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Planet Surface & Jumpgate Textures Flicker


mentis938
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I have upgraded to RC4, and the following occurences still persist. I have not seen this mentioned on the forum or the VCF.

1. When approaching a jumpgate, the jumpgate textures begin to flicker at a distance of 10.0 or below.

2. When walking in FP on the moon (& venus), the ground flickers. This may not be a texture issue however, since it looks more like a lighting issue (maybe). Here is a zipped video clip of this: www.mentisworks.org/textureflicker.zip (right click to save target-as).

3. Also when walking planetside in FP mode, the point of view/the crosshair veers to the right at times. I cannot say what the common denominator is on this one. It has happened to me on the moon as well as the IA scenarios.

That is all, and my system profile should be up to date. Thanks in advance for any light that anyone may shed on this.

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Perhaps unrelated, however, several 'large scale' games suffer from a simular problem.

The code follows the D3D API correctly, but some object clipping in complex models occures on massive grids in full resolution.

The way I heard it, its because of an object to scene size ratio. Cards will try to clip 'non-perceivable polys.' <- Or so *it* thinks. I think DX9 intro'd this.

This happens on EVE:Online.

If I run w/ Catalyst 3.2, it doesn't happen. Not all people experience it.

ProX

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So I guess I'll just have to hope that 1) a new Detonator driver will come out that will fix this, or 2) I'll be showered with a large sum of money from my tax return and get a new video card. Of course it's possible that neither of those will fix the problem .

But, has anyone experienced the veering mentioned in #2 above? This is particularly noticeable when trying to snipe at max zoom, since it will veer to the right a considerable amount. And putting the crosshairs back on target doesn't eliminate this as it continues to veer.

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I have this exact problem. I've got a Geforce 4 Ti4600 and it shows up in a lot of other games. It's disappointing because no one ever said anything about this problem when reviewing the card and I assumed it would run fine. The flickering has showed up in games like Diablo 2, Harbinger, Black & White...It seems that the problem occurs when there are two surfaces that are almost overlapping eachother. It's like the card get's "lazy" and flips them in and out...

I've tried diabling z-buffer compression and tweaking some other settings with no luck. The only thing that seems to work is switching from 4x AGP to 2x AGP, which is a pain because I'd rather be running in 4x...

As far as the "veering" goes, hasn't that been fixed in RC7?

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I just got RC7 and havn't had time to try it out yet. Thanks for the info though. I am only experiencing the flicker in UC, unfortunately, and maybe I can do something about it now.

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I have a Ti series Geforce card as well.. though I have only seen this flicker effect in UC. My other games don't show it..

ms flightsim

gothic 2

tron 2

deus ex2

prince of persia sands of time

I can tolerate the flicker for the most part... so far the only thing i've seen flicker are the jump gates. Bases, stations and such are perfectly fine. Of course, I do have the wacky cloud sky affects that have been discussed as of late. I like Nvidia, but these goofy problems are making me consider ATI when I decide to upgrade sometime down the line. UC works and it still look good, so I'll tolerate the goofy nvidia glitches for now.

I'm now playing RC7, the fixes since release are coming along quite well!

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I have a ATI 9600pro and I also get the flicker, however it only happens at particular ranges and views(eg, FP). I've just been chalking it up to driver issues that will eventually get ironed out eventually.

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well, when I'm running at 2X AGP the station and jumpgate flickering goes away but the terrain flickering still happens. I tried turning off the "planet detail map" but it diddn't do anything...I'll try messing with some other settings to see what happens

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One thing I noticed just yesterday, which may or may not be related to the RC7 patch (and probably isn't due to the lack of modifications to the graphics kernel), is that the flickering got worse for a second when landing on Earth. After initiating planetfall, and still high in the atmosphere, the cloudplane and ground texture started flickering and dissappeared completely for several seconds.

I have now reverted back to the Detonator 45.23 driver and the flickering has been minimized to a large degree, though still persists every once in a while. Not sure if there is another driver version that works better or not.

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Retail version up through latest RC.

No, it hasn't gotten worse, and it only seems to show up on Starstations and Jumpgates.

I'll do some more searching when I get home tonight on ranges from objects types of objects and views this happens in.

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For me it's happened on all versions, like Eclipse said.

I get it on the jumpgates a little but it's most noticeable on ground textures. I have to be quite close to the ground before they show up (about the same distance as the trees appear) When on the ground they're not so noticeable, probably due to the limited view perspective.

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Don't have it on planets, except before I walk. Just gates for me. RC7.

EVA in space, when I walk on an object, my FP view bounces like a kitten in a sock.

I can get a FRAPS capture if you want SC.

ProX

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No, I don't want a Fraps capture. Its a driver problem. The 32Bit Z buffer on some of these cards is not enough precision (which is why the game will use a W buffer if the card has one) and thats what causes these artifacts. There is NOTHING that I can do about it.

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For me it's been pretty much all of the above, since retail and up to current patch (RC7).

The objects affected now include jumpgates (at a distance of less than 10.0), as well as starbases/space stations, and both cloud/ground/sea plane while flying on planet as well as walkin in FP mode.

So far I cannot really tell you what the common denominator is here. And I'm not exactly sure whether this is a texture issue or something else (i.e. lighting).

-------------------

quote:

The 32Bit Z buffer on some of these cards is not enough precision (which is why the game will use a W buffer if the card has one) and thats what causes these artifacts.

...oh...well that's what it is. Nevermind .

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quote:


Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

No, I don't want a Fraps capture. Its a driver problem. The 32Bit Z buffer on some of these cards is not enough precision (which is why the game will use a W buffer if the card has one) and thats what causes these artifacts. There is NOTHING that I can do about it.


I assume by this statement you don't want the data I was collecting?

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quote:


Originally posted by Eclipse:

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

No, I don't want a Fraps capture. Its a driver problem. The 32Bit Z buffer on some of these cards is not enough precision (which is why the game will use a W buffer if the card has one) and thats what causes these artifacts. There is NOTHING that I can do about it.


I assume by this statement you don't want the data I was collecting?


Nope. There's nothing I can do about it. And I didn't know anyone was collecting data actually.
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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I have had the jumpgate flicker problem, ever since the retail release and it has looked the same throughout. It has just been the gates and stations for me. Also, firing the iod at the jumpgate makes the flicker more pronounced, seems like a reflective shader(?) effect.

Either way, it still means waiting for a driver update so it's all academic really.

I had a similar flicker problem in the game Homeworld 2 (just the mothership), which was cured by a driver update (a long time ago).

So Nvidia and ATI had better get off of their collective asses and get to work fixing these driver issues.

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I somehow get the feeling this performance war between ATI and nVidia is getting to their heads, and they're missing the bigger picture - QUALITY

Any sacrifice will do when it comes to beefing up performance though... atleast thats what they don't tell you, lol

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