Google Maps showing a black page

thedatabug

Just recently Google Maps has stopped working. Initially it shows the normal maps page but after a couple of seconds everything just goes black. If I zoom in Motorway labels begin to show but are blank.

All other browser on my system are fine. I have cleared all google cookies just to see if it makes any difference but no. Am I the only one with this problem?

mib2berlin

@thedatabug
Hi, you are the first reported it.
All fine here, Vivaldi 6.1.3035.111, Opensuse Linux.
I guess a system update mess up your GPU/Vivaldi setup.
Disable hardware acceleration in Settings > Webpages > Restart Vivaldi to test this.
Or an extension break after an update, you can test this in a private window.

Cheers, mib

thedatabug

@mib2berlin

Disabling Hardware Acceleration fixed it.

I'm on Manjaro. Fairly fresh re-install only a couple of weeks old.

mib2berlin

@thedatabug
No idea, it´s only guessing but if your Manjaro gets an update lately some new libraries or driver may cause this.
Which GPU it this?

thedatabug

I have an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

How will switching off hardware acceleration affect my browsing?

mib2berlin

@thedatabug
The acceleration is mostly for video streaming, 3D objects in the browser.
If your CPU is powerful you would even notice.
I disable it for a test and forget it for a few weeks on my older i5 laptop.

thedatabug

@mib2berlin

OK I have a Ryzen 7 5800X 3D and 32gb of Ram so Im guessing it wont make much difference to me.

Still kinda irritating knowing that it did work and now it doesn't. I'm probably gonna break my system trying to get to the bottom of it :).

mib2berlin

@thedatabug
Haha, yes this can happen sometimes.
Simply check from time to time, at least at the next Vivaldi update.

Cheers, mib

Pathduck

@thedatabug Now that you've establishes it's due to HW acceleration/GPU, you can try enabling it again, and instead toggle some GPU-related flags.

Go to vivaldi://flags and search for terms like gpu/canvas/raster. My guess from what you're describing is that this is related to canvas rendering so the first flag would be the most likely candidate.

chrome://flags/#disable-accelerated-2d-canvas - 
chrome://flags/#disable-accelerated-video-decode
chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization

There are other flags than this, these are just the most "likely" ones to try.
Make sure you restart & retest after each flag is toggled.

Does other sites work or is it just Google Maps?
Some canvas test sites I dug up:
https://webglsamples.org
http://clockmaker.jp/labs/120202_html5_performance/canvas.html
https://keyou.github.io/CanvasMark/
https://www.kevs3d.co.uk/dev/shaders/
Some really cool demos here, and assuming they all need canvas to work. They will definitely not run smooth with HW accel. off though.

Of course, GPU and driver stuff is way more complicated on Linux that what I'm used to on Windows, so might be other weird stuff going on.

Strange that your "all other browsers" don't have the same issue. I guess it depends what these browsers are. Are they Chromium-based (i.e. every browser but Firefox and derivates)?

Note: This has probably absolutely nothing to do with cookies. But clearing cache is always a good idea in any case.

thedatabug

@Pathduck

I tried disabling the flags one by one and Google Maps still showed the black screen.

The samples from the canvas test sites all worked fine.

I also have Brave, Chrome and Edge installed as well as Firefox. The other chromium browsers show Maps just fine.

Edit: I also followed your advice of clearing cache and that did the trick. Maps works now.

mib2berlin

@thedatabug
Hi, I guess @Pathduck meant to enable this flags.

Pathduck

@thedatabug said in Google Maps showing a black page:

Edit: I also followed your advice of clearing cache and that did the trick. Maps works now.

Wow, OK that's great - if only all cases were that simple

Yeah, the naming of the flags is quite misleading and not easy to understand what the defaults are.

Opera does this really well, showing what the defaults actually are.

The defaults are usually Enabled, so for testing should be set to Disabled. It was mostly to try and pin down where the problem might lie. So if turning HW accel. back on, and disabling 2D canvas, and then it works, we know the problem lies with 2D canvas rendering. Just basic detective work.

But it appears it was a stale cache issue, it happens a lot. Also explains why the other browsers worked of course - they didn't have stale cache.

If I were to guess, a simple hard reload bypassing cache would've solved it, i.e. press Ctrl+F5 is the general recommendation anytime you encounter some website issue, first thing to try.

thedatabug

@Pathduck
OK thanks I didnt know about ctrl F5.

Thanks again.

Pathduck

@thedatabug Ah yes, the old Ctrl+F5 magic combo

Back in the day when I started using the web (late 90s) it seemed it was common knowledge, but these days when everyone seems to think web sites are static "Apps" it's been largely forgotten except for web developers.

The thing is, websites are not like "Apps" running on your system - they are dynamic and change on the backend all the time. So when people keep their tabs open all the time and never restart the browser or clear cache, weird stuff happens.

Some docs:
https://www.debugbar.com/difference-between-f5-and-shift-f5/
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/c/ctrl-f5.htm