Image renders before panel data is loaded

[bakerds]

What happened:
Since upgrading beyond Grafana 11.2.2, image rendering is broken for panels that load slowly. The rendering completes, but it happens before the panel data is loaded, so we see an empty panel with the loading animation visible at the top. Panels that load very quickly render fine.

For example, this panel takes 1.5 seconds to load in the browser, and image rendering happens before data is loaded:

Edit: Actually, I can reproduce this with a panel that loads in 75 ms as well 😢

What you expected to happen:
With Grafana 11.2.2 and prior versions, these panels rendered ok.

Is there a way to wait for data to finish loading before rendering? If not, is there a configurable parameter to simply delay rendering by a few seconds?

How to reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible):
In the browser, I'm using the menu option, "Share" > "Direct link to rendered image"
There are no weird URL parameters involved.

Environment:

• Grafana Image Renderer version: 3.11.6
• Grafana version: 11.4.0, 11.3.1, 11.3.0
• Installed plugin or remote renderer service: plugin
• OS Grafana Image Renderer is installed on: Rocky 8.10
• User OS & Browser: any/all