Jagged Shadows,Pop in,Low LOD and jagged aa

[lordante]

I forgot this point.

Lot of people, like you said, got it when modding Skyrim.

But i have Skyrim and NEVER mod it :(.

May be the mod is one of the things who can start this damn bug.


DX12 games are better, especially with TAA. 

But, lot of game are not dx9 and not dx12 actualy  .
 

[k4bn]

15 hours ago, KaioS said:

Also here a video of Skyrim who clearly show the issue, its much much more prononced in our screen than in a youtube video but even in a video its visible ( again, this is a youtube video, this is a safe link ) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn-DqpcMcCU

Hello and welcome to the thread!

Thanks for the information, a lot of it has already been addressed and you are definitely on the right track regarding your issue. The Skyrim S.E. textures in the video most definitely use mipmapping, however, as you've probably figured out, a negative LOD bias is in use, hence the texture shimmering. The problem with your video is that you do not have anti-aliasing on(correct me if I'm wrong). The reason why the game uses negative LOD is because it uses TAA, I explained this in one of my last posts. 

I've booted up Skyrim S.E and the game looks pretty clean with TAA on, so make sure to check if that was the issue.

 

Similar thing happened to Witcher 3 when the devs changed the TextureMipBias to -1 in a patch. Users quickly started complaining, so the devs put the bias in the config so you could change it back to 0. Compared to Skyrim S.E, Witcher 3 has a weaker temporal AA implementation, so it doesn't work as well as Skyrim's negative LOD does with TAA.

 

 

[KaioS]

Hi k4bn,

 

First of all, keep in mind i'm a french guy and i'm really not so good to speak in english

 

Anyway, I will correct you so ^^', the video of skyrim that I posted is not made by me, and the guy who made it have AA on, that's for sure. My skyrim SE have the exact same shimmering effect with AA on.

But you know, even if i play in 4K DSR with 8X AA, the shimmering effect is still present. Normally that's impossible. So that's definitely not normal. There is only my video on planetside 2 who i doens't have AA at all because the game doens't have any implementation of any AA. 

 

For Skyrim se ( and other games ), yes TAA make the game '' clean ''. BUT if you pay attention you can see the shimmering effect through the bluriness created by the TAA, so the TAA doens't fix the shimerring, he's just hiding it. That's not what we want. We need a real fix. It's not normal to have to use alternative technique just to make a game look > almost < normal. I find that even unacceptable.

 

To prove that the problem is mipmapping ( and '' point filtering for minification '', type this in google you will see ), look this picture without mipmapping : https://www.beyond3d.com/images/articles/OGLTexture/figure1-big.jpg

And now look the same picture WITH mipmapping : https://www.beyond3d.com/images/articles/OGLTexture/figure11-big.jpg

 

Yes, this is exactly the shimerring effect that we have in our broken games.

 

Here another video to show you : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T8PAeVrlcM

Again ( I find this one PERFECT to show the problem ) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcEg52tX1y4

 

Let me now what you think about this. I really think i'm right without wanting to brag.

 

I need more information now, more people who understand this mipmapping process. As I say, i'm not a professional, i'm just a normal gamer, BUT from what i know the mipmapping process is directly linked to anisotropic filtering, this is a process used to improbe the quality of the image. Its linked to LOD BIAS too. That sound 100% logic to me.

 

We need to let people know all this information. There is obligatory a person who understands this better than us.

 

Oh ! And thank you to welcoming me  !

 

 

[k4bn]

4 minutes ago, KaioS said:

Hi k4bn,

 

First of all, keep in mind i'm a french guy and i'm really not so good to speak in english

 

Anyway, I will correct you so ^^', the video of skyrim that I posted is not made by me, and the guy who made it have AA on, that's for sure. My skyrim SE have the exact same shimmering effect with AA on.

But you know, even if i play in 4K DSR with 8X AA, the shimmering effect is still present. Normally that's impossible. So that's definitely not normal. There is only my video on planetside 2 who i doens't have AA at all because the game doens't have any implementation of any AA. 

 

For Skyrim se ( and other games ), yes TAA make the game '' clean ''. BUT if you pay attention you can see the shimmering effect through the bluriness created by the TAA, so the TAA doens't fix the shimerring, he's just hiding it. That's not what we want. We need a real fix. It's not normal to have to use alternative technique just to make a game look > almost < normal. I find that even unacceptable.

 

To prove that the problem is mipmapping ( and '' point filtering for minification '', type this in google you will see ), look this picture without mipmapping : https://www.beyond3d.com/images/articles/OGLTexture/figure1-big.jpg

And now look the same picture WITH mipmapping : https://www.beyond3d.com/images/articles/OGLTexture/figure11-big.jpg

 

Yes, this is exactly the shimerring effect that we have in our broken games.

 

Here another video to show you : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T8PAeVrlcM

Again ( I find this one PERFECT to show the problem ) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcEg52tX1y4

 

Let me now what you think about this. I really think i'm right without wanting to brag.

 

I need more information now, more people who understand this mipmapping process. As I say, i'm not a professional, i'm just a normal gamer, BUT from what i know the mipmapping process is directly linked to anisotropic filtering, this is a process used to improbe the quality of the image. Its linked to LOD BIAS too. That sound 100% logic to me.

 

We need to let people know all this information. There is obligatory a person who understands this better than us.

 

 

I see where the confusion is, but there is a difference between using alpha tested objects + negative LOD(these trees for example at 5:42) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyhI0BCP4U vs no mipmapping and nearest neighbour. Read this: https://medium.com/@bgolus/anti-aliased-alpha-test-the-esoteric-alpha-to-coverage-8b177335ae4f

 

The first video is basically a person modding in his own mipmaps, so if this is what you want, my advice is to start modding every single video game that has no mipmaps, I'm fairly certain that this has nothing to do with your GPU not being able to mipmap or something along those lines.

 

As for LOD/mip bias, read this: http://naturalviolence.webs.com/lodbias.htm

 

Here's some reasons why developers use TAA with negative LOD, the results are pretty close to normal supersampling. https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen/status/943078228071198720

Maybe tweet some of them if you are more interested in this stuff.

 

 

[KaioS]

I see.

But before this '' bug '' appears, even with FXAA the shimmering effect was not present, i'm 200% sure on that. Sure, there was the normal jagged lines that everyone have in 1080p/1440p but not this dancing ants or shimmering pixels in the texture. A person was kind enough to give me a short explanation of this process : 

- '' when adding mipmaps to a texture, the file will include many different sized versions of that particular texture. If you start with a texture that is 1024x1024, the mipmapped versions will be 512x512, 256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 32x32, 16x16, 8x8, 4x4. The sim will choose which size to display depending on your distance to the texture in the 3d world. Up close, you will see a big version, far away it will use a smaller version. This is how you get rid of the "dancing ants" or shimmering pixels in textures. Make backups of your textures before you start messing with them in case something goes wrong. ''

To my eyes that sound exactly what this shimmering problem is. If you see my video of total war warhammer 2, you can clearly see the shimmering pixels ( or '' dancing ants '' ) all over the place at 1.46. You can see them during the whole video, but its more visible from 1.46. Honestly, that cannot be another problem than a mipmapping problem. 

 

I think its not a game engine problem, even if i say its a mipmapping problem. Its something in our software that have corrupted something in our graphics card who literally destroy the process of mipmapping in all games who use this technique. This is why not all games is infect. So the solution must be to discover what has corrupted the part of our graphics cards who deals with this process of mipmapping. I do not see any other possible explanation. But as I said, i'm just an humble gamer, not a pro.

[k4bn]

47 minutes ago, KaioS said:

I see.

But before this '' bug '' appears, even with FXAA the shimmering effect was not present, i'm 200% sure on that. Sure, there was the normal jagged lines that everyone have in 1080p/1440p but not this dancing ants or shimmering pixels in the texture. A person was kind enough to give me a short explanation of this process : 

- '' when adding mipmaps to a texture, the file will include many different sized versions of that particular texture. If you start with a texture that is 1024x1024, the mipmapped versions will be 512x512, 256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 32x32, 16x16, 8x8, 4x4. The sim will choose which size to display depending on your distance to the texture in the 3d world. Up close, you will see a big version, far away it will use a smaller version. This is how you get rid of the "dancing ants" or shimmering pixels in textures. Make backups of your textures before you start messing with them in case something goes wrong. ''

To my eyes that sound exactly what this shimmering problem is. If you see my video of total war warhammer 2, you can clearly see the shimmering pixels ( or '' dancing ants '' ) all over the place at 1.46. You can see them during the whole video, but its more visible from 1.46. Honestly, that cannot be another problem than a mipmapping problem. 

 

I think its not a game engine problem, even if i say its a mipmapping problem. Its something in our software that have corrupted something in our graphics card who literally destroy the process of mipmapping in all games who use this technique. This is why not all games is infect. So the solution must be to discover what has corrupted the part of our graphics cards who deals with this process of mipmapping. I do not see any other possible explanation. But as I said, i'm just an humble gamer, not a pro.

I saw the video you sent me and I saw the explanation. The person is not talking about any sort of a problem. He is simply telling you how to make and add your own mipmaps to an SDK for a texture that has no mipmaps to begin with. This is only useful if you intend to do modding.

 

I am glad that you are finding this interesting, but I advise you to first get into the fundamentals of graphics, then the details of how aliasing and anti-aliasing works before going into the more complicated bits of graphics. 

Trust me, these sort of ideas come here almost monthly and everyone gives up after a few days because they are trying to solve something that they don't understand.

 

https://alfonse.bitbucket.io/oldtut/

http://naturalviolence.webs.com/generalaa.htm

 

Also, try doing this in OpenGL to get a general idea of what mipmapping is and to test out if it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ogRfMsc64

 

 

 

 

 

 

[KaioS]

Yes i know that he just telling me how to make and add my own mipmaps, but this explanation explain how a texture look without mipmapping. And that's what i find interesting.

 

I think you doens't understand what i mean. I doesn't say that the problem is internal to infected games, i say its external to infected games. As if something prevents the part of our graphics card that deals with the process of mimapping to work like it should work. So it would be useless to touche the codes of the infecting games given that these infected games are totally fine, we should try to understand what is preventig our graphics card from making the mipmapping part work. And I don't think its a problem of nvidia control panel tuning or something like that but rather something that prevents it from functioning normally.

 

How can you explain that a texture without mipmapping look exactly how our infected games look so ? Its a coincidence ? I'm just trying to understand ^^'

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcEg52tX1y4 This video show the exact same shimmering that we have. And this video just show the effect of mipmap on textures. So as i explain just above, there is something which prevents this process from working properly. No need to touch infected game code, because theses game are totally fine. That's in our PC, not in games.

 

I forgot to say that the shimmering effect in '' infected '' games is not present if we are very close to the texture, the more the texture is far more the shimmering effect is strong. Its clearly visible in my total war warhammer 2 video too. If i understood how mipmap work, it seems logical with my explanation of the cause of the shimmering problem.  

[Kelven]

Take some time without getting into the forum, did anyone find any solution to the problem?

[Magix]

12 hours ago, Kelven said:

Take some time without getting into the forum, did anyone find any solution to the problem?

Greetings everyone! Well, here's the deal - I have had this issue since early 2010 over several rigs resurfacing with random/different triggers each time. I remember being kind of a pioneer with this issue, having (back then) found only a handful of online threads concering this issue with no one the wiser. Now I see a lot of people complaining about this with match-perfect descriptions.

 

Apart from getting a whole new rig, or, sometimes, just a new gpu (coupled with a clean primary partition for a fresh Windows install and a CMOS reset before putting the new gpu into the case and installing Windows without internet connection so as to prevent any updates being downloaded and installed), I've found nothing works. NOTHING apart from a new rig or, just sometimes, a new GPU with the aforementioned precautionary steps. The monitor is not to blame here, imo.

 

I have found that AMD cards at least don't get me wonky shadows and draw distance (and neither did NVidia cards up until the GTA V ready drivers and above), but the pixelization, jagged edges, poor colors, backlightbleed/overbrightened effect are still there with AMD cards when issue happens.

 

Now, mind you, this is not game-exclusive, as the image degredation affects everything from BIOS UEFI graphics to the mobo startup logo to Windows desktop graphics, pictures, icons, browser graphics, videos. It's s if the PPI got lowered, contrast is off, everything looks grainy, jaggy, in videos shimmery.

 

Will come back later with a detailed anamnesys.

[Kelven]

 

I do not know if it will help what I'm going to say, but, games with more details appear more this problem, the Fortnite game, it has TXAA besides having the cartoon graphics, it makes the game look very beautiful, because the problem does not appear.

 

Videos posted on youtube and other platforms can cause the video to lose details, so it becomes harder to see this "bug"

 

[Magix]

12 hours ago, Kelven said:

 

I do not know if it will help what I'm going to say, but, games with more details appear more this problem, the Fortnite game, it has TXAA besides having the cartoon graphics, it makes the game look very beautiful, because the problem does not appear.

 

Videos posted on youtube and other platforms can cause the video to lose details, so it becomes harder to see this "bug"

 

You are correct, it is more noticable in more detailed games. As I said, the issue affects ALL PC graphics, so naturally the games will suffer the same pixelish look as does do the desktop and even BIOS graphics. It's like the PC at one point decides it should render the image pixel by pixel with no filter instead of blending them together. The best analogy for me is when I zoom out or in while in a pdf file on my smartphone and for a split second it renders the image slightly pixelated as it is on our PCs, then applies some kind of filter to make it crisp and clear, blend the pixels together to produce a nice, sharp circle for example. What exactly breaks within the PC and why, I have no idea, and it is quite bizzare that nothing helps to remedy this. I have NEVER had this happen until 2010 (had a Pentium D back then, even when I changed my mobo and GPU this would never happen, both on XP and Win7). Only after switching to the first generation of i-core CPUs did these issues start, on XP SP3 back then. My gf's laptop suffers this issue, too, she has Windows 7.

I recently built a new rig (i7 8700K, GIGABYTE Z370 AOURUS Gaming 7, 2x8GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator 3200MHz CL16, Samsung EVO 960 500 GB SSD, GIGABYTE RX 580 AORUS 8G, Fortron Hydro G 650W PSU), and everything was fine, image looked exceptionally crisp and realistic, I couldn't make out one individual pixel leaving the confines of the shape they were rendering (e.g. circles, curves, in-game objects, browser images and icons...), even if I literally pressed my nose against the monitor. Now I can see all the pixels which make up an object, and naturally that will flicker as I move around in the game. Other things like wonky Anisotropic Filtering, crappy-to-no Ambient Occlusion and the occurence of z-fighting just piggy-back along with this. It's like objects in game were put together in MS Paint pixel-by-pixel, everything looks raw. Before this games would look amazingly realistic even with AA off, and Windows graphics, icons, fonts and especially images looked so realistic, with beautiful, rich, deep colors and contrast and very smooth edges and textures with no flickering/shimmering, and everything wasn't as bright as it is now.

What triggered it on this rig is just my stupidity - I thought Windows to look just a liiiiiiiiitle blurry so I reseated my GPU. Turns out that ''blurriness'' was the filter, and by fiddling with the GPU (I just barely moved it, didn't even pull it out and back into the PCI slot) I broke the filter again. Idiot. Yet other rigs I had the issue on had other non-physical triggers, like installing an ENB for Skyrim, or a Windows update, or a BSOD. It's just so random.

[Kelven]

On 07/05/2018 at 10:35 AM, Magix said:

You are correct, it is more noticable in more detailed games. As I said, the issue affects ALL PC graphics, so naturally the games will suffer the same pixelish look as does do the desktop and even BIOS graphics. It's like the PC at one point decides it should render the image pixel by pixel with no filter instead of blending them together. The best analogy for me is when I zoom out or in while in a pdf file on my smartphone and for a split second it renders the image slightly pixelated as it is on our PCs, then applies some kind of filter to make it crisp and clear, blend the pixels together to produce a nice, sharp circle for example. What exactly breaks within the PC and why, I have no idea, and it is quite bizzare that nothing helps to remedy this. I have NEVER had this happen until 2010 (had a Pentium D back then, even when I changed my mobo and GPU this would never happen, both on XP and Win7). Only after switching to the first generation of i-core CPUs did these issues start, on XP SP3 back then. My gf's laptop suffers this issue, too, she has Windows 7.

I recently built a new rig (i7 8700K, GIGABYTE Z370 AOURUS Gaming 7, 2x8GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator 3200MHz CL16, Samsung EVO 960 500 GB SSD, GIGABYTE RX 580 AORUS 8G, Fortron Hydro G 650W PSU), and everything was fine, image looked exceptionally crisp and realistic, I couldn't make out one individual pixel leaving the confines of the shape they were rendering (e.g. circles, curves, in-game objects, browser images and icons...), even if I literally pressed my nose against the monitor. Now I can see all the pixels which make up an object, and naturally that will flicker as I move around in the game. Other things like wonky Anisotropic Filtering, crappy-to-no Ambient Occlusion and the occurence of z-fighting just piggy-back along with this. It's like objects in game were put together in MS Paint pixel-by-pixel, everything looks raw. Before this games would look amazingly realistic even with AA off, and Windows graphics, icons, fonts and especially images looked so realistic, with beautiful, rich, deep colors and contrast and very smooth edges and textures with no flickering/shimmering, and everything wasn't as bright as it is now.

What triggered it on this rig is just my stupidity - I thought Windows to look just a liiiiiiiiitle blurry so I reseated my GPU. Turns out that ''blurriness'' was the filter, and by fiddling with the GPU (I just barely moved it, didn't even pull it out and back into the PCI slot) I broke the filter again. Idiot. Yet other rigs I had the issue on had other non-physical triggers, like installing an ENB for Skyrim, or a Windows update, or a BSOD. It's just so random.

 

That's it! In my cell phone also happens this, the images are all pixelated but after a few seconds it seems that activates a filter and everything looks beautiful. I really wanted to know why this occurs!

[M300843499]

I have read this thread, 30 pages, all i can see is people refusing to understand how AA works and how engine incorporate certain image techniques.

Due to a big shift in how lighting is used, a lot of games show jaggies because light bounces off the edge of a surface or edge making it even more apparent.

 

I will record Tomb Raider and show you what i mean with 4x SSAA enabled on max settings.

 

Video is uncompressed at 30FPS direct to YouTube upload. Game capped at 40FPS for frame stability.

 

 

[M300843499]

You can clearly see here LOD pop in and also light sources bleeding, SSAA is not enough to tackle this.

 

8K and AA may tackle all once and for all, but this is 1680x1050 x4 (SSAA)

 

EDIT i am astounded at the visual quality loss after upload of this.. OMFG.

 

 

[MEC-777]

1 hour ago, M300843499 said:

I have read this thread, 30 pages, all i can see is people refusing to understand how AA works and how engine incorporate certain image techniques.

Due to a big shift in how lighting is used, a lot of games show jaggies because light bounces off the edge of a surface or edge making it even more apparent.

 

I will record Tomb Raider and show you what i mean with 4x SSAA enabled on max settings.

 

Video is uncompressed at 30FPS direct to YouTube upload. Game capped at 40FPS for frame stability.

While I partially agree with you, that this is what some people have been experiencing (and the power of suggestion along with the fact that sometimes you don't notice something until it's pointed out to you and after that, it can be difficult to un-see it). The issue at hand with this thread is that the visual quality of the game(s) changes from 'good' or 'ok' to 'bad' without having changed anything with their PC. 

 

It's like one day, you're playing the game and it looks great. Then the next day, it looks noticeably worse, like the graphics settings have been turned down or the AA filtering has broken and yet nothing has been changed in the graphics settings. I haven't experienced this myself, but this is my understanding of what the core issue of this thread is all about. 

[BuckGup]

2 hours ago, M300843499 said:

I have read this thread, 30 pages, all i can see is people refusing to understand how AA works and how engine incorporate certain image techniques.

Due to a big shift in how lighting is used, a lot of games show jaggies because light bounces off the edge of a surface or edge making it even more apparent.

 

I will record Tomb Raider and show you what i mean with 4x SSAA enabled on max settings.

 

Video is uncompressed at 30FPS direct to YouTube upload. Game capped at 40FPS for frame stability.

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

While I partially agree with you, that this is what some people have been experiencing (and the power of suggestion along with the fact that sometimes you don't notice something until it's pointed out to you and after that, it can be difficult to un-see it). The issue at hand with this thread is that the visual quality of the game(s) changes from 'good' or 'ok' to 'bad' without having changed anything with their PC. 

 

It's like one day, you're playing the game and it looks great. Then the next day, it looks noticeably worse, like the graphics settings have been turned down or the AA filtering has broken and yet nothing has been changed in the graphics settings. I haven't experienced this myself, but this is my understanding of what the core issue of this thread is all about. 

 

Yes this is a spot on description. Games aren't perfect any sometimes people will confuse things or have confirmation bias but when you experience the problem it is very drastic and sudden. I started for me simply rebooting my PC and has been borked ever since. When I bought a Ryzen 1200 it fixed a majority of issues present on my intel based PC. Not everything was fixed but it looked better.

[M300843499]

As a note with shadow issues, i get them in CSGO but i also run the graphics on low for a competitive reason.

 

 

 

[Kelven]

Look how it is on my computer, I really wanted to figure out how to fix this problem:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXYCwt-O2MBK9Nh7IYuq2hwENWhG3K8Z/view

 

It's all in ultra and in 1080p

Download not to lose quality

Does not it have like some developer to create some kind of program or filter to try to correct graphically, something like blur the measure of depth?

 

[Magix]

On 5/12/2018 at 4:37 PM, Kelven said:

Look how it is on my computer, I really wanted to figure out how to fix this problem:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXYCwt-O2MBK9Nh7IYuq2hwENWhG3K8Z/view

 

It's all in ultra and in 1080p

Download not to lose quality

Does not it have like some developer to create some kind of program or filter to try to correct graphically, something like blur the measure of depth?

On 5/5/2018 at 5:34 PM, Kelven said:

Take some time without getting into the forum, did anyone find any solution to the problem?

Greetings everyone! Well, here's the deal - I have had this issue since early 2010 over several rigs resurfacing with random/different triggers each time. I remember being kind of a pioneer with this issue, having (back then) found only a handful of online threads concering this issue with no one the wiser. Now I see a lot of people complaining about this with match-perfect descriptions.

 

Apart from getting a whole new rig, or, sometimes, just a new gpu (coupled with a clean primary partition for a fresh Windows install and a CMOS reset before putting the new gpu into the case and installing Windows without internet connection so as to prevent any updates being downloaded and installed), I've found nothing works. NOTHING apart from a new rig or, just sometimes, a new GPU with the aforementioned precautionary steps. The monitor is not to blame here, imo.

 

I have found that AMD cards at least don't get me wonky shadows and draw distance (and neither did NVidia cards up until the GTA V ready drivers and above), but the pixelization, jagged edges, poor colors, backlightbleed/overbrightened effect are still there with AMD cards when issue happens.

 

Now, mind you, this is not game-exclusive, as the image degredation affects everything from BIOS UEFI graphics to the mobo startup logo to Windows desktop graphics, pictures, icons, browser graphics, videos. It's s if the PPI got lowered, contrast is off, everything looks grainy, jaggy, in videos shimmery.

 

Will come back later with a detailed anamnesys.

 

Once again, this affects ALL the computer graphics, not just programs and games. It is very noticable in Windows, colors look washed out, everything is pixelated, images look flat and jaggy, videos show jaggies, color transitions are bad, the glassy crystal clear look is gone. I deliberately checked everything when I first got the new PC, and it all looked amazing, circles for example were perfect, colors deep and rich... It's interesting that the issue always looks the same over so many generations of rigs/hardware, I really wonder what exactly goes haywire.

 

It downgrades the entire computer/console graphics from a to z.

 

Sorry, I just re-read your post, yeah it would be nice if a third party software would fix this, but I'd rather just be able to use my computer the way it was before this issue occured. Unfortunately, I've found posts about this on some german forums as old as 2004. Same descriptions, same musings about it being some kind of electricity virus (which can't be possible), but the issue does spread between devices, or else as soon as you physically move some hardware parts it occurs, affects all components and somehow sticks to them. Very very bizzare. Fallout 4 looked so realistic on the new pc like I couldn't believe the game actually looked that good, I was literally just walking around the wasteland going "WOOOOOOW", same goes for Mass Effect 2 and GTA 5. No visible pixels, no jaggies (MINIMAL normal jaggies in ME2, but the game has no AA whatsoever, but no texture crawling, no shimmering). Hell GTA 5 looked fantastic and with no jaggies even with just FXAA enabled. MSAA 4x looked godlike. Only after physically readjusting the graphics card (didn't even slide it out and back into the PCI-E slot, just unscrewed it, moved it a little to one side, screwed it back to the case), and BOOM. Crappy graphics all over. So I'd think static electricity, but on another rig it got triggered by an ENB, yet on another after a BSOD crash, so I am stumped.

 

Update:

Well, it's all gone to sh*t now. As of today, I've got the buggy shadows+low detailed textures+pop-in+horrible LOD as well.

 

I'm done with gaming it seems. Far Cry 5 looks five times worse than it did the last few weeks. It looks as if I were playing it on a PS2

[Kelven]

 

I had a doubt, someone could confirm with a video or something, a computer with this problem and another without it?

[Magix]

On 5/20/2018 at 5:41 AM, Kelven said:

I had a doubt, someone could confirm with a video or something, a computer with this problem and another without it?

What's the point anymore. The issue is too obscure and has gone unadressed for almost 15 years now. Sometimes just a new GPU fixes it, sometimes a whole new PC has it from startup. Then you have it 'infect' your console and phone, as well. Ain't no help coming. The internet is overflooded with complaints about this, and there has not been one official acknowledgement so far.

 

In all honesty I think devs know about this and are just as stumped as we are, and are told to play dumb.

 

One thing I can say for sure, and this I find most bizzare: The severity of the issue is mirrored on other devices in my household. For example, when I set up my new PC and saw that the image quality was cleared up and great, my TV and laptop cleared up too, and when I fiddled with the GPU on the PC and "broke it" again, the quality got broken again on those devices, too. Since then I fiddled more with components, and unfortunately, it went from bad to worse - and every time my TV mirrored the severity! But mind you, only and only every time when I fiddled with the PC, not from an outside factor or spontaneously.

 

This is absolutely not a placebo effect, I am very sensitive to video and audio output and can notice and make out every little detail.

 

This shouldn't be possible, but other users have reported the same.

[k4bn]

On 5/21/2018 at 12:35 PM, Magix said:

What's the point anymore. The issue is too obscure and has gone unadressed for almost 15 years now. Sometimes just a new GPU fixes it, sometimes a whole new PC has it from startup. Then you have it 'infect' your console and phone, as well. Ain't no help coming. The internet is overflooded with complaints about this, and there has not been one official acknowledgement so far.

 

In all honesty I think devs know about this and are just as stumped as we are, and are told to play dumb.

 

One thing I can say for sure, and this I find most bizzare: The severity of the issue is mirrored on other devices in my household. For example, when I set up my new PC and saw that the image quality was cleared up and great, my TV and laptop cleared up too, and when I fiddled with the GPU on the PC and "broke it" again, the quality got broken again on those devices, too. Since then I fiddled more with components, and unfortunately, it went from bad to worse - and every time my TV mirrored the severity! But mind you, only and only every time when I fiddled with the PC, not from an outside factor or spontaneously.

 

This is absolutely not a placebo effect, I am very sensitive to video and audio output and can notice and make out every little detail.

 

This shouldn't be possible, but other users have reported the same.

The problem is that there's a variety of issues mentioned in the thread. The one that is most prominent that seems to be the case for most of the users is the universally broken LOD bias. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3rwy5m/nvidia_will_fix_excessive_gpu_idle_power_use_at/cws4xl4/ (#6)

Note that this isn't nvidia exclusive, it's tied into the rise of DX11 and the lack of DX9 and DX10 in games where the developer has full control.

 

The next one is the misunderstanding of how anti-aliasing works and how a raw aliased image looks like in motion. For example, a lot of people still think that this is an "issue", while it is most certainly not and I've proved it countless times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XXS5UyNjjU&t=164s (at 2:44 you can obviously see what is going on)

 

 

I'm not sure what issues you have, if you want further help you should show us exactly what you mean.

[Kelven]

On 26/05/2018 at 6:47 PM, k4bn said:

The problem is that there's a variety of issues mentioned in the thread. The one that is most prominent that seems to be the case for most of the users is the universally broken LOD bias. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3rwy5m/nvidia_will_fix_excessive_gpu_idle_power_use_at/cws4xl4/ (#6)

Note that this isn't nvidia exclusive, it's tied into the rise of DX11 and the lack of DX9 and DX10 in games where the developer has full control.

 

The next one is the misunderstanding of how anti-aliasing works and how a raw aliased image looks like in motion. For example, a lot of people still think that this is an "issue", while it is most certainly not and I've proved it countless times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XXS5UyNjjU&t=164s (at 2:44 you can obviously see what is going on)

 

 

I'm not sure what issues you have, if you want further help you should show us exactly what you mean.

 

My problem is exactly that of the regedit post, but my board is a Rx470, I swear if I throw an NVIDIA gpu with this corrected problem, I'll buy it right away! About the video on youtube, the problem is not even shown on it, since there is not even a filter enabled.

[k4bn]

1 hour ago, Kelven said:

 

My problem is exactly that of the regedit post, but my board is a Rx470, I swear if I throw an NVIDIA gpu with this corrected problem, I'll buy it right away! About the video on youtube, the problem is not even shown on it, since there is not even a filter enabled.

You can only fix the first issue completely in some games that have DX9 or DX10 by using AMD driver supersampling(games like Dishonored, Half-Life 2, L4D2...) or doing manual LOD bias adjustment in regedit. For NVIDIA, you can do it with SGSSAA(DX9/10 only) or by changing LOD bias in inspector. Both AMD supersampling and NVIDIA SGSSAA do an auto-LOD adjustment so you get rid of the negative LOD shimmering/aliasing and the temporal aliasing almost completely on 8x(depends on the game though, some are better, some are worse). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ekUZsK2YXgd5XjjH1M7QkHIQgKO_i4bHCUdPeAd6OCo/pub?output=html

 

You can also try to do manual LOD bias adjustment in the NVIDIA inspector.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/529407/geforce-drivers/clamp-negative-lod-bias/14/

 

All of this only works in DX9/10, for DX11 games it's impossible AFAIK. The only thing you can do is regular downsampling/VSR/DSR, but this doesn't do auto-LOD adjustment so you will never get results as good as you would with SGSSAA, thin objects like fences will still flicker in the distance.

 

The only new AA type that works nicely with negative LOD is TAA and the developers need to implement it correctly so it's works similarly to SGSSAA. This is still one of the best implementations that I know of, and it's been modded into the game: 

 

A decent TAA + at least 2x DSR/OGSSAA is IMO the best solution for newer games for image stability if you can afford it and if the game supports it.

[Magix]

6 hours ago, k4bn said:

You can only fix the first issue completely in some games that have DX9 or DX10 by using AMD driver supersampling(games like Dishonored, Half-Life 2, L4D2...) or doing manual LOD bias adjustment in regedit. For NVIDIA, you can do it with SGSSAA(DX9/10 only) or by changing LOD bias in inspector. Both AMD supersampling and NVIDIA SGSSAA do an auto-LOD adjustment so you get rid of the negative LOD shimmering/aliasing and the temporal aliasing almost completely on 8x(depends on the game though, some are better, some are worse). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ekUZsK2YXgd5XjjH1M7QkHIQgKO_i4bHCUdPeAd6OCo/pub?output=html

 

You can also try to do manual LOD bias adjustment in the NVIDIA inspector.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/529407/geforce-drivers/clamp-negative-lod-bias/14/

 

All of this only works in DX9/10, for DX11 games it's impossible AFAIK. The only thing you can do is regular downsampling/VSR/DSR, but this doesn't do auto-LOD adjustment so you will never get results as good as you would with SGSSAA, thin objects like fences will still flicker in the distance.

 

The only new AA type that works nicely with negative LOD is TAA and the developers need to implement it correctly so it's works similarly to SGSSAA. This is still one of the best implementations that I know of, and it's been modded into the game: 

 

A decent TAA + at least 2x DSR/OGSSAA is IMO the best solution for newer games for image stability if you can afford it and if the game supports it.

Thank you for your efforts in trying to explain what seems to be the obvious to us, but you must have had this issue since day one and consider it normal, nothing to it. I have no misunderstanding about AA, this is not an AA issue at all, it just has an effect which affects it; thing is, when I first booted up my new PC, I noticed how everything looks crisp and full HD, with rich, deep colors. The BASE image/pixel processing was fine, and any AA added to it worked wonders to combat REGULAR aliasing. After the issue occurrs everything from fonts to icons to games appears like it is rendered completely differently. Now EVERYTHING looks grainy and aliased and a lot of detail is gone, it all looks fuzzy. Fonts are fuzzy and aliased, so are pictures, UIs, videos, Youtube HD looks less defined. The pixels are somehow broken up, everything looks like it has less color depth, as if the individual pixels were carrying less information than before. Colors look washed out, color transitions are apparent, the graphics look compressed, somewhat overbrightened and weirdly contrasted. Spaces between the pixels can more readily be made out, subtle compression-like artifacts can be seen in all images. This same broken base image/pixel processing is what then gets used in games as well, and the graininess and pixelation carry over causing pixel crawling, poor colors and color transitions, general graininess/pixelization of anything on the screen. At first this effects is subtle, but it gets worse as one fiddles with the components in one's PC. Now, that's the fuzziness/graininess/pixelization issue, with all graphics affected, from UEFI BIOS (no, I'm not kidding), to Windows (videos as well) to games to whatnot. It's like the image is rendered pixel by pixel with poor transitions between them in luminosity and color, or else like less pixels are being used to render on the display, or/and with less bits of color, I cant say for sure. Then in games come along the object pop in/out, texture and shadow pop ins/outs, jagged or totally bugged out shadows, shadow flickering, and ingame objects and characters seem to be poorly lit, shaded and shadowed. Upping the resolution or using techniques like DSR or ingame scaling, TAA and SS just serve to mask the pixelization/graininess issue, which reduces the shimmering and jagginess on objects and textures and foliage a little, but the base broken pixel output is still there, and so are all the other issues like the LOD box, pop ins and pop outs, buggy and flickering shadows.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Magix