Screen Flickering/Tearing in SH4 (and SH3)

[BarracudaUAK]

I know this has something to do with recent updates to WINE, as I've tried multiple different video driver (read: kernel) versions and I'm still getting it.


All is good, until I start to move the mouse in the menu.
Then I get minor flickering, start a "single mission" and as I move the mouse around playing, it gets to the point of half the screen has random triangles flickering in and out (for only a few frames).

It is random, and doesn't appear to be related to where the mouse is....

I tried both 32bit and 64bit environments, as well as with the LAA patch.
With and without "Vsync".

So I tried SH3, and I'm getting it there too.
None of my other games that I tried are having this issue.

Has anyone ever had this occur in Windows?

Any other Linux user having this with Wine 2.7? (With AMD or Nvidia?)
I just updated to 2.8 from the testing repo, I'm going to give it a try with the new version see if it imporves.


I finally got a few minutes to play, and all is going nuts...:doh:

Barracuda


EDIT: It appears it was the Kernel. I upgraded to WINE 3.3, and Kernel 4.15.7 and the screen flickering stopped.
Blackjack174 confirmed it was the Kernel, as he had the forethought to just upgrade one thing at a time!!!

[propbeanie]

I don't have that issue in Windows 7-64, nor in Ubuntu 16.x-64... I forget where that's gotten to now as far as version number. I've got an older DuoCore Quad and an almost-as-old ATI 4750?? vid card... not exactly new stuff. When I first saw your post, I thought to myself, we'll have to get BarracudaUAK on here to help this person... :roll: :doh:

[Rockin Robbins]

For many games, restricting frame rate or syncing the scan to 30 fps will fix tearing. I'll have to check out my WINE version and play a bit to see if I have similar behavior on my nVidia GTS 250 card.

[BarracudaUAK]

I tried V2.8 and I get the same issue, I even went all the way back to a 4.8 kernel to see if it was the drivers.
Tried with Vsync, Tried a 'standard' 4x3 resolution.
I even tried enabling "CSMT" in winecfg.
Nothing changed.


So I started Steam and SH4 via the terminal, and this is what I keep getting...


.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x6300000b, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x6300000b, 0)

So it looks to be a Wine issue with losing the "screen".

I'm still digging as to what the issue is.

But on the other hand, I'm playing some other games atm...

Mass Effect 2 is just flying with "CSMT" enabled.

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

Is Mass Effect multi-core aware? How about the other games that work fine? Is the video expecting data out of a "pipe" for the video and that's what it's losing, or is it comm with the hardware itself? I don't understand a lot of the terminal output. Almost always seems backwards to me... like a little / big endian kinda thang...

[BarracudaUAK]

Yes, it is, minimum requirements for ME2 were for a dual-core.


Although, as per my post in the PC hardware forum, it will raise all core's load when it runs, same as SH4.

They are both DX9 games, so something must be amiss related to SH4.

Although, on closer inspection, I'm not seeing "triangles" I'm seeing the various texture assets, sometimes distorted.

Gauges, dials, even the in game font textures, they are what is flickering in and out.


Hmmmmm, I think I may have found something here.... time to test....



EDIT: Nope, didn't work.

I found a bug were someone was having similar trouble with and older version of wine.

Suggestion was to "set "Allow the window manager to control the windows." to disabled", but that didn't help...

This wouldn't be the first time that I had a game stop working great (or at all) with Wine, and I just had to wait a few.

Things like this are what make me wait to confirm updates are working before I upgrade!
But, it is about that time, approximately X.8 -X.12 usually end up giving me some grief!

I may have to just wait it out.
But I'm going to keep digging...

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

anti-aliasing?...

mod soup in SH4?...

[BarracudaUAK]

Stock, with minor tweaks that all worked as of Wine 2.4.

Didn't get to play much of anything during the last month or so, first the loss of a hard drive, then work getting in the way. Other than starting it up and playing a few "single missions", which worked, I didn't play much with WINE 2.5/2.6.

I'm going to try a fresh prefix, see if maybe the upgrade "broke" the SH4 installation of dx9 in the prefixes (have it installed in a 64bit with LAA for large mods, and in a 32bit for playing/tweaking).

And try find the AMDGPU driver config file... and see if Vsync is on.
Although it never had tearing issues before.:hmmm:

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

Yeah, the ATI / AMD stuff was never pushed too far in that regard, unless a user went in and changed it...

[BarracudaUAK]

I think that ultimately this is turning out to be a Wine problem.

I installed the X11 amdgpu driver which installs, among other things, the X11 config files for the desktop.
I enabled "Tearfree" aka Anti-aliasing...
And I still get the flickering. So it looks like I'll have to wait until the next Wine update to see if they fixed it.

Not that big of a deal, since I've had to wait a few months for regressions in other games to be fixed before.

Thanks for the suggestions of things to double check PB...

Barracuda

[BarracudaUAK]

And It's still fickering on 2.9...:doh:


I may have to go to the wine forum and see what is up with WINE lately...
Fallout 4 is running (poorly) and SH3/4 are on the fritz, I think they broke something...:hmmm:

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

The cost of "progress"... they probably sped some other games up, and lost compatibility with the older ones... I don't see how though, but maybe they left a little something out like MS did when they "graduated" to DirectX 10, forgetting some of the elements that 9c had - "required" by games like SH4...

[BarracudaUAK]

That's the trick, they are basically coding "links"...
Direct X calls linked to OpenGL calls.


And none of my other games are having issues...

But, with 2.8 and 2.9, I ran SH4 with wine set to "emulate a virtual desktop" of 1024x768, with SH4 set to the same resolution.

I started SH4 with the terminal to watch the output, and all is well, until I move the mouse then the errors that I noted previously start.

They stop when I moved the mouse to an area of the screen other than SH4.

So... I have no idea. I'm on WineHQ now to see if I can find any related bugs.

But all the other dx9 games that I have that I've tested work great... :hmmm:

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

There's an "Anti-Aliasing" (or is it one of those "-tropic" things??) setting, along with volumetric fog and a few other thingies in the game. Would they make any difference? I don't know if you have to re-start the game after changing those settings or not.

[BarracudaUAK]

Just thought I would update on this....


Although I haven't started the suggested path of using git to see if I can trace exactly what "broke", I have managed to nail down some 'possible' fixes to this without too much work...

First, I went digging for any report of this before, apparently gnome desktop had a similar problem with something similar a few years ago... (I'm running KDE), and it was because the desktop manager was changing "focus" i.e. selecting other windows...

So I followed the basic advice and I set the "focus stealing prevention" to "extreme".
This had 2 effects, First and most noticeable, it prevents me from opening the application launcher (start menu for you "windows" types:D:O::O::O:).

2nd, while it does not completely stop the flickering in SH4, it does reduce it some.
But most promising is it stops completely (I don't think it flickered at all) in SH3.

So I may, when I have some time, try the "preferred" method of debugging wine, but that will require some wading through dependencies for building from source with git....

Barracuda

[THEBERBSTER]

Hi guys
SH4.exe compatibility mode.
Ticking the box to 'Override High DPI Scaling' does this male any difference?
Peter

[BarracudaUAK]

I just read the thread about text size posted by blackhawk70, any chance that your post was meant for that thread?

No such option in Linux...

Currently I'm running it with "emulate a virtual desktop" of 1024x768 in WINE, so I can read the errors as they show up in the terminal window...

But I did check for such an option in game as well, no dice....

And I'm running WINE 2.10 as of my last post...:doh:

Although, I think with all of the post about issues with SH4 recently, I may be better off running it through WINE than most running it through Windows...:haha:


Barracuda

[Blackjack174]

FYI:
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000020, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000020, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000007, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000007, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000006, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000006, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000005, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000005, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000004, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000004, 0)

these are in fact messages from the "Main" application that gets dumped to the linux console, when hovering and focusing on UI elements in the sh3 menu, these are NOT errors.

As I have the flickering too with AMDGPU driver I tested my intel onboard driver (which worked fine with sh3 some month back), and I have no flickering / errors there.

Intel drivers for my HD4600 card now support exactly the same OPENGL levels as AMDGPU , so there should be a bug in AMDGPU driver (that incidentally is now used by AMDGPU Pro proprietary driver), I will try to revert to older mesa drivers and dissect and report this issue to the mesa developers if possible.

Hope that does not count as necroposting here (sorry), but this thread actually turns up first when searching for the problem...

cheers. :yeah:

[BarracudaUAK]

FYI:
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000020, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000020, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000007, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000007, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000006, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000006, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000005, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000005, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0002=FOCUS_RECEIVED (0x63000004, 0)
.msg<Main>: 0xaaaa0001=FOCUS_LOST (0x63000004, 0)

these are in fact messages from the "Main" application that gets dumped to the linux console, when hovering and focusing on UI elements in the sh3 menu, these are NOT errors.

As I have the flickering too with AMDGPU driver I tested my intel onboard driver (which worked fine with sh3 some month back), and I have no flickering / errors there.

Intel drivers for my HD4600 card now support exactly the same OPENGL levels as AMDGPU , so there should be a bug in AMDGPU driver (that incidentally is now used by AMDGPU Pro proprietary driver), I will try to revert to older mesa drivers and dissect and report this issue to the mesa developers if possible.

Hope that does not count as necroposting here (sorry), but this thread actually turns up first when searching for the problem...

cheers. :yeah:



I just logged back in and noticed your post....


What I posted as errors, did not show up on the older wine/driver versions.
I start all of my games through a terminal strictly so I will have a clue if something goes "not to plan".

They messages START after the game starts flickering, and only after.
Until I move the mouse and the flickering starts, I will see no messages of this kind.

Hence the reason I concluded that they were "errors".


I keep meaning to file a bug report, but life has once again been really busy...

Also, just a note to anyone else that happens upon this thread,
I'm running Fedora 27, kernel 4.14.13, wine 2.20 staging
and it is still flickering.


I just updated to 4.14.14, so I'll check again next time I reboot.

Barracuda

[Blackjack174]

I filed a bug some while ago , but so far no reaction yet:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104549

I inlucded an apitrace so developers can "replay" opengl commands and debug what is going wrong.

Incidentely I retested sh3 on my intel integrated graphics , no artefacts there exactly as I remember :hmmm: , so should be an AMDGPU issue , even replaying the trace on intel looks ok too.

[BarracudaUAK]

I've been thinking this over for the last few days, and to test if I can confirm which part is causing the issue...


I do have an older R7 370X that still uses the Radeon kernel driver. Unlike my R9 380 that uses amdgpu, So for a quick test I'm going to swap video cards and see if there is any change.

I'll post back with the results.

I don't have any other (brand) hardware to test on.

Although I might drop back to the release version of F25's mesa as well, separately, and see what happens there.

Barracuda

[BarracudaUAK]

Well, I downgraded mesa to the version in Fedora 25, which worked, and I still get flickering on the R9. EDIT: v17.0

I upgraded everything back to the current version, and swapped out the the R7, still flickering.

So I may have to drop back several wine versions and see what happens there.


Barracuda

[Sniper297]

I'm still chugging along with WIN XP, never seen LINUX or any of the VISTA and later operating systems. To throw out a few ideas;

1. From what I've read in various other games, some of the later versions don't come with DX9, so VISTA / WIN7 users had to download and install DX9C to make older games work.

2. I got flashing from newer video cards and drivers, reduced by turning off detailed ripples and 3D ships wakes in graphics options. Turning down hardware acceleration one notch (suggested for mouse problems in XP) also seems to help. Don't know how it works in later systems, but for XP;

START, RUN, "DXDIAG". Go to SOUND tab, set slider from full acceleration to standard.

Probably something similar in VISTA / 7 / 8 / 10 (was there a 9?) no idea about LINUX.
As far as I know WINE is fermented fruit juice and I wouldn't advise pouring it into a computer. ;)

[BarracudaUAK]

I'm still chugging along with WIN XP, never seen LINUX or any of the VISTA and later operating systems. To throw out a few ideas;

1. From what I've read in various other games, some of the later versions don't come with DX9, so VISTA / WIN7 users had to download and install DX9C to make older games work.

2. I got flashing from newer video cards and drivers, reduced by turning off detailed ripples and 3D ships wakes in graphics options. Turning down hardware acceleration one notch (suggested for mouse problems in XP) also seems to help. Don't know how it works in later systems, but for XP;

START, RUN, "DXDIAG". Go to SOUND tab, set slider from full acceleration to standard.

Probably something similar in VISTA / 7 / 8 / 10 (was there a 9?) no idea about LINUX.
As far as I know WINE is fermented fruit juice and I wouldn't advise pouring it into a computer. ;)

Well, I tried DxDiag and it doesn't give me the option to change the hardware acceleration anywhere. It doesn't actually "see" the hardware, but it does tell me that acceleration is on and possible.

But since WINE is "faking" or 'redirecting' everything to the Linux equivalents that's not surprising...

Short version: Hardware > Kernel driver (hardware control) > mesa (OpenGL) > WINE (faking and redirection) > SH4.

A "hiccup" anywhere and it might not work.

I tried adjusting settings, but nothing stopped the texture flickering that I'm getting.
I'm getting the flickering in the menu too, where the 'environmental' settings should not make a difference.

I will probably downgrade WINE to an older version to test.
Nothing that didn't work in 2.5/2.6 works now, so I'm not losing anything.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Barracuda

P.S. Fermented anything can stay away from my computer!

[Armistead]

Only time I've had that issue is my video card was overheating

[BarracudaUAK]

I downgraded to WINE 1.9.12 (currently 3.2) and still got the flickering.
So I'm not exactly sure where the issue is.


Also, I'm pretty sure the card isn't overheating. (Even if I lost the fans on the R9, my case has enough fans to keep the air flowing.)
PLUS, I've tried my 2nd R9, and my older R7(s). I don't think I'd be dealing with over-heating issues on 4 different cards.

But I'll check that out too.

Thanks for all the suggestions.


Worst case scenario... I'll setup a VM (with GPU pass-through) and install a Fedora old enough (probably 23) to not have flickering issues.

I have a 2nd monitor and keyboard so I'm good to go there.

Upside, is I would be able to use any and all out-of-game "tools" while I play on the "other screen" on the VM.


Barracuda

[Blackjack174]

I downgraded to WINE 1.9.12 (currently 3.2) and still got the flickering.
So I'm not exactly sure where the issue is.

Barracuda

try to start (and wait ages :O:) prepending mesa env. variable for software rendering:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=true COMMANDTHATSTARTSH3/4HERE

Software rendering still uses mesa and works (but crappy slow with ~4ghz cpu), as is the intel implementation for mesa, so I am pretty sure mesa stack is the culprit here.

Switching radeon cards will probably still use the same vertex? shader compiler with the same errors and issues, apparently these seem to behave differently than the intel/software implementations, but replaying opengl traces shows a lot of shader compiler errors (that could be a wine problem , have to test with native d3d9 dlls), so if the radeon driver path has some more issues with these this could potentially break differently.

Did it at any point in time work ok with any of your cards under wine ?

EDIT: forgot to mention , I also tried wine staging with gallium nine, this rendered my sub interior ok with no flickering but hung my hole graphic stack when getting to the bridge or anywhere else from the first station after mission loads (menu also did not flicker at all), this however bypasses the opengl stack and sends d3d9 calls to the card, hence not the same errors, but in my case I had to shutdown my system using a remote shell

[BarracudaUAK]

...
Switching radeon cards will probably still use the same vertex? shader compiler with the same errors and issues, apparently these seem to behave differently than the intel/software implementations, but replaying opengl traces shows a lot of shader compiler errors (that could be a wine problem , have to test with native d3d9 dlls), so if the radeon driver path has some more issues with these this could potentially break differently.

Did it at any point in time work ok with any of your cards under wine ?
...



To answer your last question first: Yes, from 1.7.30(when I installed Fedora 20) up until WINE v2.6.
v2.7 and up have had this issue.

I tried my R7 370X because it uses the Radeon kernel driver, not the AMDGPU kernel driver, although both use the RadeonSI (SI=Sea Islands *I think*) mesa driver. In case the error was with AMDGPU....

As far as you comment about testing with actuall d3d9 dlls.
This gets complicated typing, just to break it down so I don't confuse anyone, or myself:
I have SH4 through steam.
I have Steam installed in a 32bit WINE prefix, ".wine32".
In ".wine32" I have DirectX 9c and DotNet 2.0 installed. (Initially because S3D needed dotnet.)


I also have a "Steam install" in the default 64bit ".wine" prefix.
I also added SH4 here to test the LAA patch and larger mods.
The default prefix uses "stock" WINE dlls.

It flickers in BOTH prefixes.

The only thing I haven't tried is downgrading Xorg to 1.17 (from Fedora 22's release) and installing FGLRX, which would replace a rather large chunk of most of the probable areas.
This is what I used on my last PC with HD6750s, and this current PC up until kernel 4.8.16 with both the R7 370X, and the R9 380.

Also may try XFCE, or LXDE, as I've read of various troubles plaguing one desktop while trying to game, but not another.

I'm just running through all the possibilities.


Barracuda

[BarracudaUAK]

And XFCE and LXDE both encountered the same issue.
(Although they both have a lot of gnome dependencies, was hoping it might just be limited to KDE, since that is the only thing I haven't tried downgrading yet.)


I'll try it with the CL command you mentioned Blackjack174, and see what happens!

EDIT: SH4 crashes when launched. Black screen then I see the crash dialog box pop up in the background.
(I have my windows set to go semi-transparent when they are not the currently selected window.)


Barracuda

[Sniper297]

Looking over the XP options, in addition to adjusting the audio acceleration with DXDIAG I also have the option to adjust video acceleration down one notch by;

1. Right click on desktop
2. Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot.

Again, dunno anything about WINE, but might be worth looking to see if it has a similar option.

[BarracudaUAK]

Looking over the XP options, in addition to adjusting the audio acceleration with DXDIAG I also have the option to adjust video acceleration down one notch by;

1. Right click on desktop
2. Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot.

Again, dunno anything about WINE, but might be worth looking to see if it has a similar option.


WINE is just a compatibility layer, so no such option.
It integrates your Windows programs/games with Linux/MacOS/Unix (BSD,openBSD,etc) it's not a "virtual" desktop type thing.

Although I do appreciate the reminder of how to do it in WinXP.
It's been 3+ years since I had XP on a PC.
All the other PCs in the house (none of them mine) are all 7 and newer.

At this point seems like the Virtual machine with the GPU pass-through (thereby allowing the "virtual" OS to "see" the physical hardware) running an older version of the OS, is the best option. Pending a bugfix.

Barracuda

[propbeanie]

Surely they didn't do like MS and decide that "you don't need that old stuff anymore", did they?...

[BarracudaUAK]

Surely they didn't do like MS and decide that "you don't need that old stuff anymore", did they?...


I think it's just a bug in the driver.

There have been many improvements to the driver over the last few years.
Also WINE has added several things... I think it's just a case of work on new stuff invariably messes with the old.

Similar to moving in furniture, you can catch a wall or corner, and mess up all that drywall and/or trim work... End result, you have to fix it.


Using the native Linux version Counter Strike Source, running the stress test, I got the following results over the last few years:

Shortly after I built the PC, running 1920x1080, Detail maxed, 8x AA, 16x Anistropic (sp?) Filtering.
Motion Blur, Bloom and High Dynamic Range all turned OFF.
(Mainly because I hate those "visual tweaks".)

XFX R7 370X @ 1050mhz (factory OC)
Gigabyte R9 380 @ 980mhz (factory OC)

Averages:
With FGLRX:
R7: 273fps
R9: 253fps
R9 OC'd to 1050mhz: 263fps
Any higher and the R9 would be unstable.

switch to AMDGPU/Mesa (RadeonSI driver) (~kernel 4.9):
R9: 233fps

Then:
R9: 213fps

Later still:
R9: 230~ish

Kernel 4.13-4.14:
R9: up to 257-260fps
OC'd to ~1050mhz: 263fps

EDIT: May have been Mesa 17.2.4... Last file I can find on my PC.
Current: Kernel 4.15.2/4.15.3/mesa 17.3 (RadeonSI driver),
R9 @ factory 980mhz: 273.94fps avg.

EDIT: w/ mesa 17.3.5:
EDIT: R9: 276fps
EDIT: It's climbing again.

The highest it's been for the for the R9 EVER, and matching the older R7.
In addition to adding the Polaris (RX 4xx/RX 5xx) and the Vega 56/64 too.

So I'm sure in all of this, plus wine, someone probably commented or typo'd something somewhere.

Barracuda

[BarracudaUAK]

IT'S FIXED!!!


A few days ago I upgraded both the kernel and wine.

I had just played through Homeworld: Cataclysm (~2000) and decided to have another run through the original Homeworld (~1999) since it has been at least a few years since I played it.

I upgraded wine to 3.3 and the kernel to 4.15.7 and was about to start Homeworld...

Then I remembered I hadn't checked SH4 yet, so I started it up, and no flickering!!!

So I quit, and started via the terminal to see the output.
I'm still getting the FOCUS LOST/FOCUS RECEIVED messages in the terminal, but no flickering.

I tried the "Battle off Samar" single mission and all was working correctly.

So as soon as I finish my run though Homeworld I plan on resuming my saved game.

I'm still not sure which part was causing the error... but that's what you get for riding so close to the leading/bleeding edge.

Barracuda

[Blackjack174]

IT'S FIXED!!!
A few days ago I upgraded both the kernel and wine.

I can confirm that sh3 is working as well :up: , only thing I did is updating to kernel 4.15.7 , wine and everything else unchanged .

[BarracudaUAK]

So it was the kernel....
Good to know.:up:

I'll edit my first post, so anyone that runs across this thread doesn't have to read 3 pages to find the answer.

Barracuda