[p5.js 2.0 Bug Report]: Warnings about omitting strokes on high-detail 3D primitives don't use FES

[davepagurek]

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Accessibility
• Color
• Core/Environment/Rendering
• Data
• DOM
• Events
• Image
• IO
• Math
• Typography
• Utilities
• WebGL
• Build process
• Unit testing
• Internationalization
• Friendly errors
• Other (specify if possible)

p5.js version

All

Web browser and version

All

Operating system

All

Steps to reproduce this

Steps:

1. Turn off FES
2. Draw a cylinder with a high level of detail
3. It still logs a warning

That's because these sorts of warnings are raw console.logs in the codebase:

p5.js/src/webgl/3d_primitives.js

Lines 2582 to 2585 in 9799ead

	console.log(
	'Cannot draw stroke on cylinder objects with more' +
	' than 24 detailX or 16 detailY'
	);

Snippet:

p5.disableFriendlyErrors = true
function setup() {
  createCanvas(400, 400, WEBGL);
  cylinder(20, 100, 40, 40)
}

Additionally, this also triggers when you are drawing to a p5.Geometry, i.e.:

function setup() {
  createCanvas(400, 400, WEBGL);
  const myGeom = buildGeometry(() => cylinder(20, 100, 40, 40))
  noStroke()
  model(geom)
}

Arguably we should just silence this error if inside of buildGeometry since we don't know if it will eventually be drawn with strokes or not, to avoid misleading false positives.

[Aayushdev18]

I’d like to work on this. The warning appears to bypass FES due to a raw console.log. I’ll investigate fixing or silencing it appropriately

[shuklaaryan367-byte]

This does look like a clear FES consistency issue.

From reading the code, it seems the warning for high-detail cylinders is currently emitted via a raw console.log, so it still appears even when p5.disableFriendlyErrors = true. This also seems to trigger inside buildGeometry(), where stroke usage isn’t yet known, which could lead to misleading warnings.

I’d be interested in helping fix this and align the behaviour with the Friendly Error System if that sounds reasonable.
Thank you 😇

[skyash-dev]

i agree this can be misleading for beginners. i’m happy to take this if no one’s on it?

[Rit456]

From reading the issue, it looks like the warning is meant to discourage strokes on very high-detail primitives for performance reasons, but the current message doesn’t use FES and can be confusing for users.
I wanted to confirm whether the main goal here is improving the warning’s delivery (via FES) or refining when it should trigger.

[Rit456]

Observation:
When FES is disabled, drawing a cylinder with high detail values still logs a warning. This appears to be because the message is emitted via a raw console.log/console.warn rather than going through the Friendly Error System. As a result, the warning bypasses FES entirely and is shown regardless of whether FES is enabled.

Expected behavior:
User-facing warnings like this should respect the FES setting and not appear when FES is turned off.

Suggestion:
Routing this warning through FES (or conditionally suppressing it when FES is disabled) would align it with other p5.js error messaging behavior.

[Vedant1816]

Hey @davepagurek, I am new to the p5.js community and I would love to contribute to this issue. Kindly assign it to me, looking forward towards your reply.

[davepagurek]

Hi everyone! I'm going to assign this one to @skyash-dev. In general we prefer people finish their ongoing PRs in the p5 repo before taking on new ones, and also we generally discourage comments that just add to the noise by restating what's already in the issue (if AI is writing comments, as a reminder, we discourage that too -- feel free to use AIs to help you understand an issue, but do try to communicate on a human level.)

[skyash-dev]

@davepagurek just to confirm, the warning should not appear when geometry created via buildGeometry() is later drawn with model(), right?

[davepagurek]

I think that's probably easiest for now, since I suspect to do that would involve storing a warning somewhere on a property of the geometry for us to later check and log, and that feels like maybe not the right use of the p5.Geometry class for now. I'm open to other ideas though! But we can always do that later.