[PC] Randomly extruding models/textures (update: getting better)

duncanidaho11 · November 2016

Since the Artifacts update, textures/models (not sure which on my end) have been randomly extruding to a fixed point. Below are some examples.

It can happen to any in-game asset and occurs (per item) at a low frequency. But over an entire map there's very often something which is having problems. Ex. eyeballs, hair, skin, costumes, ships, floors, terrain, ect. Anything can be affected.

Drivers are up to date, I've force-verified the game, and the problem persists. However, changing map will clear the problem on any one asset but others assets may start extruding. Assets are often having this problem when I load a map, but they may also start extruding later (ex. while in the ship/character tailor.) No pattern, just an infrequent issue with all assets in the game (so it's probably an issue with rendering/texturing.)

I'm running Dx11 right now, and I suspect the problem may stem from that. System and software information below.

Radeon Software Version - 16.6
Radeon Software Edition - Crimson
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
Memory Size - 2048 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Core Clock - 1050 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)
System Memory - 8 GB
CPU Type - AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1045T Processor

Radeon Settings Version - 2016.0916.1515.27418
Driver Packaging Version - 16.40.2311-160916a-307259E
Provider - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
2D Driver Version - 8.1.1.1571
Direct3D® Version - 9.14.10.01221
OpenGL® Version - 6.14.10.14008
OpenCL™ Version - 21.19.137.1
AMD Mantle Version - 9.1.10.0146
AMD Mantle API Version - 98310
AMD Audio Driver Version - 10.0.1.0
Vulkan™ Driver Version - Not Available
Vulkan™ API Version - Not Available

Graphics Card Manufacturer - Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
Device ID - 6658
Vendor ID - 1002
SubSystem ID - E258
SubSystem Vendor ID - 174B
Revision ID - 00
Bus Type - PCI Express 3.0
Current Bus Settings - PCI Express 2.0 x16
BIOS Version - 015.046.000.000
BIOS Part Number - 113-258ELBAB50-X001
BIOS Date - 2014/05/22 04:30
Memory Size - 2048 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Memory Clock - 1250 MHz
Core Clock - 1050 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth - 80 GByte/s
2D Driver File Path - /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0000

One thing worth noting is that I am also getting the "your system may be using old drivers" error message in the lower left of the character select screen (again, drivers are up to date). However, texture/model extruding started as soon as I loaded up the first map after the artifacts update. This error message appeared a bit later.

exarch1701 · November 2016

STO%20Glitch%202_zps37c1xvmg.png.html?filters[user]=145823332&filters[recent]=1&sort=1&o=0

STO%20Glitch_zpsfhdvzj7l.png.html?filters[user]=145823332&filters[recent]=1&sort=1&o=1

Youre not the only one. Glad to see (in a sense) that Im not the only one.

duncanidaho11 · November 2016

A couple more examples.

duncanidaho11 · November 2016

Another melted player character
Cw52EidUkAAPkEM.jpg:large

salvation4 · November 2016

Looks like a DX or driver issue caused by something under the hood like a hotfix (Incase of DX)..I have seen a thing like this before where it was a driver issue and once a dx issue..

And yeah it looks scary I would hate to get into combat with that happening...

drakomagi · December 2016

Am getting this issue also! Thanks for posting the pics!

duncanidaho11 · January 2017

I just wanted to note that after some time this class of bug happened with gradually decreasing frequency, to the point where it was only a rare annoyance. With Season 12 it's back to happening pretty much on every ground map (and occasionally in space, usually in the form of missing polygons).

Extra troubleshooting steps:
-Setting tessellation to "application controlled" in AMD radeon settings. (no effect)
-Updating to AMD beta graphics drivers, trying that out, rolling back to the latest non-Beta ones. (no effect)
-Uninstalling/reinstalling graphics drivers (no effect)
-Force verifying STO. (no effect)
-Removing Directx related components in STO program folder, then force-verifying STO. (no effect)

Repeat of Software info

Radeon Settings Version - 2016.1223.1240.22785
Driver Packaging Version - 16.50.2011-161223a-310011C
Provider - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
2D Driver Version - 8.1.1.1583
Direct3D® Version - 9.14.10.01235
OpenGL® Version - 6.14.10.13464
OpenCL™ Version - 21.19.407.0
AMD Mantle Version - 9.1.10.0165
AMD Mantle API Version - 102400
AMD Audio Driver Version - 10.0.1.1
Vulkan™ Driver Version - 1.4.1
Vulkan™ API Version - 1.0.30

Repeat of hardware info

Graphics Card Manufacturer - Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
Device ID - 6658
Vendor ID - 1002
SubSystem ID - E258
SubSystem Vendor ID - 174B
Revision ID - 00
Bus Type - PCI Express 3.0
Current Bus Settings - PCI Express 2.0 x16
BIOS Version - 015.046.000.000
BIOS Part Number - 113-258ELBAB50-X001
BIOS Date - 2014/05/22 04:30
Memory Size - 2048 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Memory Clock - 1250 MHz
Core Clock - 1050 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth - 80 GByte/s
2D Driver File Path - /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0000

trygvar13 · January 2017

I had the same problem before I switched my AMD vid card for a Nvidia one. STO is not friendly with AMD for some reason.

geekysoldier · February 2017

This has been happening to me for months with varying degree, sometimes it happens on every ground map sometimes every other.

duncanidaho11 · March 2017

Problem update: since the last patch it seems the this issue is occurring much more frequently. If I reload a map now, chances are that some other character or piece of geometry is going to have difficult to ignore issues. It pretty much just cycles through different objects. It's rarely okay. If this becomes any more frequent (ie. more than one object breaks at a time) the game will become unplayable. Updating drivers, rolling them back, and completely reinstalling to a pre-glitch set have not had any noticeable effect whatsoever.

More examples.

Two observations:

In most cases, it's only ONE object/character per map that breaks. This can be include very large things like the ships docked at ESD (in which case the entire map gets filled with semi-random planes).
The examples provided above seem to be the product of a geometry vertex being assigned to a fixed point in space. Below I've reposted what seems to be the other class of problem, where a model or part of the map fans out. If this happens to a part of a character [ex. their hands], they become a horrifying meat peacock. This really, really could use a fix.

highbury72 · March 2017

I am getting the exact same problem. However, I have found that opening the Options, then turning Lighting 2.0 off then back on, fixes the issue. It will come back (sometimes in 2 min, sometimes in an hour. very sporadic) and is very annoying but it is at least faster than reloading the game.

abstrusrejoinder · March 2017

Hi there! This has been reported and we're looking into a fix. Thank you for your patience and for letting us know!

abstrusrejoinder · March 2017

For those of you experiencing this issue, providing your system specs (especially graphics card and DirectX) would be of great help to us (we already have Duncan's). Thanks!

duncanidaho11 · April 2017

Updating the thread with current state of the bug: still happening but infrequently now. I have noticed that the extrusion tends to happen after coming back to the game after using another program (spotify, chrome, or skype). During uninterrupted playthroughs, I don't think I've seen it happen lately. I play with the "windows maximized" setting and use the windows button to jump between programs (not alt-tab).

I can't say with certainty that every time a map or character's extruded, it's after returning to STO from another active program. But it's at least been a common theme lately. I've switched "limit CPU usage while inactive" setting to off, going to see if that has any impact.

Update/edit: nope, no effect and spontaneous model? issues were observed without putting STO in the background (mission: Temporal Reckoning, fighting in side rooms. Turned around and the male odyssey comm badge started extruding to a fixed point of the map.)

Other recent incidents: eyes+face when walking around Drozana, terrain in FE: Survivors (after first encountering crazy T'Nae.)

highbury72 · April 2017

I still have it happening as well but tabbing out has not been the issue. Sometimes just changing an outfit will cause it, other times there is no definable trigger.

nerahjj · May 2017

I've been having this issue as well, and since I saw a dev asking somewhere for system specs to help with the issue:

AMD Phenom II 6 Core Processor
AMD Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard
Gigabyte Radeon R7 360 Graphics

kostoneld · July 2018

Happening to me all the time also! Really hard to enjoy the game anymore with this happening on every ground map all over the place.

https://i.imgur.com/MDqk3KL.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Ymix0pc.jpg

I’m using dx 11 and have an AMD 360. All up to date. I have tried rolling back the drivers on graphics cards and also forcing the game to use dx9 from command line on launcher. Nothing is working.
Please please try hard to fix this. It’s disheartening to see dev posts from March and nothing is better.
It’s breaking our game and impossible to keep playing like this.

kostoneld · August 2018

Still no word on anyone looking at this? Here was a rev in here talking about this back in may but since hen not a word. I can’t play like this anymore with black lines coming out of my characters all over the ground

duncanidaho11 · August 2018

Couple of things Kostoneld

1. Could you post your full hardware settings? This isn't a general issue so it's vital that you post as much relevant user-specific detail as you can. Otherwise Cryptic can't do much.

2. If you go to this folder: (C:\Users\Public\Games\Cryptic Studios) how many PCL, Packet, and error text files do you have in their? If there's a lot, then does this bug become less frequent if you clear them out? Since I started doing that (initially just to prevent what appeared to be a hell of a lot of fluff building up) I've been getting black extrusions/lines a lot less frequently and if I start getting hit hard by it I've found that I've also had a big build up of those files too. Clear it out, restart the game, and things get better.

This is all empirical and could well be a placebo effect but take a look, clear those out and see how that goes.

frtoaster · August 2018

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

2. If you go to this folder: (C:\Users\Public\Games\Cryptic Studios) how many PCL, Packet, and error text files do you have in their? If there's a lot, then does this bug become less frequent if you clear them out? Since I started doing that (initially just to prevent what appeared to be a hell of a lot of fluff building up) I've been getting black extrusions/lines a lot less frequently and if I start getting hit hard by it I've found that I've also had a big build up of those files too. Clear it out, restart the game, and things get better.

This is all empirical and could well be a placebo effect but take a look, clear those out and see how that goes.

I think it's a placebo. If you open those files in a text editor, you'll see that they're just a bunch of useless log files. I wish they would stop writing so many useless log files, but I doubt it has anything to do with a graphics bug. See my response here:

http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13403775/#Comment_13403775

frtoaster wrote: »

I noticed these files a long time ago. As far as I can tell, they're just a bunch of useless log files. I'm pretty sure they don't have anything to do with this bug or any other bug you might encounter (except, of course, a bunch of useless logs appearing in your installation directory).

What I think happened was that someone changed the logging code to rotate the logs every hour. This makes sense on the server-side, where I imagine the log files can get pretty big. The change was probably intended for servers only, but since the client and servers share logging code, we got it on the client-side too.

If the directory in which you installed STO is named <install>, then you will find hundreds of log files under

<install>

and

<install>\Star Trek Online\Live\logs\GameClient

If you also installed Tribble, then you will also find log files under

<install>\Star Trek Online\Playtest\logs\GameClient

The names of all these log files include a timestamp, which seems have a granularity of one hour. As best as I could determine, we started getting these new hourly log files in logs\GameClient on February 26, 2016, and we started getting them in the main <install> directory on December 8, 2016. (Note that these dates might be slightly off.) Furthermore, the PACKET and pcl logs in the main <install> directory are redundant, because the same information is also written to the Packet and Pcl logs in logs\GameClient.

A while ago, Cryptic added a flag called -NoAutoRotateLogs to the launcher that allows you to disable log rotation, but it only partially works. The flag has no effect on the main <install> directory, but it does disable rotation for most logs in logs\GameClient. However, it doesn't completely disable the rotation of the Makeshaderbins log, because the names of Makeshaderbins files include a process ID in addition to a timestamp. NoAutoRotateLogs gets rid of the timestamp, but it doesn't get rid of the process ID, so you still get a new log file every time you launch the client.

lemonez13 · September 2019

Guessing there has not been any kind of permanent solution for this still?

Decided to come back and try this game again. I love it, but this graphic bug kills it for me. Constantly having to turn Dynamic Shadows on/off, when on the ground, to try to filter out the massive amount of glitching. Then eventually crashing from it.

Oddly had the exact same issue in Neverwinter, but when I played it again back at Undermountain launch it was fixed and never saw the glitch once.

I posted a thread about this issue back in 2018 as well (its in my post history, I don't have many posts).

But definitely suspect it is a AMD card issue. Have the same card series as the OP. R7 260x. Have updated drivers since the last time I played and hasn't seemed to improve the problem either.

duncanidaho11 · September 2019

lemonez13 wrote: »

But definitely suspect it is a AMD card issue. Have the same card series as the OP. R7 260x. Have updated drivers since the last time I played and hasn't seemed to improve the problem either.

Drivers for me never seemed to do the trick. Installing latest drivers: no joy. Reverting to factory default: no joy. The only thing that seemed to improve the frequency what the bug was hitting in force was restarting STO. Once it happened it was likely to keep happening with each map transition.

This year I finally built myself a new computer which is running an RX 460. That killed the glitch. So, definitely hardware and with the newer AMD fixing the problem a glitch with older AMD cards would seem a plausible target for misplacing polygon vertices.

fovrel · November 2019

I have these graphical issues frequently for some time now. Let me give my experiences.
It is always a ground map. I have never seen it in space.
In most cases it is my play character, sometimes a boff, seldo another player or an NPC. If the glitch is from a costume I can fix it often by changing the costume.
If the glitch occurs and there is a cut scene with the glitched character, the glitch is also in the cut scene.
Transferring to another map almost always fixes the glitch, hence I think it has something to do with not proper loading the character and details of the texture (just a shot at what might be the core of the problem).
My graphic card is AMD R7 360 series.

[PC] Randomly extruding models/textures (update: getting better)

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