Changing lighting in VR: CompositorError_TextureUsesUnsupportedFormat

[chimerax-bug-report@…]

The following bug report has been submitted:
Platform:        Windows-10-10.0.17763
ChimeraX Version: 0.91 (2019-12-23)
Description
(Describe the actions that caused this problem to occur here)

Log:
UCSF ChimeraX version: 0.91 (2019-12-23)  
© 2016-2019 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.  
How to cite UCSF ChimeraX  

> open "C:\Users\alexl\Desktop\chimeraX\Alejandro Llorente\files\1densities
> .cxs"

opened ChimeraX session  

> vr true

> lighting simple

started SteamVR rendering  
An error occurred in drawing the scene. Redrawing graphics is now stopped to
avoid a continuous stream of error messages. To restart graphics use the
command "graphics restart" after changing the settings that caused the error.  
  
Traceback (most recent call last):  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-
packages\chimerax\core\updateloop.py", line 73, in draw_new_frame  
view.draw(check_for_changes = False)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-
packages\chimerax\core\graphics\view.py", line 166, in draw  
self._draw_scene(camera, drawings)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-
packages\chimerax\core\graphics\view.py", line 205, in _draw_scene  
camera.set_render_target(vnum, r)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-packages\chimerax\vive\vr.py",
line 802, in set_render_target  
self._submit_eye_image('left', left_fb.openvr_texture, render)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-packages\chimerax\vive\vr.py",
line 816, in _submit_eye_image  
result = self._compositor.submit(eye, texture)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-packages\openvr\\__init__.py",
line 4265, in submit  
openvr.error_code.CompositorError.check_error_value(error)  
File "C:\Program Files\ChimeraX\bin\lib\site-
packages\openvr\error_code\\__init__.py", line 23, in check_error_value  
raise error_class(error_value, message)  
openvr.error_code.CompositorError_TextureUsesUnsupportedFormat  
  




OpenGL version: 3.3.13558 Core Profile Forward-Compatible Context 26.20.11016.1
OpenGL renderer: AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics
OpenGL vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.

[Tom Goddard]

Looks like a graphics drive problem.

The VR created textures where it renders each eye image and submits those to SteamVR. In this error SteamVR claims it can't handle the texture format. But the texture format requested was simply GL_RGBA with internal format GL_RGBA8 and data type GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE handed to glTexImage2D(). This format is handled by VR on Windows normally. My suspicion is that the Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics driver this user has provided some weird texture format, maybe not 8-bits per channel, or maybe a color palette, or maybe with compression, not sure.

This AMD Radeon doc says their graphics cards use float color representation internally and convert to 8-bit or 10-bit on output. Maybe this user is using 10-bit and maybe SteamVR cannot handle that.