Can't open Chaos Player. Not responding?

[Vizioen]

I can't open Chaos Player, at all. Not even after reinstall. I'm getting a not responding screen.

[yolov]

Hi there,

Can you show us what the screen is?
Did it run at one point and then you started getting this glitch?

[Vizioen]

Please, find attached image to see the screen I'm getting. I can leave it there for 5 minutes nothing is happening. It did run at some point (few months ago though).

[yolov]

Alright. Can you tell me if this is the "hotfix 1" version (v 2.00.22)?
We introduced OpenGL rendering for it to speed up performance.
There's a command flag to run in the old CPU-only mode. If you can give it a try and let me know if it works - it will be a clue to what's going on.
To run in the legacy mode, either launch player from a windows command line like this:

"C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Chaos Player\chaosplayer_qt5.exe" --enable_cpu_render

Or add the --enable_cpu_render flag at the end of the "Target" field in the right-click properties of your desktop shortcut icon:

hit apply and start Player normally.

[Vizioen]

Yes, latest version. 2.00.22.

Adding the flag works.

[yolov]

Then it's something related to video drivers or similar.
Let me discuss this internally and get back to you with more ideas on how to debug this.

[asen_stoilov]

Hi, can you try running the player through cmd. It will probably print the error that way.

[Vizioen]

Hi Alex/Asen. So as it turns out. It works again (without the flag too). I rebooted my computer and there was a Windows Update, so maybe that fixed it. The command line didn't give any error and Player started and when I tried without cmd it also worked. So...success.

Sorry for wasting your time.

[yolov]

No worries, happy to know it's working now.
When you said it started with the flag, which puts it in pure CPU mode, it was already an indication that something wasn't right with OpenGL.
Maybe Windows updates do something to video drivers and that could explain it.

[gagui]

Hello,

I can share some information about this issue. I have two monitors and experience the same problem, but only when Chaos Player starts on the second monitor. If I encounter this problem, I put the flag, start it, move the player to the main screen, close it, remove the flag, and it works fine again.

Therefore, it might be related to drivers and secondary monitors. I hope this information could be of some help.

To be safe while this problem is not fixed, how can I force the CPU mode even when the player is launched by double-clicking on a sequence file? If I put the flag in the shortcut, it only works when I double-click that specific shortcut.

[asen_stoilov]

Currently you can't do this. :/ But it is a gret idea to put a setting for this in the menu. We will consider it for the next release.
Regards,
Asen

[nicklas_byriel]

Hey..

Just wanted to add to this same issue for me with Chaos Player
Had the program work earlier (can't remember when the last time was though) - When I wanted to use it recently, it just freezes on startup.. Found this thread
and tried to set it to CPU mode and it starts... If I then move the player to my primary monitor, close it, remove CPU mode to normal, and start it up again (so program boots on my primary monitor) it works!

Windows 10, build 19045.2846
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
64GB RAM
RTX 4090 running driver 531.79

[yolov]

Thanks for sharing. Last time we checked, we concluded that it has something to do with video drivers and we hadn't figured out if we can do something about that.
When you don't use the CPU mode, the Player runs in OpenGL, where video drivers could potentially introduce issues and we're not certain if this is something we can control.

Thanks again.