Graphics drivers ruining cura experience

[Local 0]

Hi guys, another software problem if you may.

I purchased a new laptops been one specifically for my 3D printing as running Cura from a VM has been one huge pain in the lower area but even after that the thing is screwy.

Cura is working perfectly fine by using generic VGA drivers for the graphic card, just very slow as you would expect.

The problem comes when installing intels official drivers. I've tried all I can get, the latest, legacy etc:

When installed I cannot see my model with a y detail in Cura. The name of the Ultimaker is blued out, the model is black and the base of the printer is blue. (In Cura of course)

Layers mode works fine and the prints are fine it's just annoying as all......

Does anybody have the know how of both Cura and Intel graphics to assist me in changing my setting or finding decent drivers to get me up and running?

OS Win7 Ulti 32bit

A300 laptop

Intel 656 chipset/shared graphics.

Resolution 1200x800/ 1024/768

Aero turned off or on

No firewall/antivirus/internet

Cura 15.04 (Need U2go support) I can't roll back

And yes the graphics hard sucks and is shared memory but if it were that VGA drivers should still not let it work

[nallath 1,124]

I don't have any experience with the intel graphics drivers, but judging from your issues it seems like some parts of opengl that we use might not be supported by the intel drivers that you use (or are bugged in that version).

You could try to use a earlier version of the intel drivers to see if that helps.

[Local 0]

Thanks.

I've tried that, every copy I could.

I assumed it would be the openGL settings but I cant get any change even by changing every setting in the driver applet for it.

Cura seems to hate everything I own ;(

Any idea what specific setting I should be looking for?

[nallath 1,124]

No, I have little experience with the "old" Cura.

You could try and see if the 15.06 version gives you graphical issues. That version has a ton of bugs, but we're going to release a new & shiny version soon.

[nilrog 103]

Could you be more specific about what laptop you have bought? A300 is pretty generic

Since it's an integrated chipset and Google isn't showing much info on it I suspect that it is very crippled when it comes to OpenGL support.

[Local 0]

That's the old Cura? I only downloaded it yesterday!?!?

Tech moves faster than I thought =P

I'll check out 15.06. I have a feeling it won't help but anything for a laugh.

The A300 is a satellite pro from Toshiba. (Yes it's old, I'm poor)

I'm finding loads of info on the chipset, just non of it useful.

All I know is that the card/chipset does support OpenGL and Cura but the drivers don't and Intel really doesn't want you to find legacy drivers (I'm still looking)

I wish Cura still supported XP haha.

[nilrog 103]

While it probably supports OpenGL, I think it may only support basic features. I had a similar issue with an old Mac Mini (not with Cura though) where some applications cannot run because the HW, not the driver, lacks features.

[Local 0]

Yup, makes sense but as I said in the first post Cura is working fine with OEM drivers but everything obviously runs slowly which makes using a cad program almost impossible. With Intels driver cad is fine but Cura has problems.

If the problem was hardware this couldn't happen.

[nilrog 103]

Cura runs slow with those drivers because there is no HW acceleration in them. And just because one CAD program runs fine doesn't mean that Cura will on the same driver. It all depends on what OpenGL features each program is using, and which features the driver and HW supports. Until recent years most integrated graphics chipset had poor support for advanced 3D graphics :/

[nallath 1,124]

Well the old Cura used pretty old 3d graphic calls. This is why the issues don't make a lot of sense to me.

[Local 0]

Thanks for the help guys.

I was going to come on here and ask if it was possible to force Cura to run in software mode while keeping hardware acceleration on for everything else in case Nilrogs theory was right.

Somehow I lucked into a solution though.

It was definitely the drivers.

I took the opportunity to start from scratch and install a custom version on Win7. (did I mention I can't stand that OS? haha)

This version came with generic drivers that I have no idea what they are or where they come from =/ but they work.

Hardware acceleration is working fine and Cura is visible again.

Not the solution I wanted but it'll do for now

[nilrog 103]