pulse sets the framerate. But normally it is already 60fps. So if it still lags it is probably a driver issue or some other thing that stalls the pipeline.

    1. And this cured my problem where menus were leaving the background box behind them after repeated use of our system for a week or so !

        1. I would ask: does the -Dprism.showoverdraw=true actually color rectangles ? If so, then you know how to set the -Dprism.dirtyopts=false If not, then maybe you weren’t able to set the flag properly ?

  1. In my case the rendering problems finally turned out to be caused by a single missing Platform.runLater(…) around some calls to TextField.setText(…) (called from another thread than the JFX UI thread). After this was fixed everything worked fine. Maybe it’s also the solution for others…

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