Graphical problem in FO4 with frames persisting into following frames

Angilion · 1 Dec 2017 at 23:38

Here's an example to show what I mean:

Ghostly after-images on previous frames superimposed on the current frame. They "snap" back to just the current frame after some more movement, then the ghostly after-images occur again after a little more movement. It's most noticeable on rotation, but occurs with all movement. It's stopping me continuing with building the settlement, obviously.

It's strangely specific in that it only occured after I changed my graphics card (and thus my drivers, from AMD to NVIDIA), only occurs in my Starlight settlement, only in some parts of it and as far as I can tell only in one direction. It might be on a line through that cell, since it also occured looking in the opposite direction from a building on the opposite side of the settlement in a room on the same line, i.e. looking back in the direction of the place those screenshots were taken. Surface wetness reappears in the "ghost" frames - I've disabled that in the settings because it was the only way to stop indoor surfaces getting wet when it rains - the game engine isn't up to the job of "seeing" new buildings in settlements as being an indoor area.

I might be inclined to blame something in that settlement, but it was fine before I changed cards. I might be inclined to blame the drivers (388.31), but it's fine everywhere else.

I've tried loading older saves, but the same problem occurs in the same place even in older saves that just have the wall of the pub in place and nothing inside it yet.

Any ideas?

dreigns · 2 Dec 2017 at 07:35

Looks like a mod problem to me or texture problem I have had that with some mods

Angilion · 2 Dec 2017 at 23:57

dreigns said:
Looks like a mod problem to me or texture problem I have had that with some mods

I might have thought the same if it happened after I installed a new mod. But it didn't - I haven't installed a new mod for weeks.

Although that is the first time I've built something from the Singing Settler mod. No, it can't be that because the problem occurs in the same place on an earlier save from before I built anything from that mod.

I'm going to boot into safe mode, use display driver uninstaller and install a new version of the geforce drivers. Maybe that will fix it.

Angilion · 4 Dec 2017 at 08:46

I found the problem, at least enough to fix it.

It was something to do with the preset I was using from BethINI. After changing cards, I chose a much higher preset because I could. All well and good outside of settlements, since my new card can easily sustain the 60 fps I've capped it to. Complex settlements in FO4 are CPU limited rather than GPU limited, so performance tanks. I did some checking and in Starlight the FPS varied from the 60fps cap down to 16fps depending on where I was and what direction I was looking in. At the 16fps point, the above problem occured. Every time, repeatable and predictable. Starlight is currently my largest and most complex settlement, so that explains why it only happened there. I picked a lower preset and everything is fine.

I suspect the specific cause is viewing distance combined with the ini changes required when using mods to scrap stuff that can't be scrapped in vanilla since they result in some stuff being rendered and then discarded because it's blocked from view, thereby increasing workload.