Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 21.2.
Scrubbing in the HUD. (See Color Plate XXVI.)
it for rendering, loading it into the engine, and finally rendering it on the screen.
All of this complexity makes it dicult to understand certain levels of details, such
as why a certain pixel is the color that it is.
Parallel Nsight allows you to scroll, or scrub, through each draw call in your
frame and watch the scene as it is constructed through the various passes. We
typically call it scrubbing because it is similar to interacting with a video clip
where you scrub frame by frame to see a scene unfold. This scrubbing can be done
boththroughtheHUD,rightontopoftheapplication(see
Figure21.2
)
,andalso
on the host from within Visual Studio.
It is often useful to see the entire frame at a glance. This is why Parallel
Nsight starts on the Frames Page when entering the Graphics Inspector. This
screen provides an overview of the captured frame(s), including Actions (clears,
draw calls, dispatch calls, etc.), and Direct3D performance markers. There is a
marker for the current scrub location that you can select and move with the left
mouse button. Note that as you scrub on the host, the target will update the
current location and vice versa.
As you scrub through the scene, you can look for different errors in the scene like
rendering calls that have no impact on the final image, maybe because the rendering
