Endy - what version are the nVidia drivers your using?


GengisCon - Turbine has no reported problems with like 98% of the nvidia cards that play their game. Most people head here and google to find solutions to problems and don't share information about what they learned and if it was made better. So for the tiny amount of people who have the issue - this is a massive problem, but from Nvidias stand point its not an issue because for their overall customer base its a ignorable portion of their user base. Turbine can't replicate this issue simply because of the sheer number of configurations this happens in. Turbine isn't walking away but they can only try so much to get Nvidia to solve this problem, and from reading the LONG list of driver issues in the current Forceware release there is alot of problems with more popular games keeping them busy fixing whats not working on their side and pointing out where the game company needs to do something on their side.


Hell I can't get enough data strung together to even offer more hypothesis about what to try next.

Its hard to fix this problem when people are yelling its broke its broke, ok so tell me what you have.... silence....


I know I had pitched the idea of running one of the driver software package cleanup utilities...

it seems 1 person reported that on a fresh install of xp it still shimmered ... But not still sure what driver version they tried.


What I know...

The problem only appears on some 8800 and 8600 video cards.

The problem seems more common on cards with more than 512 ram onboard.


What I'd like to know...

What releases make it better or worse.

How many of the cards are "overclocked" by the manufacturer beyond the original spec.

Is the shimmer in a specific location all the time or is it in a specific texture/effect?

Is the shimmer there with or without decal?

Is the shimmer always present, develops over x amount of play time?


Forceware 169.21 was released in december... I have no idea what the first set of forceware drivers that supported the 8 series was, It would be nice if there could be a list compiled of all the the 8 series supporting driver releases, and then have them tried by people who have shimmer and say if the problem was there, better or worse etc...

This doesn't even begin to touch on the gaming optimized drivers like the Omega (i think he retired but I am unsure) optimized drivers. If someone could compile the list, then maybe other 8 series users could then lend help by trying them out and reporting what works, whats better whats worse. I suggest finding one of the programs that removes all the traces of the video drivers from the system to make sure nothing hangs around in between trying different versions.


I don't have an 8 series or access to one...all I can do is take information people provide and try to think what the next thing to try is... but I need information to make educated guesses.

 

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169.28 beta driver

 

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Using 169.21 drivers on a 8800 GTS 320 MB.


What releases make it better or worse. (None)


How many of the cards are "overclocked" by the manufacturer beyond the original spec.

(My card isn't overclocked).


Is the shimmer in a specific location all the time or is it in a specific texture/effect?

(Seems to be outdoor textures)


Is the shimmer there with or without decal?

(Decal doesn't make a difference)


Is the shimmer always present, develops over x amount of play time?

(Play time doesn't make a difference).


What does make a difference. If I play full screen version with the pack not showing, I don't get the flicker. If I play in the smaller screen version with the pack on the right hand side outdoors then it's going to flicker and often. It seems like it has something to do with the sky textures in the game because I don't get this anywhere else and I don't have this problem with any other game.


I don't think you should call the problem minimal. A lot of people just unsub from the game rather than trying to fix the issue and as the cards drop in price there will be even more issues if this continues.

Afker - I do not claim its a minimal problem, what I am saying is that to Nvidia its a minimal problem. There are X millions of Nvidia chipset users. Of that there are maybe a couple thousand who play Asheron's Call. Of that there are maybe a couple dozen who have this issue. Its a minimal problem to Nvidia, they are not that concerned about 50 people who have a small graphics glitch in 1 game. Put this "shimmer" in WoW and have it affect a couple 1000 players, Nvidia would take notice. I've seen screen shots of the "shimmer" and I don't think it makes the game impossible to be played, just distracting and annoying, but I can only know so much from a couple screen shots. It makes me sad that people will unsub and walk away rather than try to get help or try new things. You can only scream at Turbine so much, they brought the issue up with Nvidia. Nvidia isn't doing much, or at least not responding to people. You are left to fend for yourselves, and I've tried to help as much as I can but I can only do so much with the data I have so far.


Thank you for the information about your card thou. 320MB is another odd number and gives me more pause that it might have something to do with memory addressing. I saw in the build notes for the newest drivers that Nvidia added support for I think an 8800 something with 512 memory... So I am wondering if that might offer some solution to the memory questions.


The paper doll being open/closed is also a really good detail I was not entirely aware of.


Okies people with the shimmer, does closing the paperdoll window have an affect for everyone of making the shimmer go away?


This tiny bit of information could be a large key so please try it and let me know. The paperdoll is a different layer being rendered and the shimmer might have something to do with how the 2 edges are interacting with each other. I don't think anyones offered that detail before and if this is infact a major cause of the problem, its something small and simple to focus on and would be of all sorts of use for Turbine/Nvidia to work with. It might even be a DirectX issue because the sky is multiple layers and hitting that edge... So the paperdoll question is very important... please let us know.


This is opening up some ideas in my head of settings to try changing that might offer at least a temporary workaround until it can be fixed by whoever broke it... but I need more info about if the paperdoll being opened is a constant in what makes the shimmer happen.

I doubt players care much who broke it they just want to be able to play and this might be the key to being able to play...


wubbie

 

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What releases make it better or worse.

None. I've rolled back to the very first 8000 series driver and the problem exists there.


How many of the cards are "overclocked" by the manufacturer beyond the original spec.

I do have an OC card from the manufacturer, but I've tried underclocking the card as low as it will go. My base system (proc, ram, fsb. etc...) is running at stock. All other games that I've tried with this rig over the past 6 months or so are running rock solid..


Is the shimmer in a specific location all the time or is it in a specific texture/effect?

I've seen the problem in two places in the game:

- In the sky when looking up at least a little. It will only shimmer in half of the sky, but I've noticed it on both sides of the sky. Having the pack open or closed does not matter. If I am looking more or less straight ahead I don't seem to get it. One thing of interest - often the flicker is between the current time of day and an earlier time of day... meaning I'll see night and twilight flickering back and forth very quickly. However, other times it's just the current texture and garbled textures.

- In dungeons with wall hangings, I've notice that the wall hangings flicker in and out of existance, almost as if the wall texture is being written over the wall hanging. I do not know if it is the exact same bug as the sky, but it is similar. I don't think it's the exact same bug because the flickering sky does not occur when running the game in Linux using WINE, but the wall hanging bug does.


Is the shimmer there with or without decal?

I don't use any plugins or 3rd party apps.

Is the shimmer always present, develops over x amount of play time?

It usually takes at least 30 seconds to a minute before it starts.


IMPORTANT NOTE: The flickering of the sky does not happen when running the game in Linux using WINE. My best guess is that there is a problematic function call in a windows DLL or in the windows Nvidia driver.


Hope that helps!

Fyrie - actually it kills part of my thinking but this is a good thing it keeps me from running down the wrong path some more. But WINE adds a whole different thing to consider. Does WINE use real DirectX and Windows Drivers?


New thought... in the 8 series card nvidia added Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing...

What happens if you switch that down to something lower?

 

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Wine is not a Windows emulator per say, rather it is a set of dlls etc... that intercept windows function calls and translate them into native Linux calls. Direct X is handled this way as well, and they've kept pretty up to date with the latest Direct X functionality through Direct X 9. I believe that out of the box so to speak, Wine has no actual windows code/dlls included. Since it is not an OS emulator, it directly uses the NVidia linux display driver. It would be accurate to say that Wine does not use real Direct X or Windows drivers.


As far as AA goes on windows, it doesn't seem to matter if it's on or off as far as I've been able to tell.

Well Blah...


This is one of those times when I need an 8 series card that does this so I can just keep trying stuff until it works...


Ok how about turning off write combining in windows?

Any affect?

 

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I tried disabling the write combining to no avail. I also systematically tried just about every setting in Riva Tuner. However, since I've unsubbed due to this bug, Someone else might have to step in to try some things.

Fyrie - I hope that more people step up to the challenge.


If I had a series 8 of my own that was known to have the bug I could spend an hour or less and burn thru all of the possibilities in my head. But as it is now, I have to float the idea and wait for someone to pickup the challenge and try the newest oddball idea.


Newest pitch is how about NGO Optimized Drivers?

These fall in the same realm as the optimized drivers from Omega I mentioned before.

These drivers have been tweaked out for the best performance in games... let me put it this way... if they manage to get another 10 FPS outta Crysis what do you think the odds are it might handle Asheron's Call?

 

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