[TEC] Visual Glitches on panning - please help!

[panthercules]

OK - I'm experiencing a problem with my SH4 setup that I haven't been able to track down and I'm hoping some of you folks can help me figure out what's going on and how to fix it. I first noticed it while trying to test some ROW stuff, but now that I've noticed it I've confirmed that I'm seeing it with stock SH4 1.3, so it does not seem to be ROW-related but it's getting in the way of my doing any useful testing.

Here's the problem - when I'm in normal Bridge view, if I pan the camera left/right (using the arrow keys for consistency) I get this annoying "hitch"/stutter in the view - instead of a nice smooth pan, at several points I get a momentary freeze or hitch, where the picture seems to stop at a point and then skip/jerk ahead to catch up with the panning camera view (particularly noticeable when I cross the bow of my boat). I've played with all sorts of driver settings (even rolled back to a previous driver version), and various slider and in-game video quality level settings, but I can't get rid of this. I've reinstalled SH4 1.3, and run it completely stock, and I'm still getting this.

I would really appreciate it if a few of you could try this experiment (without changing any of your own settings) and vote in the poll to say whether you see this effect at all or not: Just start a career or patrol so you're docked in port (I've been using Manila), go to the normal bridge view, and just pan the camera back and forth a few times by pressing the right/left arrow buttons. See if everything stays smooth looking, or if you get any sort of hitch/freezes as you pan back and forth (it's most noticeable by looking at the cables and staff at the bow - if you're having this effect you should be able to see them sort of jerking to catch up with your view as you pan back and forth). It would help to know what your Vid card and in-game video quality settings are, but mostly I'm just trying to figure out if anybody else is seeing this or if it's only me.

Thanks for the help.

[Peto]

I get that too--sometimes worse than others. It seems to get worse the later in a patrol I am (which may indicate a virtual memory issue (serious guess)).

Video card is EVGA 7900 KO GT: Not over-clocking and temps are fine.
Using Driver ver. 6.14.10.9371 (haven't tried any others at this point).

Note: It's more noticable since I started using the ROW mods. But those are so good there's no way I'm going back to stock visuals.

I'll be watching this post with interest. Thanks for starting it Panther!

Peto

[leovampire]

Originally Posted by panthercules

OK - I'm experiencing a problem with my SH4 setup that I haven't been able to track down and I'm hoping some of you folks can help me figure out what's going on and how to fix it. I first noticed it while trying to test some ROW stuff, but now that I've noticed it I've confirmed that I'm seeing it with stock SH4 1.3, so it does not seem to be ROW-related but it's getting in the way of my doing any useful testing.

Here's the problem - when I'm in normal Bridge view, if I pan the camera left/right (using the arrow keys for consistency) I get this annoying "hitch"/stutter in the view - instead of a nice smooth pan, at several points I get a momentary freeze or hitch, where the picture seems to stop at a point and then skip/jerk ahead to catch up with the panning camera view (particularly noticeable when I cross the bow of my boat). I've played with all sorts of driver settings (even rolled back to a previous driver version), and various slider and in-game video quality level settings, but I can't get rid of this. I've reinstalled SH4 1.3, and run it completely stock, and I'm still getting this.

I would really appreciate it if a few of you could try this experiment (without changing any of your own settings) and vote in the poll to say whether you see this effect at all or not: Just start a career or patrol so you're docked in port (I've been using Manila), go to the normal bridge view, and just pan the camera back and forth a few times by pressing the right/left arrow buttons. See if everything stays smooth looking, or if you get any sort of hitch/freezes as you pan back and forth (it's most noticeable by looking at the cables and staff at the bow - if you're having this effect you should be able to see them sort of jerking to catch up with your view as you pan back and forth). It would help to know what your Vid card and in-game video quality settings are, but mostly I'm just trying to figure out if anybody else is seeing this or if it's only me.

Thanks for the help.

Reciently MrBeast had a problem that kept him from running the game and come to find out the driver's for his video card was actualy the problem when it seemed to be an over heating problem. This is not the first case of my hearing of driver's going bad or screwing up over time.

I notice that the ocean flickers every few minutes. Is that what you're talking about? It gets pretty annoying.

[DeepIron]

Three choices guys:

1. Update your drivers...
2. Update your video card...
3. Be selective about which ROW mods you install...

The ROW mods can push the limits of video cards. I have had some issues using my 7600GS 256M card (including the one panthercules describes) when I load "the full boat"... I found by selectively choosing particular ROW mods and installing them, especially those that use "high resolution" textures, the problems I was having decreased and I still got a lot of satisfaction from the changes...

Another thing to check is make sure you don't have a bunch of other processes running, vying for CPU time. I generally turn off my virus checker and any other "auto update" processes when I play SH4. It can make a difference...

It's the game. I have this issue on both my nVidia and ATI systems. They both have the latest drivers and there are no mods installed. Also, I'm runng dual 2900XT's and 8800GTX's.

[Digital_Trucker]

I concur with SubSuck. I've had the problem in stock (all three patches), with any mod you want to name and with two vastly different video cards (ati 9600 pro 256MB and EVGA 7800GS 512MB both with at least 3 different sets of drivers). While a part of my problem may be my outdated system (AMD xp3200+ 32 bit socket A, 400MHz fsb and 1 gig memory) I think the problem is game related and may not be noticed by folks with higher end systems. I also experience frame rate twitches at times and times when every so often the sea goes blank for a split second. I recall reading somewhere in a thread ages ago (at least a month LOL) that this was a game rendering problem. Both of these problems come and go with no apparent rhyme or reason making it very difficult to troubleshoot and hard to blame on anything except some inherent game/operating system/karma incompatibilities.

P.S. I've turned off my virus checker, firewall and all unneccessary services and applications and keep my auto update and background intelligent transfer service off except on "patch tuesday" and still experience the same problems.

[Peto]

Yep. I haven't put much work into finding a fix because it seems to be code related (after working on computers since C64, I tend to trust my instincts). I'm running a AMD 4200+ dual core on a ASUS SLI Deluxe mbd with 2 gigs of RAM. With the 7900 GT video card running everything else I've thrown at it with no problems, I hate to try to "fix it" as it could impact other things I do as well.

Anyway, the stutter on my system is pretty minimal--nothing near a game killer. My FPS reads high 40's in game most of the time. I can live with it.

I have no problem fixing other peoples computers but--for some reason--I hate to fix my own .

Peto

[DeepIron]

For you nVidia users, you can adjust the speed/quality balance by opening the nVidia control panel and tinkering with the Quality & Performance settings...

Or...

Open the nVidia control panel, choose 3D Setting-> Manage 3D Settings->Program Settings...

In there you'll find a profile for Silent Hunter III. Study it. You can then Add a new game profile by using the Add button and then specify the various display parameters... When you start SH4, the settings will be automatically adjusted.... pretty slick.

Part of the problem is this: The game uses mipmapping and some rather large textures that have to be loaded off your drive. The textures are then cached in your video memory and anti-aliased, etc before displaying.

So, if you can get the data off the drive quicker, some of the stuttering and other issues will diminish or vanish.

Other things to try: If you have multiple hard drives and have installed SH4 to the stock location on C:, try moving your Windows pagefile.sys file to a different harddrive.
This has the effect of allowing your primary drive bus to load data *off* C without having to share the same bus with writes to pagefile.sys which is also *on* C... You'll enjoy a slight speedup in all your Windows apps... You can also set the size of the pagefile to a manual size instead of "system managed". This tell the OS to quit monitoring the pagefile constantly and returns a few CPU cycles. How big to set it? Simple, look at what the OS does automatically and make that your manual setting.

Run msconfig from your "Run" menu and disable useless services. I disable things like the Windows update service (I run it manually)... Just be sure that you understand what your disabling.

While none of these hints will turn your box into a "gaming powerhouse", the result of tweaking your Windows system will gain you performance overall...

[panthercules]

This was really bugging me, as I don't remember experiencing it before I started testing ROW but I was getting it on stock installs without ROW so I figured it couldn't be ROW-related.

Turns out, it was related to what I did to get ready to test ROW. I went completely back to fresh install, and didn't load any of my personally-tweaked .cfg files cause I wanted to test "pure" stock and ROW. It dawned on me this morning that this meant that for my testing purposes I HADN'T FIXED THE PROBLEMS WITH STOCK MAIN.CFG FILE that I had fixed so long ago with my personally tweaked .cfg files that I'd forgotten about it

Anyway, when I went back in to main.cfg and fixed the following, my pans are now rock solid/smooth as silk with stock 1.3 under the test conditions described in my first post:

[VIDEO]
Resolution=1024,768,120,22 [was 60]
DynamicShadows=Yes [was No]
FullScreen=Yes
Synchronized=Yes [was No]
TextureResolutionHigh=Yes

[DEVELOPING]
DevDebugEnable=No [was Yes]
DevEditEnable=No [was Yes]
MiniDump=No [was Yes]

Now - back to more ROW testing


Just something y'all might want to check if you're seeing this on high-end machines like I was - not sure if you ever get this to go away completely on lower end machines, but the above ought to help a lot even on those machines. And with all the re-installing that we tend to do as the patches and mods come out, it's easy to forget about something like this (at least, that's my excuse )

Thanks for responding - there may be multiple causes and solutions to this, so everything above may be helpful to somebody trying to see this game in all its glory (especially with improvements like ROW out there to enjoy)

[edit - PS - in case it wasn't obvious, the change from 60 to 120 above is the refresh rate - I changed it to 120 because that's the refresh rate I run on my desktop with my monitor (and in the in-game video setup) - you probably don't have to mess with that line (the 3 in the "developing" section are the real key)]

I'm having a difficult time believing that this game can put much load onto either of my systems. I can run The Witcher at max settings without a hitch. It's possible that it's a setting I have on that the game doesn't like.

I remember having a game that didn't like the Crossfire or SLI configuration and I got major graphical glitches from that. Guess I'll have to play around.

[Peto]

Panther: Thanks for posting your settings! I used your info for my system and the stutter is gone! Wasn't very bad to begin with but now it's very smooth!

Thanks Again!

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by Peto

Panther: Thanks for posting your settings! I used your info for my system and the stutter is gone! Wasn't very bad to begin with but now it's very smooth!

Thanks Again!

Glad it helped - I felt pretty silly when I finally realized what the problem (for me) was. This was something "everybody knew" a long time ago, so much so that you don't see any posts on it anymore, so I thought maybe some of the newer folks (and some old forgetful folks like me) might benefit from a reminder. Since I had already fixed it (along with a ton of other customized settings) with my personal config files so long ago, I didn't realize that deactivating those personal config files via JSGME for this testing would recreate this old problem by going back to stock values in that file.

Pretty strange that the devs didn't correct this oversight in one of the patches, since it was identified early on as a source of these sorts of problems. At least it's something easily fixable once you know/remember you need to do it.

[Peto]

[quote=panthercules
...so I thought maybe some of the newer folks (and some old forgetful folks like me) might benefit from a reminder.
[/quote]

Well--I fall into both of those categories. I'm old and forgetful so every day is a new day !

Cheers!

[leovampire]

Originally Posted by panthercules

This was really bugging me, as I don't remember experiencing it before I started testing ROW but I was getting it on stock installs without ROW so I figured it couldn't be ROW-related.

Turns out, it was related to what I did to get ready to test ROW. I went completely back to fresh install, and didn't load any of my personally-tweaked .cfg files cause I wanted to test "pure" stock and ROW. It dawned on me this morning that this meant that for my testing purposes I HADN'T FIXED THE PROBLEMS WITH STOCK MAIN.CFG FILE that I had fixed so long ago with my personally tweaked .cfg files that I'd forgotten about it

Anyway, when I went back in to main.cfg and fixed the following, my pans are now rock solid/smooth as silk with stock 1.3 under the test conditions described in my first post:

[VIDEO]
Resolution=1024,768,120,22 [was 60]
DynamicShadows=Yes [was No]
FullScreen=Yes
Synchronized=Yes [was No]
TextureResolutionHigh=Yes

[DEVELOPING]
DevDebugEnable=No [was Yes]
DevEditEnable=No [was Yes]
MiniDump=No [was Yes]

Now - back to more ROW testing


Just something y'all might want to check if you're seeing this on high-end machines like I was - not sure if you ever get this to go away completely on lower end machines, but the above ought to help a lot even on those machines. And with all the re-installing that we tend to do as the patches and mods come out, it's easy to forget about something like this (at least, that's my excuse )

Thanks for responding - there may be multiple causes and solutions to this, so everything above may be helpful to somebody trying to see this game in all its glory (especially with improvements like ROW out there to enjoy)

[edit - PS - in case it wasn't obvious, the change from 60 to 120 above is the refresh rate - I changed it to 120 because that's the refresh rate I run on my desktop with my monitor (and in the in-game video setup) - you probably don't have to mess with that line (the 3 in the "developing" section are the real key)]

WOW did I find a multitude of problems to fix and a few of the file's actualy not just the MAIN cfg but also in the graffix's file's and more. Thank's for the head's up on this it made a difference on my end including fixing my missing limber hole water comming out. BTW the game also has dynamic shadow's and it was turned off I found out after going through the file's and now that I turned it on it's cool!!!