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Vision performance may vary widely from machine to
machine. Simulations run with grid dimensions over 128x128x128 may
incur some performance penalties depending on the environment you
are running in. The optimal situation is that you are running 1) locally
accessing data from 2) a non-mounted file system on a machine with
a fast disk and 3) .5 Gigabytes of memory or more, 4) appreciable
floating point calculation speed, and 5) with a superior modern video
card or equivalent on-board capabilities and as few bottlenecks such
as slow system bus chipset etc. as possible. We are still relatively
un-threaded, but the closer you come to said operating conditions,
the less you will notice this deficiency.
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Be patient. If you clicked on something and interactivity
froze and Vision's windows do not redraw themselves properly when
you move another window over them, this means that the program is
busy. We didn't have time to add a more explicit message that the
program is working, but please understand regardless that many operations
take some time to perform. If you continue to click while Vision is
busy processing, you risk crashing the program due to overlapping
operations on one another accidentally.
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Similarly, if you open one of Vision's sub-windows
and the main control window gets disabled (turns gray and stops listening
to your clicking and typing), be aware that you will have to close
down the sub-window you opened to re-enable the main window. We tried
to avoid this design in most cases, but just know that if the main
controls get disabled, this just means that you have to close down
the sub-window that disabled them.
Reporting Bugs:
You can count on one hand the number of people directly working on
LCA Vision. And as Vision has grown, it has become a full time job just
to debug the program. Unfortunately, most of us have had barely enough
time just to code all the new features you see and much less time, we
regret, to create the numerous test situations for adequate bug-hunting.
This means that if we are to make a better Vision for the future, we
need your help to tell us what goes wrong while you are using the program.
Generally speaking, the best "fix" for any of Vision's ails
is to close the program if it has not already crashed at the point you
encounter the problem, and then simply restart it. The longer you interact,
the more likely you are to encounter unforeseen situations we didn't
have time to simulate and debug. So if you refresh the program by restarting
it, you are more than likely to correct the problem by getting back
to situations we did have time to debug.
But *before* you restart the program, we ask that you please do yourselves
and us a huge favor and email us with your grid dimensions and/or problem
and data file size and a brief description of the problem.
lcavision@ncsa.uiuc.edu
miksa@ncsa.uiuc.edu pushkare@students.uiuc.edu
jshalf@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Also, MOST IMPORTANTLY: Please attach (or copy into the contents of
your email message) the file (in your current working directory) LogFile.txt.
It is crucial that you do not restart the program before you mail us
this information because Vision is set to overwrite the session log
file each time you start the program. Thus, if you restart the program
before mailing us LogFile.txt, you will wipe out the information Vision
was keeping on itself, and we probably won't have any way to reproduce
and/or analyze the same conditions that caused the program to misbehave.
On the other hand, if you do follow these instructions, you can help
us build a better, sounder LCA Vision of tomorrow.
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