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Bryce freezes when left mouse button held down for more than a second or two.

Erwin0265Erwin0265 Posts: 63
edited November 2016 in Bryce Discussion

Hi   I've just started playing with Bryce 7.1  following along with David Brinnen's tutorial videos on You Tube  I've also purchased the Bryce Mentoring DVD (although most topics are a bit too advanced for me as a beginner; which I thought it was for... oh well)  and I have a question I can't find an answer to.  I have bryce installed on a PC with Win 7 OS and when I hold down the left mouse button for more than a few seconds, Bryce freezes and there appears a thick black outline on the left and top edges of the viewing window.  As soon as I release the mouse button  Bryce becomes response again but the last move by the cursor is undone or overdone (translated further than intended, for example).  This even happens if I just hold down the left mouse button but don't actually do anything; I just keep the cursor stationary.  Is this a bug or is there something I can do about it?   I did have Bryce installed on an external drive and thought this issue was due to the slightly slower data transfer from an external drive; so I uninstalled Bryce and installed it in the Program Files  x86  folder - but the issue remains  and I don t really want to keep Bryce on the C drive as content will clutter the drive and slow performance and I have yet to work out how to set up just the content folders on an external drive  it appears that Bryce needs content to be installed in the same location as the program itself .  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Cheers,   Erwin

Post edited by Erwin0265 on

Comments

  • Electro-ElvisElectro-Elvis Posts: 883
    edited November 2016

    Hello Erwin

    I have faced the same problem you described. It couldn't find a solution first, I tried to ignore it, because it bothered me not that much.

    BUT because of your question I started to examine this annoying behaviour of Bryce. And I was lucky and found probably a solution. Simply untick the option 'Auto-Update' in the Preview window (see attachment). Of course there is a small drawback, to update the preview, you have to click into the preview view, but I think, that is accetable. Glad you asked and hope it helps for you, too.

     

    Auto-Update.jpg
    270 x 362 - 45K
    Post edited by Electro-Elvis on
  • Erwin0265Erwin0265 Posts: 63

    Hi EE,

    Thanks for the suggestion but no joy.

    I tried your suggestion and there was no difference to my problem.

    I set up the most basic of scenes (I added a terrain, unaltered, to the default scene on start-up) and then tried to move the terrain by just using the left mouse button (LMB), held directly on the selected terrain - I was able to move it around for 1 - 2 seconds before Bryce froze and all movement of the terrain stopped - UNTIL I released the LMB, after which the terrain moved to wherever my cursor had stopped when I released the LMB.

    I am finding this behaviour so frustrating, I am back to playing with DS (Which is fine, but not for terrains) as I am unable to follow along to any tutorials to my personal satisfaction as I can't even adjust colours of the atmosphere with any sort of finesse as the colour picker freezes (the window remains open but moving the eye dropper around makes no difference to the colour chosen as the "chosen" colour ends up being whatever colour the eye dropper was hovering over when the program froze).

    Any other suggestions whould be greatly appreciated...........

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643

    I fully understand your frustration but have absolutely no idea what's going on. I've used all Bryce versions from 4 up to 7.1 on Windows 2000, XP and 7 on 10 different computers over the years and never ever had such a problem.

     

  • Electro-ElvisElectro-Elvis Posts: 883
    edited November 2016

    Hi Erwin

    Sorry, to hear that. Unfortunately I have no idea. Just a few long shots. Most probably another software running on your computer triggers a conflict, but such cases are really hard to find. It could be also the mouse driver. Have you ever tried another mouse? Or the antivirus software. Or the graphic driver. There are so many possibilities. I wish I could give you a better answer.

    Post edited by Electro-Elvis on
  • Erwin0265Erwin0265 Posts: 63

    Oh bugger: I was hoping that someone else might have had the problem; it must be a clash with another program. I may have a go at running it in compatibility mode to see if that makes any difference.............

    Anyone with any other ideas; I'm open to trying pretty much anything.................

  • Erwin0265Erwin0265 Posts: 63

    Well, it's always nice when you can solve your own problems....................

    Hoping that I am not "jumping the gun" by providing this feedback, but it appears that by simply changing compatibility mode to XP, Service Pack 3 and running as Administrator, has solved the issue!

    I just tried it by selecting a terrain and moving it around, non-stop, for over a minute (Bryce would generally freeze aft 10 or so seconds - so this is really good)!

    If I discover any other issues/problems, I will report back.

    Cheers,

    Erwin

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433

    I'm wondering if your problem is something to do with the OpenGL setting (one of the mini icons down the right hand side... I'd suggest turning the OpenGL option off by selecting one of the Bryce native viewport options and giving it a try). I'm at the office at the moment and sadly don't have a copy of Bryce here but I'll post more about it when i get home and give some screen grabs to guide.

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701

    I see this too. have for a long time. thought it was USB mouse stuff, but I think by completely disabling my second monitor, I was able to stop that behavior. it also keeps the 'list of objects' menu (lower right options) from showing all items in a scene w lots of objects/groups - e.g. import a v4 and try to navigate the list.

    all worked fine with one monitor. nvidia, current drivers, no odd Bryce settings. I've never been able to get Bryce to work in multi monitor mode (preferences)' as the various lab pop-up do odd things for me, but I think that's a known issue.

    I assumed it was driver/system specific, so I chose to live w it. maybe you can find a fix where I couldn't!

    hope this helps!

    --ms

  • Erwin0265Erwin0265 Posts: 63

    Well, so far so good; changing Bryce's compatibility settings appears to have done the job.

    I'm running 3 monitors under a Win 7 Ultimate OS, with Bryce running with compatibility settings of XP SR3 64-bit and all is functioning as it should.

    Depending on what OS you are running; Mindsong, have you ever tried playing with the compatibility settings? Bryce 7.1 is getting rather "long in the tooth"; it may be that it was never designed to run under Win 7/8/10 (Vista?) - this may also be a solution for you - again, depending on what OS you are running; if it's more recent than XP SR3 (Which it probably is, and assuming PC - I have zero experience with Mac) give it a try.

    Right mouse click on Bryce.exe (or shortcut icon) > properties > Compatibility > Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 3) > OK.

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701

    Ooooh yay - something to try!

    so... On my win 7 pro, it's not happenning anymore (with a simple scene), so go figure, but I'm OK with that! It's been doing this for years! heh

    I'll see if that makes a difference on my Win10 later when I get to that machine! I was bummed when it did it there too! Maybe there's hope!

    Thanks for reporting back! This might qualify as a 'sticky' or as a note in one of the "Bryce-Notes" stickies! How many folks has that 'feature' scared off, I wonder?

    cheers,

    --ms

  • S RayS Ray Posts: 399

    I find Bryce to have more stability on Win 10 then it did on OS 8 or 7. Or maybe I have become more aware of what causes it to freeze or crash.

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701

    (S Ray, your website is quite nice!)

    --ms

  • S RayS Ray Posts: 399

    Thanks mindsong, it's still a work in progress. I hope to be adding some more resources there sometime in Jan 2017

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701
    edited December 2016

    update for future Brycer reference:

    On my win7 host (been using it a lot this week), it still happens every-so-often without the compatibility setting, and is very inconsistent now (used to be able to make it happen reliably). I've enabled the XP-Sp3 compatibility mode, and while it wants admin approval to start, and it mumbles about a 'safe' graphics mode, I haven't seen the problem since (fingers crossed). Of note - in the previous W7 mode, a small bit of the bryce containing window would creep onto the other monitor and I could never fix that. In XPsp3 compat mode, the main bryce window is completely on the monitor-1 screen as expected.

    My multiple monitor mode still puts the various 'labs' in really strange places (on second monitor, half off the screen), and I can't resize bryce at all - just full-screen in a window, or minimized. Anyone else see this? Has it always been this way, and I'm just noticing it now?

    cheers,

    --ms

    Post edited by mindsong on
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