High resource usage while idle?

[bessemermine]

It seems like V-REP is using a fair amount of resources while just sitting idle, without a simulation running or paused.
This is particularly noticable on my desktop computer, where I have a GPU with a fan in it, which can clearly demonstrate the current load level via the noisy fan.

I'd guess that maybe it is rendering the idle frame very quickly, as fast as possible? The title bar seems to indicate "25 ms", or only around 40 fps.
I recall a similar issue coming up in StarCraft 2, of all places, where the menu screen had no frame rate limiter set on it, and because it was a simple rendering task, it would end up pegging the graphics chipset at very high load, as it tried to render at several hundred fps.

[coppelia]

Hello,

You are right, when idle, V-REP will try to keep around 20 frames per second. We modified/improved this in following way:

• By default, when idle and the mouse button is not down, there are 8 fps
• When not idle (i.e. when simulation is running or paused), or the mouse button is down, there are as many fps as needed. By default one per simulation step. This can be changed via the simulation settings dialog or the simulation speed toolbar button. Rendering can also be completely turned off with simSetBooleanParameter(sim_boolparam_display_enabled,0).
• The idle fps can be changed in the setting file located at system/usrset.txt. Refer to variable idleFps.
• The idle fps can also be changed via an API call: simSetIntegerParameter(sim_intparam_idle_fps,idleFps)

Above points 1,3 and 4 will be available in V-REP release 3.0.4

Cheers

[bessemermine]

Any expected availability date for v3.0.4 ?
I have found a sort-of workaround, by a driver-level hack for my NVidia card that allows for a global frame limiter, but there's a lot of small usability quirks with the OS and other programs associated with using this hack. And for my laptop, that only has an Intel Integrated Graphics from a few years ago, so such global limit exists.

[coppelia]

Hello,

we hope to bring version 3.0.4 out within 2 weeks (around July 8th 2013)

Cheers