Yeah, I have to agree, it looks like there is something wrong with the z-buffer ordering.
[...]
In fact, the whole "Planets filling up" might be related to that too.
4 significant patches in the last 2 weeks, plus various small hotfixes, and not one of them seems to even mention this issue - Still happening to me, I imagine it's still happening to others - I'd personally really appreciate some indication that it's being investigated - if someone could even just nail it down to a particular gpu or video setting issue, I'd be a lot more content. Its been at least 2 weeks since the last dev response...
4 significant patches in the last 2 weeks, plus various small hotfixes, and not one of them seems to even mention this issue - Still happening to me, I imagine it's still happening to others - I'd personally really appreciate some indication that it's being investigated - if someone could even just nail it down to a particular gpu or video setting issue, I'd be a lot more content. Its been at least 2 weeks since the last dev response...
Given the size of the last three patches, you'd think we'd have solved this by now.
Yes, still having the same issues as reported above.
Could we at least be told if this is something that can be fixed by updating GPU drivers? Or if this is something on cryptics side we just need to wait for?
Could we at least be told if this is something that can be fixed by updating GPU drivers? Or if this is something on cryptics side we just need to wait for?
So far the 12.1 Catalyst drivers seem to be greatly reducing this flicker. NOTE I said reduce, not resolve.
Simply put, there are 2 (or more) texture layers that aren't behaving themselves the way they should be. If you watch an old sci-fi movie from the 70's-80's for example you can see a little black box outline around a spaceship when moving through space.
The problem is on the server side Cryptic/PWE and will require some tweaking to either the textures or more likely the programming. Because this is pretty much a game wide issue with what is called the skybox, it will be something that will take them a long time to fix.
I've noticed this flickering too - glad to see I'm not alone. It's very pronounced on some random cluster maps where there's a nebula cloud in the distance and against the stark black background.
And as for the "planets filling up": first time I saw that, before I got closer and just saw the silhouette crescent of the planet I thought it looked really cool! So disappointing when I got closer and it filled in.
I am experiencing the same problems as everyone else. When I updated my graphics software, the textures went bad. This is the only game it has affected. I will have to stay tuned to figure out if this issue will be resolved or whether I'll have to revert back to an old update.
this driver fixed or minimized the current issues with the game, its not a driver issue per-say because I have seen it on amd and nvidia cards, something in an update was bugged, the above driver is beta, but its worked for everybody whos tried it (nobody I know has complained and nobody here whos tried it has complained)
Since this flickering is still goin on I would like to say that my nvidia gt9600 does not flicker but my gtx 560 ti does. Hope this info can help the techs to solve the problem. All drivers are up to date.
yup - problem still persists - what bothers me most, is it's not only a known problem, but they even know why it's happening (theres a post I think at the top of this forum detailing something about how they chose to layer their background textures and whatnot - I'll see if I can find the link again)
and for whatever reason it still isn't fixed - this thread is nearing 6 months in age without so much as a peep
I'm really thinking this is a very basic issue that needs to get fixed - it impacts a huge portion of gameplay, and is just obnoxious - and letting it sit this long without any movement is just tacky
There is no correct resolution; it's a test of character.
James T. Kirk
Issues like this are sometimes not as easy as they first appear. Sometimes they are caused by bugs in systems that the STO team itself doesn't deal with, and can't fix.
In this case, the issue is in some underlying graphics programming. We have a 'core' team of graphics programmers, who do the underlying graphics code that all of our games use.
The Nebulae flickering turned out to be unrelated to the problem of stars drawing in front of planets. The skydome size issue laid out in the above linked post, has been fixed (as of S6 launch at least). The nebulae persist. The STO environment team (the ones who make/place nebulae) has been working with the graphics programming team to figure out what is causing it. We've done numerous tests, and while we've found some things we can do to reduce the flickering, nothing has gotten rid of it completely.
However, I got an email this afternoon from our lead Graphics Programmer, stating that a potential fix has been checked in, and that I should go look through some nebulae to see if the problem is indeed fixed or not. I'm out tomorrow as my mom is visiting, but be assured I will be looking into this on Monday.
I'm sorry this issue has persisted as long as it has, all I can tell you is that we really do want all of these kinds of things fixed as much as you do, but things take time, get prioritized, get shifted due to game breaking stuff, and eventually (hopefully) get fixed.
Issues like this are sometimes not as easy as they first appear. Sometimes they are caused by bugs in systems that the STO team itself doesn't deal with, and can't fix.
In this case, the issue is in some underlying graphics programming. We have a 'core' team of graphics programmers, who do the underlying graphics code that all of our games use.
The Nebulae flickering turned out to be unrelated to the problem of stars drawing in front of planets. The skydome size issue laid out in the above linked post, has been fixed (as of S6 launch at least). The nebulae persist. The STO environment team (the ones who make/place nebulae) has been working with the graphics programming team to figure out what is causing it. We've done numerous tests, and while we've found some things we can do to reduce the flickering, nothing has gotten rid of it completely.
However, I got an email this afternoon from our lead Graphics Programmer, stating that a potential fix has been checked in, and that I should go look through some nebulae to see if the problem is indeed fixed or not. I'm out tomorrow as my mom is visiting, but be assured I will be looking into this on Monday.
I'm sorry this issue has persisted as long as it has, all I can tell you is that we really do want all of these kinds of things fixed as much as you do, but things take time, get prioritized, get shifted due to game breaking stuff, and eventually (hopefully) get fixed.
This issue has not been forgotten.
Hey mr Taco head :P
From my unreal tournament modding days (i appreciate different engine etc) but there was a similar issue if you placed overlapping meshes or overlapping textures on a sureface you would see a similar flicker to what you see when it happens in STO. Have you epxlored this as a possibility ? btw if your hiring people id gladly take up a post in QA nad if there is an employee referral scheme i will spliut it with you 50/50 :P imagine how many tacos you could buy
We generally refer to that as "Z-fighting" (as in, two faces are coplanar).
While I agree that's what this looks like, I have looked pretty closely at some of the affected nebulae objects, and cannot find any duplicate faces.
We've gone as recreating this effect on a single triangle, in a skyfile with nothing else in it, so there's something more at work. Anyway, I'll see if we got it fixed on Monday.
what confuses me to no end is that this same issue happened in Season 4, on a larger scale, it was fixed back then and now with Season 6 it came back as if somebody put old code in the build...
Yesterday (after the patch) I've noticed that certain space instances do not display background textures properly. This is mostly the case with nebulas, and from what I've noticed it's not random.
First time I noticed this was during the mission S'harien's Swords (Romulan Front), which I've completed several days ago on a different toon, and didn't experience anything similar. This time, the background nebula textures were flickering and displaying "blocky" textures during camera move. Reported this as a bug in-game.
The reason I say this must be instance related, or specific texture related, is that I didn't notice anything similar during any other mission I've played (i.e. all space STFs, Sol, Sector Blocks, Eta Eridani Dailys etc. are fine). Yet I'm sure this is related to the 05.01.12 patch, because, as I've said, I did those missions several times before and didn't experience anything similar.
No DX11 is involved (my system does not support it). No video configurations were changed and my graphic card (GeForce GTX 460) drivers are up to date.
Anyone else experienced anything like that? Any solutions, perhaps?
EDIT:
Just to be sure, I've made an additional trip to DS9, as I recalled similar nebulas around, but all's fine there. Then I went back to Deferi Sector and got the same mission as before. Background nebulas flickered again - http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5665/screenshot2012010619433.jpg
This seems to be the case with nebula edges, or places where they transit to normal space.
I remember similar flickering in various areas when I was running on 150% brightness. Examples: Some part of Cardassian space, Haakona system, maybe a few more sector blocks. Very annoying, but it vanished when I switched down to 100%.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Sadly the potential fix did not accomplish what we wanted, do we're back to the drawing board on this. Sorry guys.
Eh, all in all, not the end of the world.
Speaking of minor annoyances, when are they going to get your splash and water drops effect added back in to SFA? I always go thru the ponds between the lore terminals and the main building. It just isn't the same anymore.
Sadly the potential fix did not accomplish what we wanted, do we're back to the drawing board on this. Sorry guys.
I'll admit I have no idea about IT at all, so I may sound noobish and provide only vague suggestions, but although I believe this is a major issue, it wasn't as prominent before Season 6 went live.
It was also me who created this particular thread (Archived Post) and although I can't say when the issue was gone for me, I didn't experience it for quite some time and thought you've fixed it (still using the same GeForce GTX 460, no change for me in neither hardware nor software). Ever since S6 launch though it still persists again...
It's like zerobang's saying - try looking into the previous code, as even though it might have not been fixed for ALL players, it was definitely better for SOME of us before S6.
Comments
6970, core i7 4.6ghz, 16gb Ram, SSD. Z68 board.
Does the reinstalling of 12.1 driver help?
Given the size of the last three patches, you'd think we'd have solved this by now.
Yes, still having the same issues as reported above.
So far the 12.1 Catalyst drivers seem to be greatly reducing this flicker. NOTE I said reduce, not resolve.
Simply put, there are 2 (or more) texture layers that aren't behaving themselves the way they should be. If you watch an old sci-fi movie from the 70's-80's for example you can see a little black box outline around a spaceship when moving through space.
The problem is on the server side Cryptic/PWE and will require some tweaking to either the textures or more likely the programming. Because this is pretty much a game wide issue with what is called the skybox, it will be something that will take them a long time to fix.
******
i7 940 @ 4.4 GHz
12 GB DDR3-2000
(2) ATI 5870 video cards in crossfire and running eyefinity triple screens (5760x1080)
(6) 120 GB SSD2 drives in RAID0 array (on dedicated Areca RAID controller card)
After a bit of fiddling around, I discovered if you DISABLE AA in the STO options, all of the graphical glitches will go away.
Looked fairly terrible (so I forced AA on the Catalyst control panel) but back to being playable again.
I'm using a Radeon 5700 1g card with 4g of system RAM. All drivers are up to date as of March 11 2012.
And as for the "planets filling up": first time I saw that, before I got closer and just saw the silhouette crescent of the planet I thought it looked really cool!
Could you be a bit more specific in this, what is AA in the Catalyst Control Panel >_> or where can you find it in STO options.
I'm running:
- ATI Radeon 4870 x2 in Crossfire configuration
I haven't done any GPU driver updates, and this problem seemed to spontaneously arise, as I haven't had it before.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-12.x--8.96-February-28-download-2867.html
this driver fixed or minimized the current issues with the game, its not a driver issue per-say because I have seen it on amd and nvidia cards, something in an update was bugged, the above driver is beta, but its worked for everybody whos tried it (nobody I know has complained and nobody here whos tried it has complained)
give the latest nVidia beta's a go, if they fix it, let everybody know.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=263739
current problem appears to be the ghost planets and flickering background nebulae
and for whatever reason it still isn't fixed - this thread is nearing 6 months in age without so much as a peep
I'm really thinking this is a very basic issue that needs to get fixed - it impacts a huge portion of gameplay, and is just obnoxious - and letting it sit this long without any movement is just tacky
James T. Kirk
In this case, the issue is in some underlying graphics programming. We have a 'core' team of graphics programmers, who do the underlying graphics code that all of our games use.
The Nebulae flickering turned out to be unrelated to the problem of stars drawing in front of planets. The skydome size issue laid out in the above linked post, has been fixed (as of S6 launch at least). The nebulae persist. The STO environment team (the ones who make/place nebulae) has been working with the graphics programming team to figure out what is causing it. We've done numerous tests, and while we've found some things we can do to reduce the flickering, nothing has gotten rid of it completely.
However, I got an email this afternoon from our lead Graphics Programmer, stating that a potential fix has been checked in, and that I should go look through some nebulae to see if the problem is indeed fixed or not. I'm out tomorrow as my mom is visiting, but be assured I will be looking into this on Monday.
I'm sorry this issue has persisted as long as it has, all I can tell you is that we really do want all of these kinds of things fixed as much as you do, but things take time, get prioritized, get shifted due to game breaking stuff, and eventually (hopefully) get fixed.
This issue has not been forgotten.
Hey mr Taco head :P
From my unreal tournament modding days (i appreciate different engine etc) but there was a similar issue if you placed overlapping meshes or overlapping textures on a sureface you would see a similar flicker to what you see when it happens in STO. Have you epxlored this as a possibility ? btw if your hiring people id gladly take up a post in QA nad if there is an employee referral scheme i will spliut it with you 50/50 :P imagine how many tacos you could buy
While I agree that's what this looks like, I have looked pretty closely at some of the affected nebulae objects, and cannot find any duplicate faces.
We've gone as recreating this effect on a single triangle, in a skyfile with nothing else in it, so there's something more at work. Anyway, I'll see if we got it fixed on Monday.
I remember similar flickering in various areas when I was running on 150% brightness. Examples: Some part of Cardassian space, Haakona system, maybe a few more sector blocks. Very annoying, but it vanished when I switched down to 100%.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Eh, all in all, not the end of the world.
Speaking of minor annoyances, when are they going to get your splash and water drops effect added back in to SFA? I always go thru the ponds between the lore terminals and the main building. It just isn't the same anymore.
Not sure if you've seen this, but I even started a thread with comparison screenshots - the same map on Holodeck (pre-S6) and on Tribble (S6-test) - http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=4571481
It was also me who created this particular thread (Archived Post) and although I can't say when the issue was gone for me, I didn't experience it for quite some time and thought you've fixed it (still using the same GeForce GTX 460, no change for me in neither hardware nor software). Ever since S6 launch though it still persists again...
It's like zerobang's saying - try looking into the previous code, as even though it might have not been fixed for ALL players, it was definitely better for SOME of us before S6.