When loading a project, the editor shows an empty scene before actually showing the last edited scene

[NatGazer]

Godot version

4.2 beta5, beta6 and rc1

System information

Windows 10 - Vulkan (Forward+) - RTX 3060 laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 5600H - 24GB RAM

Issue description

Every time a project is loaded, after the boot splash, an empty scene like the one below appears:

After some time, the last edited scene is finally shown as expected.

I took the time to see after which version this occurs and I concluded that this glitch is only present in 4.2 beta5, beta6 and rc1. Godot 4.2beta4 and before works as expected

Steps to reproduce

Just open a project with at least one saved scene. If the scene takes time to load, the glitch is more noticeable

Minimal reproduction project

glitchBlankScene.zip

Just a simple scene with some high-poly count CSGMesh3D to make loading time big. I didn't delete the .godot folder because that doesn't make Godot load the last edited scene. Anyway you can delete the .godot folder yourself and reopen the project a second time to see the glitch

[NatGazer]

I don't believe this is an enhancement. I know this is just something visual, but it just makes project loading look so unclean. And considering this is not an expected behavior that was introduced in one of the latest releases, I believe this is more a regression than an enhancement

[KoBeWi]

Duplicate of #47053
It's not a new issue.

[NatGazer]

Ok, I might haven't made myself clear. As I said, this glitch only happens after Godot 4.2 beta5, this is not a duplicate of a 2021 PR.

This is how a project opens in beta4:

This is how a project opens in rc1:

[KoBeWi]

This does look the same as the old issue. The "empty scene" appears while the project is loading, which means that for some reason your project is initializing a bit longer.

This is technically some performance regression, but might be hard to pinpoint.

[NatGazer]

I actually noticed that rc1 opens projects a bit faster than beta4, although rc1 shows the empty scene.

So, I believe this is not about time, but rather a change made in beta5 that unexpectedly started to cause this behavior. I took a look at the dev snapshot for beta 5 and I have no ideia which change might be causing this

[akien-mga]

This is likely a consequence of #84200, where some steps in the editor initialization had to be delayed to give time for the mesh conversion tool to be shown.

At this time it's the least bad option we have for this, for future releases we plan to rework editor initialization fully to have better control on all this.

[NatGazer]

This is likely a consequence of #84200

Ok, that's good to know. I'm just wondering, but... Considering that, would it be easy to disable that delay in projects that are already updated to 4.2?

[akien-mga]

It's just cosmetic, you wouldn't save much time. On your screen capture it looks like it takes around the same time to get to the scene, it's just faster in 4.2-rc1 to show the editor UI before the scene has loaded.

The changes we had to do around #84200 are quite complex and still have edge cases, so this likely won't be changed at this stage.

[NatGazer]

Understood, thank you for the clarification

[Calinou]

This can likely be worked around by adding a fixed loading plaque before the editor is fully initialized, so you see some kind of feedback while the editor is still finishing loading.

[KoBeWi]

The empty editor state is interesting. You can't open any file, because everything is empty, but you can run your project. And if an error happens in the project, the script editor will actually open a script. The editor is fully responsive, just nothing is loaded.

[YuriSizov]

I don't think that the performance and the regression tags are appropriate here. According to the clips posted above it loads even a bit faster now. It's just that the intermediate state shows up for a bit longer.

I guess previously something else in the editor locked it in place so the splash image wouldn't go away, and now it goes away a bit earlier. But the overall load times don't seem to be meaningfully different. And the intermediate state was always there. As for better loading indication, this is something I plan to work on in 4.3.

[KoBeWi]

So in the end it's a duplicate of #47053?

[YuriSizov]

For poor editor feedback part, I guess so. But we can still keep this one open to indicate that there was some recent change that may make things more noticeable for users.

[larinius]

I have same behavior - I see just empty editor without any assets for some period of time (10-30 seconds). At least add loading spinner or "Pease wait.." text, so we could know that project not crashed and will open soon.

[NatGazer]

This is likely a consequence of #84200, where some steps in the editor initialization had to be delayed to give time for the mesh conversion tool to be shown.

Considering that now the conversion mesh tool is not shown at startup, why wasn't this fixed? The code that makes this "delay" behavior shouldn't be needed anymore right?

[YuriSizov]

@NatGazer The "delay" is not related to when the message appears. It's related to when the tool runs, which still happens at the startup. And at the end of the day, the change doesn't impact anything other than visual state of the editor. It still loads for the same amount of time.

The logic behind the editor startup is quite convoluted, so given there is no actual performance regression there was no point risking breaking something so close to the release.

[akien-mga]

Duplicate of #47053 (reopened as #92650 was reverted for 4.3).