Messages

46

Feature Requests / Scale bar units

« on: September 21, 2013, 12:33:11 AM »

Scale bar section in ground control has distance in meters “Distance (m)”, but it looks like its cm, because when I put 0.01 to describe 1cm, my model becomes very small, and only works right if I put 1.0 So I think it should be (cm) there.

47

Feature Requests / Re: Parallel chunk processing

« on: June 20, 2013, 09:41:58 PM »

A simpler way to solve this might be to add a feature to import / export chunks from other project files. Then users can run 2 projects with 2 instances of Photoscan open and then merge them together into one project file later.

There's always a way around, for everything. However feature request is not only for something that doesn't exist, but also for something that makes your life easier and saves time.

48

Feature Requests / Re: Parallel chunk processing

« on: June 19, 2013, 12:26:11 AM »

Great Idea James. It will allow do corrections to idle chunks and view processed ones.

49

General / Re: Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 19, 2013, 12:20:31 AM »

Hey Milos,

Thank you for that link! Was wondering if there was a way to switch off HP for some programs from windows. Hate turning it off from BIOS, it hurts other software and processes which do benefit from HP.

Instead of completely disabling HyperThreading, you can use programs like Process Lasso (free) to set default CPU affinities for critical processes, so that their threads never get allocated to logical cores. We call this feature HyperThreaded Core Avoidance. It is better than completely disabling Hyper-Threading because it leaves the rest of the system free to take advantage of this otherwise useful feature.

http://bitsum.com/processlasso its free and totally works, just tested. Also has many more interesting tools.

No, Agisoft team done excelent work with paralelism in pscan

I was speaking about parallel chunk processing, feature requested here:
http://www.agisoft.ru/forum/index.php?topic=1337.0

50

General / Re: Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 18, 2013, 11:18:18 PM »

Ahhh, do I love this thread? So much weird and fascinating stuff going on. Everyone is getting strange results. Now maybe, just maybe! Our own observation of tests, affects the observed reality  Quantum physics theory at computer software testing    Ok back to our strange stuff.

Spent some time installing and setting up Windows 7 just to run this tests and see if OS makes much difference. And here are some peculiar results:



Switching to Windows 7 did show some positive changes in speed. But, difference between 402 and 394 seconds is very low and I will neglect it, saying that there was no difference between two OS on this stage. However when I started playing with HP, weirdness came up. Not only it worked faster with HP off, it also performed 10% better under Windows 7. Although I think its only due to software issue

My conclusion is that OS doesn't matter that much, and I will stop my tests on this stage before I loose my mind. Clearly, and I hope you all will agree, we have a problem that affects Photoscan performance and its quite complex. Starting with OS and BIOS settings, ending with complex workstation hardware.

I hope in the future, we will see Photoscan that can optimize itself for best performance, based on the system hardware and OS. Feature request maybe!? 

Also wish AgiTeam implements parallel chunk processing some time soon.

51

General / Re: Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 16, 2013, 10:32:05 PM »

Hey Milos! Thank you for sharing that info!

I second that! Switching off Hyper Threading (HT), did show nice improvement in processing speed. However switching off Turbo Boost only crippled general productivity in my system. As my Xeon's boosting up not just for a second or two, but do work over 3GHz during the whole process. May be its due to cooling system. So I can confidently say boosting helps a great deal.



So funny thing about HT. Apps either support it, or they don't. Never knew it can work against you. Its like if all of those employees, (in Wishgranter post) starting to argue with each and screw around pissed off

Also my tests showed that HT OFF only helps during Photo Align process. Geometry Build showed the same time with it being ON or OFF.

IMHO, based on the testing data, Photoscan doesn't support HT, and has a faulty algorithm(s) responsible for Photo Align process. Sounds reasonable to make it not use HP feature, unless we benefit from it.

Would be nice to hear what Agi Team has to say.

52

General / Re: Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 15, 2013, 08:28:25 PM »

Hey James, from what I know caching is not something that happens for no reason. You have to really sweat a little on the code side to make caching possible.

Also I did ran test on totally different sets of photos as well as on identical. And did not notice anything of that sort.

53

Feature Requests / Parallel chunk processing

« on: June 15, 2013, 04:16:10 PM »

http://www.agisoft.ru/forum/index.php?topic=1330.msg6645#msg6645

54

General / Re: Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 15, 2013, 04:06:57 PM »

 Thank you all for replying, there were some good ideas!

 So the last two days I spent testing this two systems, to understand how they deal with the load. Turned out classical testing, of starting two machines simultaneously on the same task and see which one finishes first, don't really do justice this days. Especially when you get into equation dual CPU systems.

 Digging for hidden potential in both systems I decided to run 2 and 3 parallel Photoscan windows, working at the same time on 6 photos set. Which started to show some very interesting results. You can see from bottom table, time performance on each test.



 This graph shows how each system deals with the load during parallel Photoscan tasking. Obviously exponential peaking is a bad thing



 While working on the same one task, during conventional testing, systems didn't show much difference in speed and only in cost . However when you multitasking, you're starting to reach the true Xeon station potential. As it deals with load more efficiently judging from that graph.

 Here's some results of Xeon working on 90 photos set where each one is 18mp!



 Having that data, its pretty clear that sequential chunk processing is not the most efficient way to work, for those of us who need to process multiple sets of photos. Hereof I would like to request for Parallel chunk processing feature in Photoscan. As from this, all will benefit.

 Here's an example.

 Sequential processing of 5 sets, 90 photos each:
 107 + 107 +107 +107 +107 = 535 min

 Parallel processing of 5 sets, 90 photos each:
 128 + 128 + 107 = 363 min

And this is 172 hours of saved time, we can spend processing two more sets and walk a dog 

Also depending on system potential, it would be cool to be able to set the number of parallel processes Photoscan will do. If sets are not heavy, like 20-35 photos, it can be set to 4 may be even 5. If its heavy, 100 photos and more, could be set to 2.

Would like to hear what you all think, may be you have something to add or see where I'm wrong.

Some screen shots of nice smooth synchronized parallel processing here:

55

General / Strange workstations testing results.

« on: June 14, 2013, 12:56:12 AM »

 Hello Agisoft team. We at Infinite Realities started one sweet experiment and baffled with results. Would be cool if you could shed some light on it.
 So we have two powerful Workstations running Agisoft PhotoScan Professional edition 0.9.1



 As you can see, Photo Align stage was a total disaster for Xeons Workstation. Which doesn't make any sense as there are two E5-2670 running on Max Turbo Frequency at 3.3 GHz against one i7-3930K
 On Geometry build stage we didn't see much difference in speed. Although Xeon WS showed dramatic speed boost on Depth Reconstruction and was already at 10% building geometry while i7 WS was still on Depth stage. This might be only because GPU's kicked in, but were busy only during Depth Reconstruction stage which is sad because its just 3-4% of the overall time.

The questions are:
How is it possible that 6 core with 12 threads at 3.8Ghz overtakes 16 cores 32 threads at 3.3 GHz?
Why GPU's potential is not harnessed during all processing stages?