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MultiplatformUs
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Poor refreshing of windows in Unity Mode running VMWare Fusion 11 on MacOS and virtualizing Windows 10

I am running a 2018 Mac mini (i7, 16gb ram, 512gb SSD) with the latest version of MacOS and I am virtualizing Windows 10 which is on 1903 with the latest version of VMWare Fusion 11.

To start, there are no performance issues, my issue is strictly a graphical issue and it is exclusive to the Unity Mode, in Single or Full Screen Mode everything is just peachy.

In Unity Mode I am seeing some graphics issues whenever I drag a window across the screen. For example, lets say I have the calculator app open in Windows 10 using Unity Mode and I drag the window from the left side of my screen to the right side of my screen, the movement of the dragging is anything but smooth. It looks like animations and frames are dropping and moving the window looks jaggy and jerky but nothing is hanging and as soon as I stop dragging the window everything is fine. It’s strictly a graphical issue with Windows 10. I also see it in the animations when I minimize an Windows 10 program, except here I only sometimes see it. It appears to be random to me. And this only occurs with Windows 10 programs, with MacOS programs everything is smooth as one would expect.

I’ve tried reinstalling VMWare tools, changing cores to 1, 2, and 3, increasing VRAM from 1gb to 2gb, turning off 3D acceleration, and I see no changes.

Is this expected behavior? Or what would be the fix?

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Mikero
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This is normal, has been expected since Unity was created.

It takes time to capture the window from Windows and than 'draw' that in a Mac window.

So when you update/move the window, we have to find the new location inside Windows, track the changes and re-draw the UI on the Mac.  You can sort of see this in the Thumbnail view where Windows has this grey background. That's what Windows 'thinks' it's doing.

Remember too that operating systems aren't supposed to do this Smiley Wink

So generally we look at it like this...

Are folks using the window when it's being dragged? No.

As such, we put our engineering efforts on making it perform when it's not moving, rather than try to solve for this.

It's a perception thing, and we've argued about it at length. "It feels slow when I drag the window!"

But spending resources so the UI doesn't 'tear' when dragging the window around is much better spend in just about any other area of the app.

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Mikero
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This is normal, has been expected since Unity was created.

It takes time to capture the window from Windows and than 'draw' that in a Mac window.

So when you update/move the window, we have to find the new location inside Windows, track the changes and re-draw the UI on the Mac.  You can sort of see this in the Thumbnail view where Windows has this grey background. That's what Windows 'thinks' it's doing.

Remember too that operating systems aren't supposed to do this Smiley Wink

So generally we look at it like this...

Are folks using the window when it's being dragged? No.

As such, we put our engineering efforts on making it perform when it's not moving, rather than try to solve for this.

It's a perception thing, and we've argued about it at length. "It feels slow when I drag the window!"

But spending resources so the UI doesn't 'tear' when dragging the window around is much better spend in just about any other area of the app.

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Was it helpful? Let us know by completing this short survey here.

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Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
MultiplatformUs
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Thank you for the answer! Knowing this is normal is something of a relief, since now I know there isn't a problem with my installation!

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mathias_neuhaus
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Hi Mikero,

while this may be the correct answer, it's quite disappointing nonetheless.

Why don't you "cheat" when moving a window, just present the current (static) contents, and delay the redraw until the user drops the window?

Stay healthy!

Mathias

rjhornsby
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I too appreciate the candid response, and like @mathias_neuhaus, find the sort of "we argued and 'the users will live with it' was the winning side" a bit troubling. I appreciate anyone who fought for "we can do better than this". It's disappointing that for whatever reason UI/UX and QA lost on this one.

Personally, I hate dealing with Windows. IMHO it's both a technical and UI/UX nightmare. The point is that to some extent, I feel the pain of trying to make something like this work properly.

However, Mathias's suggestion of delaying the redraw seems like a much better solution than how it behaves right now - which is pretty terrible. It's difficult to drag the windows at all because there's so much lag even if you move the mouse very slowly, you're pretty much assured of overshooting the window's intended position. I could understand the screen tearing, as annoying as it is visually, but in combination with the cursor/drag halting for 250-500ms while you're trying to move the window isn't a graphical glitch - it's a usability issue.

Please reconsider the decision to fix this.

ColoradoMarmot
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The other option is to not use unity - it doesn't have the issue when in desktop mode.

Mikero
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I think that's perfectly reasonable to consider.

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Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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jubaque
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No sir!!

Not using Unity it's not a good solution at all

in my case Desktop mode is not useful when I have an extended Desktop so I need Unity constantly.

take any Idea you are so smart and can fix it. I am new in Vmware Fusion 12 and drop VirtualBox because felt Unity was my solution when using more than 1 monitor to extend screen. but it's frustrating dragging windows across the screen in special when dragging to the extended Desktop .

I own a MacBook Pro i9 16GB

wjtsandifer
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Something changed after Fusion 10.x.  Only my MacBook 12 Fusion 10.x with Unity in Windows 10 was smooth. After 11.5 and now 12.1 Unity is like a power point slide show when moving windows around while Parallels Coherence is smooth like Fusion 10.x. Something else isn't right because Unity shouldn't be a slide show when moving windows. Running on a MacBook 12 AND a MacBook Pro 16" 2019. Fusion 10.x Unity was smooth. 

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deac33
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Mikero,
Would it be reasonable when moving a window in Unity to just show the window FRAME while moving so we can tell where it is and when to release the mouse? When the mouse is released then the whole window can be redrawn.

The current problem is that it's so jerky that moving to the desired destination is very difficult and painful.

Thanks for describing the developer problem and for keeping this thread open.
-deac33

      macOS Big Sur 11.1 (20C69)
      VMWare Fusion 12: Player Version 12.1.0 (17195230)
      Fresh Install of Windows 7 to VmWare
      Vmware tools just reinstalled, tried 1,2,3 cores; 1 seems slightly better.

 

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davidew
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