Jagged Shadows,Pop in,Low LOD and jagged aa

[DaoNayt]

You mean you switched 5 PCs and they all had this problem?

[iiNNeX]

15 hours ago, DaoNayt said:

You mean you switched 5 PCs and they all had this problem?

Correct. I have also moved house since then, and own a high quality UPS system which "cleans power" to put in simple terms. Still no difference. It's best to ignore it for now and try to play on the highest res possible

[DaoNayt]

I see... Well I guess 33 is a good age to quit gaming...

[DaoNayt]

Most TVs have terrible resizers and sharpening filters that make everything blocky and shimmery. Thats why many console owners will think they have this problem, and thats why people thought their TV's somehow got "infected".

 

[Asasinas]

I also can't understand how this can happen on several different computers. Like I said, I tested 7 PCs. And all of them have this weird/mystical flickering in games. One of my old PCs haven't been turned on for more than 2 years. I cleaned it, turned on and bam, same flickering in same games. Why? How? That PC never had such problems and now this...

 

There must be something common in all the PCs I tested. Maybe app, maybe some hidden setting causing this. I dunno. I don't think this is Nvidia related. Again, I removed Nvidia drivers from my laptop using DDU and tried the games with only integrated graphics and all the issues were present. I also don't believe it's electricity problem, unless there is something wrong with voltage or other power settings in BIOS.

[DaoNayt]

Thats what I thought, some setting got "stuck" god knows where, and needs to be fixed. I wonder if graphics card BIOS reflash would help? I dont wanna do it with my brand new card, lest I lose the warranty.

[KaeptnKnoppers]

This has been driving me crazy for 2 years now.

I think the problem is the monitor, thats been infected by the PC/Voltage.

Some Pixel issue?

when you move to another house, you should get everything brand new, including monitor.

Theres no way, you´ll still have the problem, right?

 

[lordante]

Hi everyone.

Long time i didn't come here.
Back because of the division 2...


I will make something clear. Since Ryzen CPU i didn't have big trouble on this.
A month a go, i reinstaled computer, and, here we go again. Flickering is back, but not as hard as before. Can deal with it.

BUT, the division2 is a total mess for it.

What i find:

It is clearly related with lights and reflection in game. Why? Because when the weather is cloudy or during night in the game, all the shimering/flickering/flashing textures/edges are REALLY "better" (understand less of the flickering issue). I allready think about it before, but now i'm sure it is part of our troubles.

May be it is a mess with reflection and AA and LOD. Finding the exact combinaison can solve it, and i bet i did it by accident when upping on AMD CPU.
 

Surprisely, i tested some different DSR resolution too, and for once 4K was worse than 2K. So i set it on 2K right now.

I also forced Nvidia control panel on the div2.

I hope this can help!

[lordante]

And before i forget:

IT IS NOT HARDWARE OR ELECTRICITY.

Can be only software or/and settings.


I told you about a friend who give me a computer and a amd 280 for test. This friend did not have any trouble, NO TROUBLE.
Recently his 280 died. He bought a RTX2060, guess what? He is mad now having EXACT SAME TROUBLE AS ME NOW.

So it is not a personnal filling, this guy know my troubles since long. He could see it on my computer and not on his. Since RTX 2060 he can. And he cries like me now huhu!

[Harsh45]

On 3/31/2019 at 3:41 PM, Bearhugger said:

Problem is not just AA related. All graphics get reduced...

This is my issue,  graphics getting reduced to trash,  trees in all games look like cardboard cut-outs.  I’ll upload some clips to show you guys in the near future.  I’ve been really busy with work lately,  haven’t had time to do anything else.

[Harsh45]

I’m happy to throw a wrench in all of your guys theories as to what’s causing these visual issues.  I have been using Nvidia GeForce Now for the past 2 weeks and I can say without a doubt that ALL the visuals STILL look like complete garbage and doesn’t make a difference.  Now how could me streaming a game from Nvidia’s server look like complete crap?  It’s not my PC putting out the graphics...  I have no bleeping clue as to why this would be?

 

Blade shadow is the same way too!  

[Harsh45]

I guess my gaming life will be reduced to a peasant only to game on console.... .. .

[darksquall]

On 4/7/2019 at 2:57 PM, iiNNeX said:

Correct. I have also moved house since then, and own a high quality UPS system which "cleans power" to put in simple terms. Still no difference. It's best to ignore it for now and try to play on the highest res possible

Can confirm that , I trashed my pc , monitor all the cables even USB sticks and I moved from my place.  I only have new phone now , day 5 in new place bug was noticeable and after 2 weeks It was identical like in old place. I didnt bring anything from the old flat so yeah good luck fixing this graphical anomaly. Suffering since autumn 2016

[iiNNeX]

5 hours ago, Strider890 said:

BTW has anyone of you guys with this issuse took PC to PC service to test all parts of PC e.g put another MB,RAM and PSU?

Pointless, when I've changed 5 entire systems, from the power cable to the last component.

 

This is a software bug. I have a good response on it somewhere let me see if I can dig it up.

 

Edit: Here is a pretty technical reply that I got:

 

"So i dug up a little bit more and i'm kind of following this problem as deep as shader programming. So apparently LoD bias is a general topic in OpenGL SL so im trying to narrow it down as much as I could. So right now i know the problem is that Shadow Depth Map Algorithem is messing up.  This algorithem has 2 passes. The first pass is to use the Vertex shader to generate a depth map using the World Space coords and the camera projection information. The second pass is for the Vertex shader to take in the vertecies that are being selected using a combination of our previous camera projection information and World space map and sends it to the "Pixel Shader" to have the depth map projected on it using a matrix.

 

Now the Vertex shader has to do two calculations here and it can't do it at same time. Any delay or miscalculation in any pass can result in artifacts. Here are multiple scenarios:

 

1. First pass is completed but the depth map is Not smooth out through space (1-1-1-0-0-0 instead of 1-0.75-0.5-0.25-0)> second pass is completed successfully> result in shadow popping and hard transformation from high res shadows to low rez blocky shadows.

 

2. First pass is being completed in delay (a hardware/code slowing it down?)> second pass completed successfully> Flickering and Shimmering of shadows and jaggy edges (it gets fixed when there is no camera motion since the second pass is not being applied anymore)

 

3. First pass is completed successfully> second pass Is completed with miscalculation> object popping or misplaced shadows aka peter panning + shadow is different shape than object

 

4. First pass completed successfully> second pass delays> flickering and alaising alphas (transparent textures like grass, trees or vertex paint like snow on a thatch roof or moss on a wall)

 

5. First pass contains faults such as artifacts on special surfaces such as metal or specular (shiny)> second pass is completed> grains and noise on metal/wet surfaces.

 

note that one can have all the problems above or maybe one of them or two. I hope i explained it as best as i could. Sorry for long reply  I grabbed this info going thru dev blogs and forum posts on shader programming but ive came across a good MSDN page that explains this with more details. I also attached a graph of how the passes work. Ill message you if i know more. I was thinking of posting this is Kenji's thread but then i figured they only believe what they wanna believe so i wont bother. If you make thread feel free to use this info. "

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416324(v=vs.85).aspx

[iiNNeX]

Here is another part of that response:

 

"So long story short I tracked the problem to NvAPI which is the CoreSDK of nVidia CUDA Dev by running some commands using the CUDA Development kit. This NvAPI is set of instruction of how a GPU has to react and nearly all games have a variant of it. A variant of NvAPI (Usually named as nvpmapi) is what holds the switch to different functions that the APIs like D3D and OpenGL and now VulkanRT do such as AA and AF. Every time you change something in a game's or 3D application settings, it writes a modified NvAPI to the GPUs L2 Cache (Or Dram however I think it's the cache since the DRAM resets itself when you restart PC). I tried writing API contexts to the L2 and guess what, the 3D applications started acting differently but here's the thing; whenever you close an application a global version of NvAPI must written into L2 Cache or in other terms flushed."

 

[Bartholomew]

28 minutes ago, iiNNeX said:

Here is another part of that response:

 

"So long story short I tracked the problem to NvAPI which is the CoreSDK of nVidia CUDA Dev by running some commands using the CUDA Development kit. This NvAPI is set of instruction of how a GPU has to react and nearly all games have a variant of it. A variant of NvAPI (Usually named as nvpmapi) is what holds the switch to different functions that the APIs like D3D and OpenGL and now VulkanRT do such as AA and AF. Every time you change something in a game's or 3D application settings, it writes a modified NvAPI to the GPUs L2 Cache (Or Dram however I think it's the cache since the DRAM resets itself when you restart PC). I tried writing API contexts to the L2 and guess what, the 3D applications started acting differently but here's the thing; whenever you close an application a global version of NvAPI must written into L2 Cache or in other terms flushed."

 

Id be surprised id any level of cache on a gpu would be non volatile as non volatile memory is orders of magnitude slower and therefore not suitable for caches ("usualy").

 

That text in red is just specifying that resources locked using the underlying interfaces of the root api interface should be released before the entire api can be unloaded (explaining that not doing so is an error and thus will be reported to fail if attempted).

 

Also, the phenomena is also reported with amd cards; i suspect strongly amd drivers do not invoke nvapi

 

However, that shader story might hold "some" merit in a far distance, but id need longer brain time on that one before commenting on it (too tired now). 

 

 

 

 

[DaoNayt]

AMD doesn't use nvapi, obviously, but the principle might be the same. Although, if it was cache related, unplugging the PC, or even taking the card out and reinserting, would fix it by clearing the volatile memories. Which isn't the case.
The only non-volatile memory in a graphics card, afaik, is the BIOS. maybe that's where the issue is hiding? If an actual expert from AMD or Nvidia looked into this issuse, I'm sure they would know where to look. Us end users can only guess.

[Asasinas]

Time to dust off my PS4 Pro. I just wasted 30$ on PS4 copy of AC Odyssey just to see if there will be any flickering, shimmering and other graphical artifacts. I will try it when I have time and I will let you know how it goes.

[Bearhugger]

I also think it's software related, coz:

 

When I get that problem I can sometimes fix it by installing a newer driver (without DDU)

and resetting my BIOS before and after that. I also use a different power outlet (just in case it's still somehow electricity related=.

Then it seems to be fixed (as long as I don't install new software a.k.a. a  new game).

Then it comes back in most cases (for example with AC Odyssey).

It also comes back when AC Odyssey gets a new update...

 

Of course, a problem here is that a new driver only comes every month...

[DaoNayt]

I oppened a support ticket with AMD and Sapphire. AMD so far is having me switch drivers, reinstall offending games and other standard procedures. Sapphire hasn't even replied...

Regarding publicity, I'm not sure this would be a suitable topic for LTT but maybe Gamer'sNexus would be interested. Unfortunately, their forums are down for now.

[lordante]

AMD don't give a F allready tried.

Intel offer me a refund.

My reseller accepted to make a standard change for AMD GPU.


Fact are:

Intel and AMD by allowing me to refund, know something is wrong.

[DaoNayt]

3 hours ago, lordante said:

My reseller accepted to make a standard change for AMD GPU.

Did the new GPU work fine?

[Meeseeks]

On 4/10/2019 at 1:04 AM, iiNNeX said:

Pointless, when I've changed 5 entire systems, from the power cable to the last component.

 

This is a software bug. I have a good response on it somewhere let me see if I can dig it up.

 

Edit: Here is a pretty technical reply that I got:

 

I also read somewhere about this issue related with rendering pipeline. I agree with you but this addresses case 1(people who have flickering/shimmering, low lod in games) and for case 1 issues are only in games. On the other hand we have people here (including me) with another case where besides heavy flickering they have other symptoms like blur in bios, blur/jaggy text in windows, everything in distance gets blurred etc. It's like somehow pc is not performing to its full capacity. This makes me believe we are mixing up 2 different situations. 

 

Edit: This is where i read about rendering pipeline, some devs were talking about it.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/white-pixel-aliasing-from-directional-light-on-edges.520378/

 

 

 

What if this rendering pipeline requires the gpu to perform at it's full capacity but due to some unknown reason it's not. This statement may only concern people with case 2.

[Bearhugger]

On 4/9/2019 at 12:25 PM, Harsh45 said:

 trees in all games look like cardboard cut-outs.

ikr

[lordante]

12 hours ago, DaoNayt said:

Did the new GPU work fine?

NO