Graphics Log Document

A graphics log document is a record of the Direct3D events that were captured from your game or app during a graphics debugging session. You can examine the log in Visual Studio to identify rendering errors so that you can use the Graphics Diagnostics tools to inspect them in more detail.

This is what a graphics log document looks like in Visual Studio:

Note

Starting in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, the Graphics Diagnostics tool windows are hosted in an independent copy of the Visual Studio shell. This customized shell, called Visual Studio Graphics Analysis, eliminates unnecessary menus and options, but otherwise the graphics log document and workflow are the same as before.

To start Visual Studio Graphics Analysis from the Visual Studio, from the capture interface, choose one of the frames you have captured by following the Frame … link above the thumbnail image, or double-click the thumbnail.

For more information about this change, see Graphics Diagnostics Overview.

Understanding graphics log documents

By using Visual Studio to examine a graphics log document, you can visualize the effects of Direct3D events on the render target that occurred during capture. You can pinpoint regions of the render target that contain unexpected output. When you select a pixel in the affected region, you can use Graphics Diagnostics to inspect it, its shaders, the Direct3D events that affected it, the application call stack that led to those events, and the DirectX objects that support those events. You can use this information to diagnose rendering problems in your game or app.

The top part of the window (Graphics Experiment.vsglog) displays the current render target output of the selected frame, and the bottom part displays a Frame List that contains thumbnail images of the captured frames.

To inspect a frame

• In the Frame List, select the frame that you want to inspect. The render target output in the top part of the graphics log document is updated to display the selected frame.

To inspect a pixel

• In the top part of the graphics log document, select the pixel that you want from the render target output. When a pixel is selected, you can use the Graphics Pixel History window to view detailed information about the selected pixel. For more information, see Graphics Pixel History.

Playback machine

Also displayed in the upper-right corner of the Frame List is the Playback Machine. The playback machine is a machine or device that is used to play back graphics events from a graphics log file during a later graphics diagnostics session. By using a different device instead of your development machine to play back captured events, you can more accurately reproduce the execution environment in which the problem occurs—for example, you can use a machine that has different graphics hardware or drivers than the ones that your development machine uses, or other kinds of devices, such as an ARM-based Windows RT tablet or Windows Phone device.

For information about how to specify a playback machine, see How to: Change the Graphics Diagnostics Playback Machine.

Graphics log summary information

When a graphics log file is the active document, the Properties window displays information about the environment that hosted the Graphics Diagnostics capture session. Several categories of information are displayed.

• Direct3D Information
  Lists information about the hardware and driver features of the display adapter that was used during the capture session.

  Property	Description
  10-bit XR High Color Format	True if 10-bit XR high-color format is supported; otherwise, False.
  DirectCompute CS 4.x	True if Compute Shader 4.0 is supported; otherwise, False.
  Double Precision Shaders	True if the display adapter supports double-precision (64-bit) floating-point values; otherwise, False.
  Driver Command Lists	True if the driver supports command lists; otherwise, False.
  Driver Concurrent Creates	True if the driver supports concurrent (asynchronous) creation; otherwise, False.
  Extended Formats (BGRA, etc.)	True if extended formats like BGRA are supported; otherwise, False.
  Max HW Feature Level	Displays the highest feature level that is supported by the display adapter.

• Display Information
  Lists information about the display adapter that was used during the capture session.

  Property	Description
  Description	The display adapter description string.
  Display Memory	The amount of memory that's installed on the graphics adapter.
  Driver Name	The name of the graphics adapter driver.
  Driver Version	The version of the graphics adapter driver.
  Name	The name of the graphics adapter.

• Experiment File
  Lists information about the experiment file that's associated with the capture session.

  Property	Description
  Path	The path of the .vsglog file. Note Under legacy capture, this property is unused.

• Module Information
  Lists the name and version of the dynamic link libraries (DLLs) that were loaded by the app during the capture session.

• System Information
  Lists information about the hardware and operating system that hosted the app during the capture session.

  Property	Description
  Memory	The amount of memory that's installed in the computer.
  OS Architecture	The target CPU architecture of the operating system.
  OS Version	The operating system version.
  Processor	The processor that's installed in the computer.
  Target Application Architecture	The target CPU architecture of the app. This can be different than the OS Architecture.

• Target Application
  Lists information about the app that's the subject of the capture session.

  Property	Description
  Last-Modified Date/Time	The date and time that the app was built.
  Path	The path of the app.
  Process ID	The process ID that was given to the app.
  Version	The app version.

• VSG Log File
  Lists information about the graphics log document.

  Property	Description
  Created by	The name of the app that created the graphics log document. For example, if the capture session was initiated from Visual Studio (manual capture) the value of this property is Visual Studio.
  Session Start Time	The date and time that the capture session began.
  Size	The size of the graphics log document.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Missing Objects Due to Vertex Shading

Walkthrough: Debugging Rendering Errors Due to Shading