Flickering textures and clipping

titaniumx3 · 13 Jun 2006 at 05:48

This has been a problem with virtually every card I've ever bought. What I'm talking about is the annoying texture flickering and clipping at polygon seams observed in certain games. The best example is Battlefield 2, it totally ravages the game especially with my old 9800 pro and even with the X1900XT, though to a lesser extent. You mainly see it when zooming into distant objects (say with a sniper rifle), but also on certain closer objects; the grenades in BF2 are an excellent example, where the silver parts seem to be flickering/breaking up like crazy.

I've now also observed it in GR:AW, though nowhere near as bad as BF2 its still very annoying. Sometimes it appears on the chacters clothes, where the different polygons meet, sometimes its just the odd flickering texture here and there (luckily in GR:AW its not that noticeable). I also find that it mostly appears on distant buildings, statues, cars; you can clearly see the effect when using the sniper rifle scope.

Does anyone know the cause of this? Can it be fixed?

(BTW, I can remember with old games it used to appear when playing in 16bit colour, but I don't think games use 16bit these days.)

jellybeard999 · 13 Jun 2006 at 05:59

i get it too :/

its always the shape of the polygon... as though the 1 poly has trouble being rendered

Dutch Guy · 13 Jun 2006 at 08:51

I think I got the same when HL2 first came out, after installing a newer driver I dod not see it anymore so perhaps it is driver related?

Also try changing the control panel options for your card like Speed > Quality and disable optimisations etc...

Maybe change the LOD from 0.0 to 0.5 to see if that helps (if that is possible with a ATI card)

titaniumx3 · 13 Jun 2006 at 13:32

Do you think its possibly related to overheating of the GPU/RAM?

Dutch Guy · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:17

titaniumx3 said:
Do you think its possibly related to overheating of the GPU/RAM?

No, if you have overheating components you would get a lockup, black screen or tearing.

It is most likely game related where the developers were not as precise as they should or driver related.

Is it possible to capture a screen (and upload it to www.imageshack.us ) so we can see excactly what you mean, maybe we are not talking about excactly the same thing?

BillTheButcher · 13 Jun 2006 at 15:00

titaniumx3 said:
Do you think its possibly related to overheating of the GPU/RAM?

I'm not saying Dutch Guy is wrong but I get some strange texture behaviour in Hitman: Bloody Money and Oblivion. It is nigh on impossible to get a screenshot because the messed-up textures only appear for a split second before reverting to normal.

This only happens when one of my GPUs hits around 80 degrees C. If I play Oblivion immediately after starting the PC the textures are completely normal. If I leave the game running for 5 minutes or so, the GPU temps ramp up and the textures start flickering.

I've tried all kinds of drivers and control panel settings and nothing has made any difference.

I'm putting everything into a new case tonight which should hopefully improve the cooling. I'll post when I have some results. I've been posting in this thread if you want any more info on my setup.

Dutch Guy · 13 Jun 2006 at 15:05

BillTheButcher said:
I'm not saying Dutch Guy is wrong but I get some strange texture behaviour in Hitman: Bloody Money and Oblivion. It is nigh on impossible to get a screenshot because the messed-up textures only appear for a split second before reverting to normal.

It could be that what I think you mean is something different, that's why a screenshot would help.

Only way to figure this out is to remove the side of the case and mount a deskfan blowing into the case or set the fanspeed to 100% and run a game to see if it happnes less often.

Rincewind · 13 Jun 2006 at 22:34

i've dabbled with 3ds max in the past and found this to happen with live renders when 2 low poly surfaces pass through each other (or just touch each other)

i think that's the problem. perhaps a driver update would hel pthough.

titaniumx3 · 15 Jun 2006 at 00:26

Thanks for all the replies! I took a screenshot in BF2, displaying the flickering when holding the grenade:

Its not the best example because its very difficult to capture the flickering in screenshots, but you can see the glitch (like missing parts of the texture) on the safety lever of the grenade (marked around in red); when playing, it is constantly changing shape and flickering at high speed. The effect can occasionally be seen on other weapons, but it seems to vary in intensity depending on how you are positioned, altitude and the paticular map you are playing; other times it just seems completely random!

I also captured a short video in GR:AW, displaying the problem. Its about 25mb, but please do check it out as its the best way to see the flickering:

Click here to watch GRAW-Flickering-graphics

As you can see, the flickering is mainly seen from a distance when zooming in with the sniper scope. The flickering in this video is actually pretty intense; most of the time its barely noticeable.

My main concern right now is if this is a symptom of an overheating GPU/RAM. Theres nothing pointing directly towards an overheating problem and there quite a few people reporting the same problem in BF2, but then again my card is hitting almost 90C under full load.

I'd really appreciate some if some GR:AW players could also post their findings; if its a common issue, then at least I can safely rule out overheating artifacts.

BloodWolf · 15 Jun 2006 at 00:30

Yes! I get these too on Battlefield 2..
When I'm holding the gun, on that top bit that curves at end on gun (Forgot the name..) you can see flickers. :confused:

Puppetmaster · 15 Jun 2006 at 00:57

happens on bf2 for me a lot. used to do it a lot with my overclocked 6800gt, had to lower the overclocks a bit to get it to be ok, even on water.

With my x1900xtx on stock cooling and speeds it still did it and temperatures were fine. Not sure why it does it but i find it depends a lot on lighting

BloodWolf · 15 Jun 2006 at 01:26

My temps are also fine, still does it..could be drivers?

or many bf cus atm it really sucks

Puppetmaster · 15 Jun 2006 at 13:28

with my 1900xtx i also got very very few on cod2 hardly at all really, got 1 or 2 on a cutscene bit for tomb raider demo as well, but bf2 seems horrible for it

titaniumx3 · 15 Jun 2006 at 18:23

I think its safe to say the BF2 flickering is a driver/software issue and I'm pretty sure when I first played the game it wasn't so bad; they may have changed something after the 1.12 patch.

That said, I've yet to find anyone reporting the same issue in GRAW.

Gerard · 15 Jun 2006 at 19:09

A lot of the flicking in bf2 is because of the engine, buildings around the windows etc tend to flicker a lot from range and lessen as you get closer, when im using the spec ops m4 that seems to have a flickering effect around the edges as well. For the weapons its almost like no anti aliasing is being applied to certain aprts of the gun causing the flickerig effect.

Look at the shadows in bf2 though, theyre total crap and have never been fixed, they occasionaly look ok from certain angles but from other angles they look like ass.

Gerard · 15 Jun 2006 at 19:10

titaniumx3 said:
That said, I've yet to find anyone reporting the same issue in GRAW.

Ive the demo of GRAW and get it as well, ever notice in the helicoptor scene the guy directly in front of if he has any regular assault rifle the magazine will clip through the part where its inserted into the gun from time to time before you hop out?

BillTheButcher · 14 Jul 2006 at 15:48

Just been browsing through older threads as I'm still getting this problem and I found this one.

I've just watched your clip from GR:AW and that is exactly the same problem I have but in other games. It doesn't flicker quite as much as yours but it's the same kind of flickering.

It happens in all games for me, most recently in Oblivion, Hitman: Blood Money, Prey and Titan Quest. I also tried F.E.A.R. again recently and it happened in that too.

I'm almost certain it's related to GPU temperatures as all of the textures are absolutely fine for the first few minutes of play but then the flickering starts once the GPU temps rise.

I'm having a nightmare trying to keep GPU1 cool - I've posted in other threads on here about a case change I made to try to alleviate the problem - and I've also recently changed from an Arctic AcceleroX1 to a Zalman VF900-Cu on GPU1 to see if that would resolve it. Still no joy.

When I quit back to the desktop to check temps GPU1 is hovering around 84 degrees under load.

It doesn't ever result in a crash but it's really annoying. :mad:

BillTheButcher · 29 Sep 2006 at 14:41

Quick update on this - I recently saw an all-time high of 95 degrees while playing Call of Juarez so I've taken out my second card. Load temp is now down to 55 degrees and all artefacting has stopped so it was definitely the GPUs getting too toasty.

ScarySquirrel · 29 Sep 2006 at 15:57

Yeah I get this a lot in plenty of games, most recently Tiger Woods 2007.

I have an ATI 1900XT.

titaniumx3 · 4 Oct 2006 at 01:47

BillTheButcher said:
Quick update on this - I recently saw an all-time high of 95 degrees while playing Call of Juarez so I've taken out my second card. Load temp is now down to 55 degrees and all artefacting has stopped so it was definitely the GPUs getting too toasty.

So the flickering in BF2 has completely stopped?