Jagged Shadows,Pop in,Low LOD and jagged aa

[MEC-777]

13 hours ago, MarkFMB said:

-snip-

 

So basically the AA filtering in many games just doesn't work properly. This is what I noticed with Rise of the Tomb Raider in the video I posted here not too long ago. The only way I can get it to look "good" is with just straight FXAA or by using DSR.  

[wassimal01]

On 23/12/2016 at 1:24 PM, MEC-777 said:

 

Donc, fondamentalement, le filtrage AA dans de nombreux jeux ne fonctionne pas correctement. Voilà ce que je remarquai avec Rise of the Tomb Raider dans la vidéo que j'ai posté ici il y a pas trop longtemps. La seule façon dont je peux l'obtenir pour regarder "bon" est avec juste FXAA droite ou en utilisant DSR.  

I noticed that games that have TAA's "Temporal anti-aliasing" as Battlefield 1 and fallout 4  ,it's the only anti aliasing that works very well for me

[clement1012]

Somebody would have to try a "no infected" pc plugges to an ups for see if the problem persists (sorry for my bad english)

[darksquall]

On 2.01.2017 at 11:28 PM, clement1012 said:

Somebody would have to try a "no infected" pc plugges to an ups for see if the problem persists (sorry for my bad english)

One person from this thread already tried that without succes .

New pc connected through ups with new peripherals . 

[A_W_Z_2]

new monitor new pc new cables same problem, virtual super resolution helps if you run the game in 4K but then the game runs  bad.
also it happens now when watching videos on browsers html5 players! IM LOSING MY MIND 

[xAcid9]

you guys still going about this eh? maybe it's in the head instead of hardware.

[ManniMeister31]

anything new?

[clement1012]

...

[clement1012]

Someone tried a new graphic card nvidia 1000 series for to see if the problem disappear?

[ManniMeister31]

yes, i build a complete new pc a while ago. used a 1070. same issues

[Charles-roy]

This Issue is happening to me too I've used multiple computers, I'll get some footage of it looking clean and well kept but I'll show you what it looked like on my old computer with and amd cpu (phenom iix4 810) and a nvidia gpu (750ti) along with my build after that which also had an amd cpu (fx 8320) and an nvidia gpu (750ti) (whole new everything except gpu) and my current pc with an intel cpu (i7 3770k) and a different nvidia gpu (gtx 680) It shows up the worst in war thunder when I use my gun sight it disappears though and it shows up bad in fo4.

Issue still persists even at 1440p

The 2 middle videos are my 680

3rd video is 1440p

The last video is before the shimmering started, which was 2 years ago which was on my phenom ii build which also started shimmering shortly after too which is shown in the first video 

 

[Diablatos]

Has anyone figured this out? I have this same problem with my GTX 1060 3gb. I thought maybe it was my mobo but I plugged my PS4 in and the problem was there too... 3 different monitors/tvs, three different hdmi cables. This is far from normal, I am very aware of aliasing and my game settings with ssaa are worse than game setting with no aa applied before the issue started. I have been ghosting all of the forums about this and they eventually just stop or close... So either everyone is giving up or the conspiracy theorist in me thinks nvidia is silently contacting big complainers and sending them titan rugs with 4K display(kidding, not kidding, whatsup nvidia?!)

[Diablatos]

On 2/14/2017 at 6:50 AM, ManniMeister31 said:

yes, i build a complete new pc a while ago. used a 1070. same issues

Ever figure this out? I'm pulling my hair out...

[BuckGup]

3 minutes ago, Diablatos said:

Ever figure this out? I'm pulling my hair out...

It is a problem with AA. Some Nvidia dev answered me on their forum. It has been a problem since it was a thing. But that still doesn't explain why it started happening randomly.

[lobolaw1984]

On 8/6/2016 at 1:26 AM, KenjiD5 said:

Hello. we have a topic before like this and we are talking about the problems (already written in the title) and we met some guys who is just pure nonsense and keep talking to us like we are dumbs and i am the reason why the topic is closed.. now im so sorry and now i wont swear anymore but please let start all over again @ElijahDar @SpeedUp10 @Karalum  @SamStrecker and many other more and for the new guys who just visited this topic recently.. this is the problem we are talking about 

 

 

luckily we have solutions that might work so come and join us if you have these problems..we are going to help you

Hello everyone - I have been having this issue with flickering, pixilated shadows since 2013. One day I fired up Starcraft 2, and the shadows were horribly jagged. Then I went to play some BF3, same issue. It has literally affected every single game that I have played since. I have switched every single component in my PC except the keyboard, mouse, and case fans. I have used multiple hard drives, ssds, windows 7, windows 10. It even happens with the integrated graphics. It is not in my head, all shadows look like the above images. I think the "shadow acne" issue is the right path to go down. I think that it has to be software related, some latent setting in Windows that is affecting the way that shadows are rendered. 

[iiNNeX]

Here is what a very technically savvy guy PMed me a while ago:

 

"Hello iiNNex,

 

I have good news and bad news.

 

SpeedUP and I figured out the exact problem and have an idea of how to fix it. Bad news is that we don't know how to do it.

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. Here's a copy of my message to SpeedUP:

 

NVAPI_INTERFACE NvAPI_Unload

(

)

DESCRIPTION: Decrements the ref-counter and when it reaches ZERO, unloads NVAPI library. This must be called in pairs with NvAPI_Initialize.

SUPPORTED OS: Windows XP and higher

Note: By design, it is not mandatory to call NvAPI_Initialize before calling any NvAPI. When any NvAPI is called without first calling NvAPI_Initialize, the internal refcounter will be implicitly incremented. In such cases, calling NvAPI_Initialize from a different thread will result in incrementing the refcount again and the user has to call NvAPI_Unload twice to unload the library. However, note that the implicit increment of the refcounter happens only once. If the client wants unload functionality, it is recommended to always call NvAPI_Initialize and NvAPI_Unload in pairs.

Unloading NvAPI library is not supported when the library is in a resource locked state. Some functions in the NvAPI library initiates an operation or allocates certain resources and there are corresponding functions available, to complete the operation or free the allocated resources. All such function pairs are designed to prevent unloading NvAPI library.

For example, if NvAPI_Unload is called after NvAPI_XXX which locks a resource, it fails with NVAPI_ERROR. Developers need to call the corresponding NvAPI_YYY to unlock the resources, before calling NvAPI_Unload again.

Return values:

NVAPI_ERROR	One or more resources are locked and hence cannot unload NVAPI library
NVAPI_OK	NVAPI library unloaded

 

So remember how I said that each 3D rendering software comes with a variant of NvAPI? Well thats why its happening. Now let me set up a scenario:

Imagine running a game such as GTA V. The first time you run it the settings are usually set on lowest meaning no AF or AA, low shadow resolution and distance. So the NvAPI takes these settings and unloads them into the L2 Cache of GPU so that the Stream-multiprocessors can read them and when ever you exit the game NvAPI should force the GPU to flush the settings by writing Global Settings into the cache area. For some reason it's stuck. It can happen when you change a setting by dramatically tuning it up and the variant is not fast enough to rewrite. Now the settings cannot be verified by any variant in order to be flushed. The only way to fix this is to find the way to flush the cache and unload a clean NvAPI into the cache. Now this also answers why this happens again when you insert new parts into the PC and that is because the drivers always keep the same buggy variant in their backup files and loads it into memory if its missing. It also works the other way, if you reinstall the drivers, it automatically reads the variants setting from the cache and make a copy of the variant. 

 

So the document claims that in order to fix it we have to unlock the resources and unload a variant (The red text) However I have no idea how to do that."

 

Hopefully that can help people. I just don't bother with games anymore

[LexLoneWolf]

Hi guys, same shitty problem here, I'll tell you how started for me and my experience. (gosh this is starting to seem like a therapy group xD).

well all started when I bought the RX 480, I started to see weird things like a squared pattern (Shadow acne) in some places on games, I had a GTX 650 before and I didn't notice that kind of things, or I just was looking at the FPS counter more than how actually the game looked like.  I tried putting my RX 480 on a friend's PC, the same, and when she put her graphics card back, guess what, the same fucking problem.

I thought it was just a driver issue cause she had another 480 so I contacted with the AMD technical support and they thought the graphics card was defective. I changed back to the GTX 650 doing a clean installation of the drivers with the DDU software, same shit,
I knew it wasn't normal so I sent back the graphics card and the motherboard to the store. They replaced the mother board but couldn't replace the graphics card cause it was discontinued so they refund the money and I bought a GTX 1060, again this shit:

 

It might look different to other people, shadow acne looks different on other games, depends on how the games are coded or optimized.


I was so upset, so I sent back again all the hardware but the hard drives so they could fix it. They replaced the graphics card again and they told me everything worked correctly. I haven't assemble the PC yet cause scares the shit out of me, if that happens again I'd be so done.

So I've been thinking, whether is a software problem, then formatting the hard drives or getting a new ones and reinstalling windows should fix it (I'm pretty sure a lot of us have tried that without result), or is external to the PC, I don't think any peripherals like mice or keyboards could cause this problem, it'd be silly, so I think it could be the electrical installation of the house or maybe the monitor which is conected directly to the graphics card, besides I noticed that even playing at 60 FPS or above with Vsync enabled it doesn't feel smooth at all in some games, I know it would be weird too, but those two things are the constants when we conect the PC for the first time. it just doesn't make sense to be a software or hardware problem for those people who have bought a completely new PC.

I might have written a lot of bullshit here, but i'm just trying to help find the cause and hopefully together find the solution some day.

[MEC-777]

1 hour ago, LexLoneWolf said:

.

It's simply not possible for this to be caused by "dirty power" from the house. It just isn't. 

 

I think what @iiNNeX posted a few replies above is the first viable possibility as to what could actually be causing this issue. 

[LexLoneWolf]

On 8/3/2017 at 1:14 AM, iiNNeX said:

Here is what a very technically savvy guy PMed me a while ago:

 

"Hello iiNNex,

 

I have good news and bad news.

 

SpeedUP and I figured out the exact problem and have an idea of how to fix it. Bad news is that we don't know how to do it.

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. Here's a copy of my message to SpeedUP:

 

NVAPI_INTERFACE NvAPI_Unload

(

)

DESCRIPTION: Decrements the ref-counter and when it reaches ZERO, unloads NVAPI library. This must be called in pairs with NvAPI_Initialize.

SUPPORTED OS: Windows XP and higher

Note: By design, it is not mandatory to call NvAPI_Initialize before calling any NvAPI. When any NvAPI is called without first calling NvAPI_Initialize, the internal refcounter will be implicitly incremented. In such cases, calling NvAPI_Initialize from a different thread will result in incrementing the refcount again and the user has to call NvAPI_Unload twice to unload the library. However, note that the implicit increment of the refcounter happens only once. If the client wants unload functionality, it is recommended to always call NvAPI_Initialize and NvAPI_Unload in pairs.

Unloading NvAPI library is not supported when the library is in a resource locked state. Some functions in the NvAPI library initiates an operation or allocates certain resources and there are corresponding functions available, to complete the operation or free the allocated resources. All such function pairs are designed to prevent unloading NvAPI library.

For example, if NvAPI_Unload is called after NvAPI_XXX which locks a resource, it fails with NVAPI_ERROR. Developers need to call the corresponding NvAPI_YYY to unlock the resources, before calling NvAPI_Unload again.

Return values:

NVAPI_ERROR	One or more resources are locked and hence cannot unload NVAPI library
NVAPI_OK	NVAPI library unloaded

 

So remember how I said that each 3D rendering software comes with a variant of NvAPI? Well thats why its happening. Now let me set up a scenario:

Imagine running a game such as GTA V. The first time you run it the settings are usually set on lowest meaning no AF or AA, low shadow resolution and distance. So the NvAPI takes these settings and unloads them into the L2 Cache of GPU so that the Stream-multiprocessors can read them and when ever you exit the game NvAPI should force the GPU to flush the settings by writing Global Settings into the cache area. For some reason it's stuck. It can happen when you change a setting by dramatically tuning it up and the variant is not fast enough to rewrite. Now the settings cannot be verified by any variant in order to be flushed. The only way to fix this is to find the way to flush the cache and unload a clean NvAPI into the cache. Now this also answers why this happens again when you insert new parts into the PC and that is because the drivers always keep the same buggy variant in their backup files and loads it into memory if its missing. It also works the other way, if you reinstall the drivers, it automatically reads the variants setting from the cache and make a copy of the variant. 

 

So the document claims that in order to fix it we have to unlock the resources and unload a variant (The red text) However I have no idea how to do that."

 

Hopefully that can help people. I just don't bother with games anymore

Okay that's at last a reliable explanation, we know what is exactly happening, but it also happens with AMD so now we have to determine what is messing up with the 3D rendering API's to fail that way

it's so frustrating, we have to be a really low amount of people with this problem, there's no information about this nowhere, all are dead topics... Anyway, that is a great advance to possibly find a solution, meanwhile all you can do is manually change the shadows resolution and the shadow fading in the engine files of the games, Unreal engine is particularly easy to modify.

I'll check eventually this topic to see if it's something new, and a lot of thanks for all the people that has been researching and trying to find a solution.

And an advice here, if it's not so bad and doesn't really affect the playability don't bother yourself, ignore it till you buy another pc configuration or the problem is solved, your mental health will be greatfull with you

[lobolaw1984]

4 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

It's simply not possible for this to be caused by "dirty power" from the house. It just isn't. 

 

I think what @iiNNeX posted a few replies above is the first viable possibility as to what could actually be causing this issue. 

Absolutely - it has to be software related. It even happens with my native intel graphics. I've changed every part in my pc.

 

[lordante]

Hi!

So, i'm french, and sorry if my english is bad.

I've some issue too with my r9 390x, started with gtx 660 and r9 290x.

I did lot of test like you, with no effect BUT:

-Pure opengl game looks unaffected(game tested: Doom, spore). Game who can switch between DX and Opengl are infected(game tested: warthunder).
-DX12 game are near 0 affected (they are a little but you can still play if you are not looking after it)
-TSaa + 4K are the best way to minimise this effect (the two together).

So, i start to search again and again, and my question is: Can't it be Direct Shader corruption? As DX use different direct shader for different version, and opengl can use them, if i'm right, too.

Edited March 11, 2017 by lordante
add information

[clement1012]

               

[clement1012]

If it is indeed an electrical problem why persists after the total change of the PC?

I also have the problem on my tv and my ps3 so I think this is most likely an electrical problem

[lordante]

Pretty sure it is not electrical, i changed PSU, House, and got an electrical protection...

 

[clement1012]

17 hours ago, clement1012 said:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/831430/geforce-900-series/pixelated-shadows-texture-popins-gtx-960-970-980-ect-/68

Read post 1018 of Kraudi, I have exactly the same problem and it seems to me that the ps3 don't use directx.

 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2620399/flickering-bad-anti-aliasing-entire-household.html

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2620399/flickering-bad-anti-aliasing-entire-household.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2624066/ground-shimmer-poor-anti-aliasing-games.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2696395/causing-jagged-edges.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2616503/gta-extreme-aliasing-blurry-graphics.html