[AV8R]

In testing the latest nightly and some other nightlies from earlier this year, I found that nightlies beyond 3.8.1 Official have some significant random graphical glitches with textures.

Check out the image below grabbed from a bit of an Arcadia station and notice the awful pixelation on the vertical struts:

https://imgur.com/T7kbsn9

I can get blotchy textures like this with almost any nightly from January onward. This phenomenon is repeatable (if I get out of the game and go back in using the same EXE, the glitches will still be there, usually in the same place). I can find more examples on the same Arcadia model and other larger ship models if I look carefully over their surfaces.

Now look at the same image using 3.8.1 Official Release:

https://imgur.com/sG8DF4t

Much nicer texture smoothing, especially if you look at the random black smudge on the surface (which looks like a hole in the first example due to its hard edges).

Seems something has crept into the nightlies that make random (and not-so-random) textures appear either extremely zoomed-in or just poorly rendered. I can try to get more screen shots of more areas so you can see the similarity of the glitches (when I see them, they always look like that - super big pixels of varying colors, depending on the texture its based on). Does anyone else see this using EXEs after 3.8.1?

[Nyctaeus]

DDS artifacts caused by DXT compression. I experience them from some time. This stuff is actually caused by specular [-shine] mapping, so I changed my methods of generating them.

FSO team and various modders are aware of it's existence. So far I don't know how to handle this.

[AV8R]

It does seem to get worse the later version of the EXE I use. With 3.8.1, it is very difficult to find any misrendered textures any where on the models. But the later the version, the easier it is to find them. In the example above, if I run 3.8.1, that last vertical strut is always rendered properly. With the latest nightly, it is almost always rendered badly. I don't know what it is about that particular texture on that model, but later EXE's can't seem to deal with how it was applied there.

Certainly is a head-scratcher.