Game view goes dark grey in 5.4.0f3

arkano22 · August 1, 2016, 9:26am

Is anyone else constantly getting this error in Unity 5.4.0f3?:

RenderTexture warning: Destroying active render texture. Switching to main context.

When this happens, the editor game view goes completely black until you switch to/from fullscreen. It happens around 3-4 times per minute, which is annoying to the point of making me consider go back to 5.3.
Happens in all of my six projects.

I read in the 5.4 beta forums of a very similar issue that made it to RC2, could it be that it has slipped trough?

AntonVazhinsky · August 2, 2016, 7:16am

I have the same problem, on OS X El Capitan

arkano22 · August 2, 2016, 7:33am

OS X El Capitan here too. I´m considering sending a bug report now that this doesn´t sound like it’s just me.

Also, if you resize the game view window while it’s black, do you get random garbage? Seems like the render texture used by Unity as the final rendering target is getting destroyed for no reason.

AntonVazhinsky · August 2, 2016, 10:46am

It looks as if the resize window. So far, it is necessary to establish unity 5.3 so it is impossible to work.

arkano22 · August 2, 2016, 11:46am

Yes, this is exactly what is happening to me. I will report it and revert back to 5.3 in the meantime, since the editor is unusable in this state.

artysta · August 4, 2016, 10:47pm

This is happening to me as well (also El Capitan) I have to close the Game Window and open a new one and it comes back alive. It has me worried (again), is this going to crash my devices?

arkano22 · August 5, 2016, 7:54am

Haven’t deployed anything with 5.4 on El Capitan, but chances are standalone builds will also have this problem. I assume the rendering path is the same for both the editor and standalone, so if the editor is affected builds will too.

I could be wrong tho, so just try it. Also, will probably only happen to people playing your game on El Capitan.

zedarus · August 5, 2016, 8:40am

Yep, happens to me as well on OS X 10.11.6: game view goes “black” (well, not completely black, but filled with its background color #282828). But I still can’t find a 100% way to reproduce this.

arkano22 · August 5, 2016, 9:12am

Yes, I suppose that color comes from some place in the graphics card video memory, probably from some other unrelated texture used by the editor UI. As soon as you resize the view, garbage will replace it.

I suppose the result of having a render texture that has already been destroyed bound for rendering is undefined, thus you get something (anything) else from the video memory instead.

Btw, no progress on the bug report I sent. Haven´t heard back from Unity on this.

artysta · August 5, 2016, 2:27pm

I’m only building iOS builds at the moment and testing has not seen this on the mobile devices, so far only in the editor.

arkano22 · August 5, 2016, 3:06pm

If this is a El Capitan only issue as it seems, will not happen in any other platform / OS. This seems to confirm it.

Koth · August 6, 2016, 12:43am

I can confirm that this is not limited to El Capitan, I am having the same issue on OS X 10.8.5 using Unity 5.4. My screen doesn’t go black but it goes to the default grey background of the scene editor. Fixes itself when I pause and unpause play mode. Haven’t encountered it in builds yet but I just started using 5.4 today.

akeplinger · August 8, 2016, 2:01pm

Seeing this to. The Game view works for a while, then goes black. If I resize the game view I get graphical garbage. If I close the Game window and open a new one it works for a while but eventually goes black again. Alternating pause and play has no effect. Using multiple monitors so it might be some side effect of that.

arkano22 · August 8, 2016, 2:49pm

Hi akeplinger,

I only use one monitor (laptop mac) and I get the exact same behavior you describe, so I think it’s not related to the amount of monitors.

Which OS are you using? Just to get an idea of the severity of this in terms of users affected. The more we are, the faster we´ll draw attention towards this bug.

artysta · August 8, 2016, 5:58pm

Im using 10.11.6 El Capitan with 2 monitors on a late2013 27" iMac. Happens at least once a day but usually many more times at what seems to be random times. It goes Grey, not black, and for me I have to close the Game window and re-open to fix. I don’t have to re-run Unity.

arkano22 · August 8, 2016, 9:38pm

Yep, mine is also dark grey. Closing the game window does not fix it for me, though.

ppixu · August 9, 2016, 11:32am

This has been happening to me for some time with Unity 5.4 betas, and now in the release version. Rebooting Unity fixes it. Sometimes ticking off “Maximize on play” helps as well. Using 15" MBP Mid 2015 with AMD M370X and latest El Capitan.

juan-jo · August 11, 2016, 11:48am

Same here.
If you switch to another tab and then back to the ‘Game’ tab it works again.
Quite annoying anyway.

Ayrik · August 12, 2016, 8:49pm

This is happening to me too. If switching tabs doesn’t work, I switch layouts, and if that doesn’t work I have to restart Unity. Not fun if it happens right in the middle of testing something! I’d like to submit a bug report but usually I’m on the train without proper wifi and it’s hard for me to remember to send in a report when I get home…

Buhlaine · August 12, 2016, 8:59pm

Just wanted to pop in and give you a few links that are related. We currently have an issuetracker page up for a similar bug, Unity Issue Tracker - Game view disappears after playmode. I’m looking around to see if I can find one that is your exact issue.

Here is also a thread that is going to be updated by our editor team regarding the issuetracker above. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/blank-game-view.421817/ This issue was also mentioned in that thread, it might be worth monitoring.