Textures flickering on distant object

[akdavis]

EDIT: please note that with further testing, distance (other than very close) and viewing through optics is not really a factor. In the case of the screenshot below, the factor was whether or not the ship had been damaged.

This is especially (perhaps exclusively) a problem with ships, particularly when view at a distance through optics. Certain areas of the ships have areas of black flickering across them. You can see a bit of this black flickering/flashing in the screen below, but of course it does not really convey the effect in a still image.



I'm pretty sure this is not a problem new to 1.2. I cannot find a relation to any in-game settings. Any ideas if a card setting might be causing this.

I have a pair of 6800 Ultras with latest drivers (although I am running the game on a single GPU as I lose FPS with SLI). 1280x960 w/ 2X AA

[Cakewalk]

I have a similar problem (GeForce 7900 GS, 4X AA, 8X AF, 1400x900). Its quite noticeable when looking at ships in the museum, also.

[akdavis]

Yeah, museum was the first place I noticed it after I installed the game.

[Chock]

Sounds like an issue with mipmapping to me - mipmapping being the technique used to scale textures in the distance to stop this kind of thing going on - you may be able to find something in your video card driver application to alter how this is (or possibly isn't) being applied.

[akdavis]

Well, here's something interesting. I found the most obvious mipmapping setting on my card and changed it and then went back to the same scenario I saw the artifacts in above and it seemed gone...until I was messing around later and fired my deck gun at the ship and hit her once. All of sudden the flashing black areas were back along the whole length of the ship. Went to graphics options and slid the "3D damage" slider all the way to the left. The flashing areas went away again.

So, any damage seems to cause this to appear. However, even with the slider all the way to the left, certain areas of ships still exhibit these artifacts until you zoom all the way in (when viewing them in the museum). One of the most obvious areas is elevators on carriers, e.g. Bogue class fore and aft elevator:


The life rafts hanging vertically along the sides of ships are also prime suspects, albeit in a much smaller form.

[Anvart]

Originally Posted by akdavis

Well, here's something interesting. I found the most obvious mipmapping setting on my card and changed it and then went back to the same scenario I saw the artifacts in above and it seemed gone...until I was messing around later and fired my deck gun at the ship and hit her once. All of sudden the flashing black areas were back along the whole length of the ship. Went to graphics options and slid the "3D damage" slider all the way to the left. The flashing areas went away again.

So, any damage seems to cause this to appear. However, even with the slider all the way to the left, certain areas of ships still exhibit these artifacts until you zoom all the way in (when viewing them in the museum). One of the most obvious areas is elevators on carriers, e.g. Bogue class fore and aft elevator:


The life rafts hanging vertically along the sides of ships are also prime suspects, albeit in a much smaller form.

Yes, you have approached to the reason very close ...
When I did lit ships (SH3), i had the same problem, when crack models did not coincide absolutely precisely with the basic model ...
I think it's not videocard bug ...

[akdavis]

Originally Posted by Jace11

Hmm, this has been really bugging me..

So I was playing around with graphic settings etc, tried different drivers, mipmapping levels etc. I found only one fix: it was unchecking ship normal maps in the options (sliding the damage slider down did not remove it for me). Unchecking normal maps completely removes the flickering black textures, yet it did not seem to change the ships textures at all, they look identical with it checked or unchecked.. which is weird... they still look great!! I toggled the option while looking at the side of a ship and unlike all the other graphics options, toggling normal maps seemed to have no effect, post effect, caustic effects, glare etc can all be observed real-time when you toggle...

Maybe the normal maps are activated twice causing the flickering - maybe they are not implemented properly at all. This type of flickering I have seen in other games and was a reasult of two textures laid over each other.

Anyway I have unchecked it, and I see no loss whatsoever in image quality of ship textures.. but mysteriously all the flickering goes away.. only thing I need to check is damage..

I thought I had already checked this, but I double checked to make sure. Checking the Bogue's elevators in the museums shows that the huge areas of flickering are still there. Perhaps it is ameliorated to some degree for the small areas seen from the side of many ships, but the problem is definitely still there. I also inflicted damage on the two merchants in the navigation training mission and the random areas of flickering black immediately reappeared, as well.

Areas where there are horizontal lines that take on an angle as the ship rolls also have a "flickering" effect that I believe is unrelated. Perhaps the normal maps effect that, or perhaps this is improvement is dependent on card/drivers?

Anyways, I tested a bit more and noticed a few more things. First, the "ship damage" has three settings: right, middle and left. All the way to the right and a "3D" hole and the flickering appears after damaging the ship (although some hits in certain areas seem not to cause the flickering). With the slider in the middle, no 3D damage or any other change occurs, but the flickering is still there. With the slider to the left, there is no 3D or 2D damage and no flickering. This suggests to me that some sort of damage texture is supposed to be applied, but instead all I see is this random flickering on large areas of the ship, often on parts not associated with the damage just inflicted.

The only other way to make the flickering disappear (whether that which is always there or that which appears after damage) is to view the ship from very close range.

edit: I also tried to exit the sim and restart after making the change in the options just in case it didn't take immediate effect, but this made no difference.