PVRTrace for OpenGL ES 1.1

PowerVR Insider
1

I’m trying to find PVRTrace recorder for OpenGL ES 1.1 on Win32 platform. So far I noticed:


2.05 - doesn’t have PVRTrace tool at all


2.06 - have both analysis and recorder


2.07 - analysis only (and also analysis tool is even older than one in 2.06)


2.08 - OGLES2 only





Problem I run into is that if I use recorder from 2.06, quite often I get “Unexpected end of file” error. Is it a known issue and there is some workaround or whatever? Or could you point to the latest version of the tool (I have 2.06.26.0649 SDK)?





Thanks

2

Hi hayohayo,

Unfortunately we discovered bugs in the 2.6 version of the OGLES1.1 libraries which is why they were taken out of the 2.7 release, as they were broken. We have now fixed them, but they didn’t quite make it into the 2.8 release. We’ve now got fixed versions of the libraries and they should be up on the website soon, if not this afternoon then probably on Monday at some point. When they become available you will be able to find them here.

Sorry that they haven’t been available sooner!

Thanks,

Tobias
<p =“Msonormal”>

3

Thanks for reply, Tobias. And I started thinking that you’d dropped support for 1.x. Waiting for the release.hayohayo2011-05-30 09:42:07

4

Hooray, it works! Thanks.





I don’t see description of pvrtrace.cfg file in .pdf file (other than paths to original libs). Where can I find it?





Also I remember I could see textures in previous version of PVRTraceGUI, but not anymore. There is some RecordData in pvrtrace.cfg and setting it to 1 makes difference in terms of trace.pvrt file size, so I suppose it does dump textures.

5

Hi hayohayo,

The only other settings in the pvrtrace.cfg file that you’ll need besides the lib paths, come under the [record] heading which are:

[record]
TraceFile = trace.pvrt             Name of the file to write to
RecordData = 1                      Whether all data is recorded. If 0 then only pointer addresses are recorded. If 1, all data is recorded.
StartFrame = 0                       Frame to start recording from
EndFrame = 2000                   Frame to end recording at.

As for the texture viewing, sadly something became severely broken with it at some point during the last few versions. It’s not a trivial fix which is why it’s not currently in the 2.8 release of PVRTrace, however the functionality will be restored in our 2.9 release which should be out by the end of August.



6

Other issues I faced:


1. Setting StartFrame to anything other than 0 crashes application


2. Is there a way to get trace in text format? Otherwise it’s hard to compare traces for different runs.





Thanks

7

Hi hayohayo,

Setting it to anything other than 0 should be working, I had a look and traced the problem to a single line of code which I’ve now corrected. I’ll get it built and up on the website as soon as possible.

As for the text format traces, unfortunately not at present no, however it is a feature that will be present in our next release, which we aim to release by the end of August.

Thanks,

Tobias

8

Hi there,

I was just trying to get PVRTrace output with the PVRTRace libs on beagleboard. When generating my trace.pvrt file by starting a Qt application, the PVRTraceGUI on my ubuntu host system crashes with a segfault trying to open that file.
When I try to dump the API calls of a non-Qt application just using EGL and GL calls, the PVRTraceGUI is able to open the dump file.
Do you have any idea why that is and how I can fix it to get to the Qt application API dump?
Thanks,
honta



9

Hi honta,

I’m a little confused, are you trying to capture the Qt API? PVRTrace only captures EGL and OpenGLES calls. Calls from other APIs are never captured. However a file shouldn’t be generated unless those libraries are accessed… could you send a copy of the broken trace.pvrt file to devtech@imgtec.com so we can take a look?

Thanks,

Tobias



10

Hi Tobias,

sorry for confusing you.
I know that only the OpenGL ES and EGL calls are captured. My Qt Application uses them, as I make use of the PowerVR plugin for Qt.

After I regenerated my trace files this morning to send it to you by mail, I could open the generated files with the PVRTraceGUI. Now I am confused because I did exactly the same thing as yesterday and am not able to reconstruct the error…
If I will encounter it again, I will send you the trace files.
Thanks,

Honta



11

Hi Honta,

Ah ok I see. There are still some kinks we’re working out with PVRTrace at the moment, we’re hoping to have most of them ironed out for the next release. The crash you saw could have unfortunately been one of any number of things, but I’m glad you’ve got it working now. I will of course be glad to assist you if you come across this or any similar errors in the future!

Thanks,

Tobias