Flickering z-fighting textures in the 64-bit client

rabidfox

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Bug Report Number:
170472
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This is by Elminster in estar. Bug report #170472 is 2 years old, marked as solved a year ago and it still flickers to this day. Two years ago, I filed a ton of tickets (170472, 170538, 171100, 171094, 171097, 171108, 171102, 171106, 171364) some of which had zip files with multiple z-fighting textures in each of them. Another impossible to miss one is in Feywild's Wynwood Hall, between the questgiver for Wake Me Up Inside and the AH; the floor flickers heavily in one spot there.

There's so many flickering z-fighting textures all over the place that reporting them feels like a herculean job; after that big batch of bug reporting of them 2 years ago, it kinda burnt me out on filing tickets for stuff like that. And that there are still tons of them all over the place limits my desire to (re)report the ones I still see. Maybe others can jump on the bandwagon and bug report them and post them on this thread too to call them out.
 
rabidfox

rabidfox

The People's Champion
For anyone not familar with the z-fighting term, in basic terms it's when two texures are overlapped and the game engine can't decide which one to render on top so they flicker as the engine alternates between which one it shows. The simply fix is likely moving one of the textures slightly so it doesn't fully overlap (but that requires manual adjustments to that location in game by a dev). There's probably also graphic engine changes that could reduce them (but that might result in more bugs as a result and/or be costly to do).
 
Aelonwy

Aelonwy

Well-known member
These give me such a headache. Ravenloft Castle is just filled with this issue. A lot of the architectural highlights seem to be secondary textures or objects inset on a primary object or texture and in the 64 bit client most surfaces flash while the textures fight for supremacy.
 
rabidfox

rabidfox

The People's Champion
The sharn bank still flickers. I feel like it used to flicker even worse, so it might have had some bad textures cleaned up with this one left behind.

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rabidfox

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Speaking of Sharn, just on the other side of the same quest giver area; all these windows flicker.

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The paintings inside the inn there used to flicker and I don't see them doing so anymore on my system. =) So work has been done in some spots, just many more to go.
 
Savage

Savage

Phoenicis' Wife
Those spots are all over. It still bugs me a little, but got kinda used to it. Those empty treasurebags bug me a bit more. Maybe when they fix that flicker sometime, they can fill them bags too :D
 
rabidfox

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Savage said:
but got kinda used to it.
Click to expand...
That's how I view them, it's a bug I've adapted to and ignore most of the time (and/or just adjust my mouse look to avoid). But it's poor look for a game to have glaringly obvious visual bugs like that. A flashing texture in the middle of quest that I zerg past in 2 seconds flat isn't a huge deal, but some of them like ones in estar/wynwood/sharn give a bad impression for game's visuals for anyone new/returning (and are quite annoying even for us vets who've grown accustomed to them).
 
Altra

Altra

Well-known member
It's annoying, some spots are even headache-inducing, but what bugs me the most, EVERY time I play, is that my inventory does that!
I have to move it around the screen to trade an item, because it flickers and flickers and won't let me move it, and forget about trying to see stats on a weapon or armor.

I'm positive that it's overlapping textures where I happen to be standing.
It's SO friggin frustrating.
 
Dragavon

Dragavon

Well-known member
I do not have high hopes that any of this will be fixed. It is a problem even in the Morgrave public area.

When it happens in brand new content I have no hope SSG will fix it in old content.
 
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