Bug Report & Workaround: OpenGL atom selection/picking issue with Intel Iris Xe Graphics

[Davide Cortinovis]

Dear VESTA Development Team,

I am writing to report a specific graphics rendering and selection bug I encountered while using VESTA on Windows, along with the workaround I successfully used to solve it. I hope this information might be useful for your troubleshooting documentation or FAQ section to help other users facing the same issue.

System Specifications:

OS: Windows 11 (64-bit)

GPU: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics

OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 (Build 31.0.101.5590)

The Problem: When interacting with the 3D model, the atom selection (picking) tool fails to correctly calculate the Z-buffer/depth when clicking on atoms with larger atomic radii (such as Ga, As, Fe, or W). If I attempt to measure a bond length by clicking a first atom and then a second one behind or near it, VESTA intercepts the "invisible" bounding box of the first atom again. The result is that the software selects the first atom twice, outputting a bond length of 0.00000 Å. The picking tool works normally only if I manually reduce the atomic radius of these heavy atoms to a very small value (e.g., 0.2 Å) in the Objects > Properties panel.

The Solution: Since this is clearly an Intel graphics driver issue regarding OpenGL depth and picking, I bypassed the hardware rendering by forcing software rendering through Mesa3D.

Here are the exact steps that completely fixed the issue for my setup:  

  Downloaded the latest mesa3d-release-msvc package for Windows.

Used the included perappdeploy script to target the VESTA installation folder.

Installed the "Desktop OpenGL" payload, which placed opengl32.dll and libgallium_wgl.dll directly alongside VESTA.exe.

Upon restarting VESTA, the software rendering completely resolved the picking issue. I can now smoothly select any atom and measure bond lengths and angles regardless of the atomic radius. 

Best regards,

Davide