Recommended shader debugger?

Graphics
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I am just porting one of my game projects onto MonoGame. I’m running Windows 8.1 and building in VS2013, if that’s interesting.

I used to use PIX/the Graphics Diagnostic toolbar in VS to debug my shaders. When I attempt to use either one against MonoGame, I get an access violation exception thrown on the line “graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this)” thrown by SharpDX.Direct3D11.dll. This happens in both my own game projects and in the MonoGame Windows Project template, with no changes by me.

Is this something that’s unique to my machine, am I missing a config step or does PIX/descendant debuggers not work against MonoGame? If the last one, are there other shader\graphics debuggers that folks have had more success with?

This looks very similar to the issue being described in MonoGame crashes when debugging on WP8.1 device, although I am not running in any form of emulation.

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Had the same problem, tried everything but nothing worked (PIX, PIX64, VS Graphics Debugging, AMD Perfhud etc.) than I run accross Nvidia nsight… The Nvidia developer registration process was a nightmare but after a day or so I could download the nsight for Visual Studio. It integrates nicely in VS 2013 and works like a charm. Of course you need to have a Nvidia GPU and you need to enable debug shader compiles in the monogame content processor.

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