Heads-Up Display (HUD)


The HUD is a heads-up display which overlays directly on your application. You can use the HUD to view real-time GPU signals and performance counters, capture a frame, and scrub through its constituent draw calls.

All actions that occur either in the HUD or on the host — such as capturing a frame or scrubbing to a specific draw call — are automatically synchronized between the HUD and the host, and thus you can switch between using the HUD and host UI seamlessly as needed.

The HUD has three (3) modes:

Running: Interact with your game or application normally, while the HUD shows real-time GPU performance graphs overlaid on the scene. When you first start your application with NVIDIA Nsight Graphics, the HUD is in Running mode. This mode is most useful for viewing GPU performance information in real-time while you play your game.

Activated: Once activated (using the activation hot-key toggle), the NVIDIA Nsight Graphics HUD allows the resize or repositioning the signal graphs, and the pause and capture of a frame from the running application.

Frame Debugger: Once you have captured a frame, you can debug the frame directly in the NVIDIA Nsight Graphics HUD (as well as from the host). The HUD allows you to scrub through the constituent draw calls of a frame, to view render targets with panning and zooming, and to examine specific values in those render targets.

Running Mode

In this mode, your application can interact with the game or application normally, and the HUD shows real-time GPU performance graphs overlaid on the scene. When you first start your application with NVIDIA Nsight Graphics, the HUD is in Running mode.

To activate the HUD:

Make sure your graphics application has focus, and then enter the activation hot-key, CTRL+Z. The HUD is now in Activated mode.

Activated Mode

Once activated (using the activation hot-key toggle), the HUD allows you to toggle hotkey experiments. A toolbar containing common operations becomes visible in this mode.

Frame Debugger Mode

Once you have captured a frame, you can debug the frame directly in the HUD. While you can also debug the frame on the host, the HUD allows you to scrub through the constituent draw calls of a frame, to view render targets with panning and zooming, and to examine specific values in those render targets.

Hot Keys Action
CTRL + Plus (+) Zooms in
CTRL + Minus (-) Zooms out
CTRL + Zero (0) Makes the current texture go to a 1:1 ratio so that 1 texel fills 1 pixel.
Left-click + drag on the scrubber at the bottom Views a particular draw call in your frame. You can hold SHIFT when scrubbing for more scrub precision, which is especially useful when looking at frames with a large number of draw calls.

When the desired draw call is active, release the left mouse button. The geometry for the currently active draw call will be highlighted, as long as it is on screen.
Left-click + drag on a render target Pans and zooms the currently displayed render target. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in to a particular portion of the render target.
CTRL + mouse over a render target Shows the value for the currently displayed render target. A small display window will show you a high-zoom view of the pixels in the area, and the value of the current pixel that the mouse is hovering over.

To switch the display to another active render target:

  • Click the Select Render Target button on the HUD toolbar.
  • A drop-down menu will appear, showing all valid choices for the current draw call. Select the desired render target.
  • Note that if a selected render target is not still active for a different draw call, the display will automatically switch to an active render target.

 


 

NVIDIA® Nsight Graphics Documentation Rev. 2018.4.180813 ©2018. NVIDIA Corporation. All Rights Reserved.