Framerate annihilation on iteraction with UI elements

[Yen]

When interacting with the button on the default template for C# blank app in preview 1, the framerate of my entire desktop gets lowered drastically for up to a second at which point it returns to normal. Both clicking and just hovering over the button cause this to happen.

Note that I am recording this on a high refresh rate monitor (144hz) and as such, samples and videos shown below might not be visible on lower refresh rate devices.

Steps to reproduce the bug
Create the blank app C# template in preview 1.
Hover over button.

Expected behavior
Not make my desktop and any other graphically enhanced content (games, videos) break.
I can fully confirm that this does not happen on older UWP applications (both the settings and and the windows calculator do not cause this issue).

Screenshots
This is a video here and not a gif as to show the issue best requires high refresh rate playback.
https://streamable.com/wkybdm
The website used here is https://www.testufo.com/ and is a common website used for testing high refresh rate issues. Please ignore that the website is saying stuttering issues are occuring even before the UI component is interacted with, the video recording software causes enough of a disruption to trigger this. Even without a high refresh rate monitor, you can see the UFOs desync and slow down massively for a second after interaction indicating a massive issue with the framerate of the desktop at that time.

Version Info

NuGet package version: [Microsoft.WinUI 3.0.0-preview1.200515.3]

Windows 10 version	Saw the problem?
Insider Build (xxxxx)
November 2019 Update (18363)	Yes
May 2019 Update (18362)
October 2018 Update (17763)
April 2018 Update (17134)
Fall Creators Update (16299)
Creators Update (15063)

Device form factor	Saw the problem?
Desktop	Yes
Mobile
Xbox
Surface Hub
IoT

[ranjeshj]

@MikeHillberg @jeffstall @codendone as FYI

[codendone]

@Yen We have not be successful at reproing this issue. Could you try this on Preview 3 to see if the problem still repros for you there?

[Yen]

@codendone I have updated to the latest preview version of visual studio and reinstalled the winui3 preview extension. I can confirm the issue persists.

[codendone]

Thanks for checking, @Yen! We'll keep working on this, then.

[Yen]

@codendone I had another look and it turns out this bug only presents itself when the window itself is in focus even though the visual effects for the hover event are firing when not in focus! Here is an example of this https://streamable.com/6hblw9 (again, not an embedded gif because of the playback framerate). You can see the same behaviour as before where it causes any other hardware accelerated content on the device to get serious frame timing issues for a second before resolving.

10.0.19041 Build 19041
GTX 1070 driver version 456.38

[codendone]

Very interesting. Thanks for these extra details!

[ChewWorker]

I just checked this with a recent windows build with a 144Hz monitor. I tried a variety of different scenarios including the blank sample app not in focus and hovering over the button. I couldn't reproduce the issue. If this is still reproing we need more information to be able to reproduce your configuration or get a trace from this machine/configuration.

Thanks!

[Yen]

@ChewWorker Would you be able to see if you can reproduce this on a machine with both a 144hz monitor and a 60hz monitor attached at the same time? This is the only other thing I can think of that has caused issues for me in the past as far as high refresh rate goes.

[pratikone]

could you verify if this issue still appears. The old video link has expired. if it does, feel free to reopen this issue and also attach a new video as it has been hard to debug

[A1steaksa]

Hey, I've just come across this issue after running into this problem. I have a 144hz left monitor and a 60 hz right monitor. The Windows Store version of the WinUI 3 Gallery app shows this effect.

It can be repro'd on my end by comparing quickly minimizing/maximizing the WinUI 3 Gallery by clicking the taskbar icon. By comparison, Windows Explorer performs just fine when doing the same.

Some additional details, in case it's useful:

• Running Windows 11 21H2 OS Build 22000.1335
• I've been able to get this same effect in a custom window using the Blank App, Packaged (WinUI 3 in Desktop) template, potentially to a lesser degree, though it's hard to say for sure from just looking at it.
• The effect is not entirely localized to the app itself. If you trigger the effect and then un-minimize another app, the other app will also have a lowered framerate for a short time. I can't say for sure, but it feels like it's possible that switching to another app lowers the amount of time the effect happens. It might be that non-foreground apps don't repaint as frequently or some similar optimization that's responsible for that, if indeed it is actually something I'm seeing.
• Videos are recorded via ShareX at a target of 60 fps
• Whatever the Settings, Media Player, and Photos apps are made out of, they do not trigger this same effect

DxDiag.txt

fpsDropDemo.mp4

If there's any other info I can give that might help, please let me know.

[pratikone]

thanks. I will check it out. re-opening the issue

[github-actions]

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