Slow Redraw Of Crosshair Cursor in NT8

[molecool]

It is extremely easy to find yourself in a 'boiling frog' or 'sunk cost' type of situation where you have invested so much capital/time in a toolset that you are unwilling to make drastic changes once serious fundamental issues arise.

Not to kick a man when he's down but I would have to agree here. It's got nothing to do with .Net whatsoever and everything to do with the new 2D graphic API (I forgot which one) that was chosen. Obviously we don't see these problems on NT7, do we?

And yes, absolutely need to agree with jcrza on this - I have been in computing since the early 1980s and drawing a crosshair fluidly wasn't an issue past 1990 or so. Don't you guys find it silly that we may have to upgrade our hardware in order to run a charting API without skipping frames?

Quite frankly, this should not even be an issue in this day and age. We are using super computers as phones these days and a skipped framerates wouldn't even be acceptable on mobile platforms. I completely understand the hesitation to make drastic changes and delay the final release. Marketing at NT would freak out at the mere mentioning and we've been using NT7 since what - 2010? I can't remember - it's been this long....

I'm not posting this to fan any flames of discontent. But I would like to encourage everyone to take a step back and look at this from an objective perspective. NT Team: How do you think the (growing) competition is going to use this? I can hear it now: "Sure you can try to use NT8 if you don't care about sluggish charts."

Meanwhile we have community driven tools like Quantopian and QuantConnect grow by leaps and bounds. They are still in the early beta phase but I expect both efforts to aggressively push into NinjaTrader's market niche going forward. This cannot be ignored. While we are worrying about skipped frames on NT7 those guys are implementing a community driven, open source, cross-platform algorithmic trading engine that runs in the cloud. Backtests that may take hours or days on NT can be performed in mere minutes or hours. It's a completely different ballgame - assuming they can pull it off and support futures and forex markets. How is NT going to compete on such a level let's say three to five years from now?

Personally I have made a huge investment in NT over the past eight years. All my systems, all my indicators and tools are running on NT7 and migration of only a subset of that will take me weeks and perhaps months. Lacking an automated migration tool for my existing codebase I don't find the idea of spending all that time just to face graphic issues like this particularly appetizing. And quite frankly I am tempted to consider if my time may be better spent porting it to Quantopian or QuantConnect. I rather would not but reports like these do not strengthen my confidence in the long term potential of NT8.

It took over 5 years (correct me if I'm wrong) from the announcement of NT7 to the early beta release of NT8. On NT7 I am still forced to support .Net 3.5 which is hopelessly outdated. How long until NT8 is in a similar situation? Will I have to wait until 2020 or later to see NT9? And if the drawing API is showing fundamental issues at this early stage - as opposed to showing a significant speed *increase* - then I am curious as to what my incentive is.

In closing - the devil quite often lurks in the detail. This is a very important detail that may haunt you guys for many years to come. If it can not be fixed then I propose that a different graphic API is being considered. I know that sucks but end users don't care about the technical details. Let's not forget that trading applications are mission critical and traders are not known for being patient or forgiving if they feel that their platform is slowing them down.

Food for thought...

This is a really serious issue. It makes the entire program feel sluggish. I spent 95% of my time interacting with charts. I've had global crosshairs on 20+ open charts on multiple screens on thinkorswim without a single dropped frame.

Here's how you reproduce the issue in NT8. Get three monitors, do a three wide setup, plug them all into the GPU, put one ES chart on each and instrument link them, then enable global crosshairs on the leftmost and rightmost monitors ONLY while leaving local crosshairs enabled on the center one. Wiggle your mouse around with the middle chart selected. It's still responsive, right? Feels good? Now enable global crosshairs on your middle screen as well so that now all three are synced.

Notice the difference in how it feels the second you toggle it? Notice how the framerate on the chart is reduced so that when you stretch the chart the performance is degraded. If you don't notice it perhaps you need more charts so you're consuming the number of threads/cores on your system or something. Or maybe try quickly toggling with the crosshairs hotkeys for better A/B testing on how it 'feels' if you're not using an FPS counter to watch the performance degrade.

How much horsepower can you really ask of the user to draw some charts and synchronize some lines in a 2D environment? Please look into it more seriously. This is something that should have been caught in alpha, not RC1. I won't be renewing my lease if this isn't fixed. It seems incredible to be saying things like "Dots are a lot harder to render then just lines" when it's obvious there's a serious issue here. We're living in the age of rendering games like crysis on laptops and you're telling us rendering lines is taxing for desktop computers? C'mon guys. Embarrassing.

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Thanks for those that have posted hardware specs and feedback on crosshair performance on your system setup.

Good news! We have made performance optimizations and improvements in two cases. Those of you that saw performance degradation with dotted crosshair over the standard line crosshair and those of you running into issue when using global crosshair. Expect to see these in the next release.

We still have more work to do for those of you that struggled to use the standard crosshair. We're looking into understanding why such hardware makes such a difference to see what options we would have to improve the experience further. I will update this thread again when I have further information.

-Brett

[dotnet]

It is better to tell how it is:
The sharpdx implementation/direction is a failure. The graphics in NT8 is slower in every aspect relative to NT7. They could just kept the legacy NT7 chart control (host winform on top of wpf) and spare years of development time and frustration.

[marty087]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned but I just skimmed though and couldn't see it anywhere.

I noticed that I had severe cross hair lag on one chart and not another. I have 6 monitors and the only chart that had adequate cross hair response was the "Primary Display" as set in windows display settings in WIN 10 marked as "Make this my primary display"

So i changed my primary display to another monitor and voila, the chart on the new primary display was fast and all the others slow...

[crokusek]

I just want to add a note that using a new dedicated hardware video card (modern low end, DirectX 10 or higher, only $40) greatly improved the cross hairs compare to using the intel integrated graphics (IIG).

Apparently the IIG must be a software implementation for the key aspects that NT8 is relying on.

[TimStone]

my crosshair is incredibly slow as well and nt8 so far is pretty much useless bc of this. it's really lagging heavily on a very fast system w 3 screens where i had never any issues w NT7 crosshair.

I also can't really understand why you guys havent implemented the Rainbow Indicator Crosshair?! You support that indicator suite and promote it on your website but the guy seems to have vanished and doesnt update it anymore. Anything that guy has added to NT7 is exponentially better than most of the stuff you guys seem to have done so far.

I attached a screenshot of the crosshair i mean which is so much better in every aspect there is. Please just have your developers have a look at http://rainbow-in.com/

Everything that guy has done has improved NT7 usability by 100% and is an absolute must for a new refurbished version.

http://rainbow-in.com/feature/improved-crosshair/

thanks and rgds from Austria

[ToMer_K]

RC2 - Slow crosshair as well

Hi,
I am experiencing slow crosshair, Local or Global, with or without the crosshair lines, when maximizing the chart window in my secondary screens (only).

I haven't read all the thread because it very long but I just wanted to update I have this issue.

I don't know if it has any connection to it but I saw that maximizing the window in my secondary screens is filling the whole window and not letting me see the taskbar (Windows 8.1 pro).

My stats:
1) Nvidia Geforce GTX 860M, 1 laptop monitor + 2 externals
2) 4720HQ i7 2.6Ghz
3) 3 monitors per card
4) 1920X1080
5) The delay is annoying but allows me to work

[marty087]

Hi,
I am experiencing slow crosshair, Local or Global, with or without the crosshair lines, when maximizing the chart window in my secondary screens (only).

I haven't read all the thread because it very long but I just wanted to update I have this issue.

I don't know if it has any connection to it but I saw that maximizing the window in my secondary screens is filling the whole window and not letting me see the taskbar (Windows 8.1 pro).

My stats:
1) Nvidia Geforce GTX 860M, 1 laptop monitor + 2 externals
2) 4720HQ i7 2.6Ghz
3) 3 monitors per card
4) 1920X1080
5) The delay is annoying but allows me to work

Everything mentioed here is also my experience. There is definate perfromance differences in non-primary screens and also regadring maximised charts. I can have a chart pretty much the same size as it would be when maximised and have a much quickly crosshair than if the window was maximised. Same issues in WIN10 with the taskbar disappearing.

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

ToMeR_K and marty087,

Interesting observations thanks for sharing, could be something there related to what video card is running a display. You mention laptop, could it be that you have integrated 'weaker' graphics card and a dedicated graphics card on the laptop. It could be that the integrated video card is running the secondary monitor. Might be worth checking into, each OS is a little different on how to check. Normally right click on desktop > Display setting and its either right there or you have to click advanced settings + display adapter properties to read what video card is driving and do that for each monitor. Can typically be found in the Nvidia Control Center if you have that installed as well and are using an nVidia card.

Also, I might ask if you have the time for debugging purposes. Could you on a chart right click > Properties > Go to the Crosshair section and expand > then enable "Draw cursor only". Do you see better performance with that mode on the primary and secondary monitors?

Thanks.

[ToMer_K]

I think I solved it! (for laptops)

Hi Brett,
As I wrote, I tried the crosshair with and without its lines. Same behavior.

Your question encouraged me to do some research and I discovered that through Nvidia's control panel you can change the GPU that will handle NT8. By default it was on the integrated graphic display.



After changing to the high performance NVIDIA GPU the crosshair started moving fast.

[sledge]

Hi Brett,
As I wrote, I tried the crosshair with and without its lines. Same behavior.

Your question encouraged me to do some research and I discovered that through Nvidia's control panel you can change the GPU that will handle NT8. By default it was on the integrated graphic display.

[ATTACH]40753[/ATTACH]

After changing to the high performance NVIDIA GPU the crosshair started moving fast.

Which version of integrated GPU is your machine using?
And which version of NVIDIA GPU is your machine using?

Are your integrated GPU drivers up to date?

[ToMer_K]

Which version of integrated GPU is your machine using?
And which version of NVIDIA GPU is your machine using?

Are your integrated GPU drivers up to date?

Intel HD Graphics 4600 (up to date driver)
Nvidia Geforce GTX 860M

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Thanks for sharing those findings. I wonder how many users are running on laptops and with the energy efficient video card is in use for NinjaTrader. I will look into if anything could be done from the application side to default to the Primary video card in that case and additionally create some documentation in the performance section of the help guide around this information.

-Brett

[ToMer_K]

Thanks for sharing those findings. I wonder how many users are running on laptops and with the energy efficient video card is in use for NinjaTrader. I will look into if anything could be done from the application side to default to the Primary video card in that case and additionally create some documentation in the performance section of the help guide around this information.

-Brett

Great!
Will it reduce CPU usage or help in any way in NT7 as well?

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Likely not, since NT7 graphics is based on older CPU driven technology for rendering. NT8 is based on the latest GPU driven technology stack.