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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support => Topic started by: Priami on September 10, 2017, 06:59:09 am

Title: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: Priami on September 10, 2017, 06:59:09 am
Hi

I've started playing FS again after couple of months and for some reason, I get flickering horizontal lines when framerate drops below 60. It's not that noticable during normal gameplay but still rather annoying. I figured it might have something to do with vsync but fiddling with the settings in both the launcher and Nvidia control panel did nothing.

I haven't done any significant changes to my setup after the last time I've played except getting a secondary monitor which I keep disabled when I play something.

Anyone ideas what might be causing the problem? I attached the log file but it looks perfectly normal for me, and I've used the same settings before without any issues.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 10, 2017, 07:45:24 am
Would "screen tearing" be the proper description for that?
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: Priami on September 10, 2017, 07:52:05 am
Would "screen tearing" be the proper description for that?

Well kinda, but not exactly. It's short horizontal lines instead of entire sections of the screen showing different frames. Printscreen won't capture those errors, will post an image taken with camera soon.

EDIT: Here's the pic. The problem is most noticable just after going to a loading screen, probably because the framerate gets so low. Those lines seem to be parts of the previous frame (in this case the main menu) so it is kinda similar to screen tearing in that regard.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: m!m on September 10, 2017, 08:41:03 am
That looks like a dying GPU to me. There is nothing in the rendering engine of FSO that would explain artifacts like that so the issue must be somewhere external to FSO. Are your GPU drivers up to date? Maybe it's just a bug in your current driver version but it does look similar to the artifacts that occur when a GPU is in the process of dying (although that should happen for the whole system so there may be another cause).
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: Priami on September 10, 2017, 08:52:22 am
That looks like a dying GPU to me. There is nothing in the rendering engine of FSO that would explain artifacts like that so the issue must be somewhere external to FSO. Are your GPU drivers up to date? Maybe it's just a bug in your current driver version but it does look similar to the artifacts that occur when a GPU is in the process of dying (although that should happen for the whole system so there may be another cause).

I don't think my GPU is faulty, I've only encountered this problem in FSO. I currently have the latest Nvidia driver, I'll see if clean reinstall or downgrading will fix the problem.
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: tomimaki on September 10, 2017, 06:04:13 pm
Try 382.53. At least for me it works.
All later drivers show the same artifacts as yours.
Title: Re: Visual artifacts when framerate drops
Post by: Priami on September 11, 2017, 08:58:47 am
Try 382.53. At least for me it works.
All later drivers show the same artifacts as yours.

382.53 works without problems. Thanks!