Originally from ticket #25295.

Whenever I select one of the second level system settings in SkySafari 4 (like adjusting the star magnitude or the milkyway brightness), the text everywhere in the toolbars and commands turns blocky and illegible. I coudn't even see what to select to close the program. I have turned off the Force GPU rendering per your suggestion but this doesn't fix the problem. I have to completely power off my tablet and turn it back on again for the text to return to normal. This is very frustrating. Please advise.

Bill Tschumy replies:

Michele,

Sorry you are having this problem. I really don't know what is happening. In all the cases we've seen previously, turning of "Force GPU Rendering" has fixed the issue. Please verify that the change has actually been remembered.

What kind of device do you have and what version on Android? Is it a stock Android or have you installed a custom ROM?

Bill Tschumy
SkySafari Developer

Ticket update:

All of the Hardware Accelerated Rendering features are turned off or unchecked. This was the default.

The Force GPU Rendering (for 2D drawing) is unchecked
The Debug GPU Overdraw is turned off
The Profile GPU Rendering is turned off

I have a Dragon Touch A1 tablet with Android 4.4.2. I haven't installed anything other than a couple game apps. The program works until I try to adjust some setting. Then I have to power off and restart every time. Is there another setting that might be doing this?

Thank you for trying to help me with this. I was so excited to use the program.

Michele

Bill Tschumy replies:

Michele,

Although I haven't seen this before, it is possible that your device doesn't have enough graphics memory to adequately run SkySafari.

As a test, try turning off the panoramic horizon. It might be hard to find the setting if the text is unreadable, but it is in the Horizon and Sky settings. Choose the option to show the horizon as a translucent area. You could also try turning off the Milky Way display. These changes will reduce the amount of graphics memory the app needs and *might* make the problem go away. If that works, you could try re-enabling the Milky Way.

Bill Tschumy
SkySafari Developer

Ticket update:

Bill,

That did it! I turned off the Milky Way, Horizon, and switched Constellation mythical pics to just lines, then went in to increase star magnitude and didn't have a problem. I went back and turned on the horizon as transluscent and turned on milky way and it happened again. As soon as I turn off the milky way again, it works fine. So definitely the graphics memory with my tablet is the issue.

Thank you for your assistance. I look forward to trying it out tonight!

Michele

Bill Tschumy replies:

Michele,

Glad to hear you have a partial work around. It sounds like that tablet may be a bit skimpy on graphics memory.

Bill Tschumy
SkySafari Developer