Objects flickering at distance post update

With SLI8 and SLI-AA set up for my card in town I'm getting ~30fps, which for me is a decent drop from the 50 or so I normally get in town. But even with those in the field I'm getting ~50fps.

I should go and turn on the load balance indicator for my system, but that would just bring up an entirely new set of problems for me. Performance related OCD for the win! I learned a long time ago to get it to a point where I can play it with out annoyance and leave it at that or else I'll spend all day tweaking things and never get to play.

So far, I say using SLI-AA over split frame or alternate frame rendering is the best fix for those of us with an SLI setup getting this problem. As long as I'm get fluid motion, and I don't see flickering so be it!

I have this same config in my current rig. My wife's pc has 2x 6800GS in SLI. Both machines run WinXP SP2 with all the latest patches (including DX9 updates).

In case no one has noticed, this is obviously an issue with nVIDIA drivers and the latest updates. I have been experiencing this since the last major update that introduced Hero Battle changes.

The question now is: Is this a driver problem or a game client problem?

The latest update for GeForce 7 series is Version: 93.71, Release Date: November 2, 2006. I think it will be very difficult to convince nVIDIA to update a driver for products that aren't their latest, especially over one game. Also take into consideration that the grpahics anomoly occured after a game client update and I think you will agree with me that the error is on the side of the game client.

How can one person best influence a game client update? That answer has already been posted by Vel:

I am running a single 7950 GX2 and am getting the same flickering. I have submitted a report to PlayNC. Nothing I have tried fixes the problem. I can stop it for short periods by changing ANY of the graphic settings in game but it never lasts very long.

Lets keep this thread alive till the problems are solved for everyone using NVIDIA Cards. Not everyone can do SLI8 AA to resolve the problem as it is happening on single card systems as well for NVIDIA users.

- Vel

I found useing the 91.47 drivers and selecting wait for vertical sync, made things better for me. But I'm still geting flickering now and then and now total system lock ups as well. But its not just GW its happending in other games too like LOTRO which I got a week ago and still can't play because of the really bad flickering. Useing a XFX 7900GT/GTO 256Mb

Agreed with Vel... keep the chatter on this topic going and hopefully it'll get noticed. I too submitted a report to NCSoft and for all those also experiencing this issue, please do so as well. The more people that make it known in an official capacity, the more likely they are to place it higher on their priority list.

I'll add my comments to keep the thread alive as well.

I am running a single 7950GT, and E6700 and 2gig ram.

Since the now infamous early April update, I have suffered from a massive drop in frame rates as well as the horrid rendering and flickering problems on distant objects.

Having been used to playing the game absolutely maxed out with 4x AA at 125+ fps (or 60fps with Vsync enabled - I much prefer the tear free look of the game with Vsync on) I am suffering from frame rates dropping to unplayable levels way too often with AA now turned off completely.

I have done the usual driver update / driver downgrade, Nvidia driver cleaner, delete/recreate paging file, defrag, chkdsk, spyware/virus scans, deleted and redownloaded the gw.dat file, tried 2x AA, No AA, and all the various sound switches, and at least a dozen other things as well that I can't think of right now.

The game is still just about playable most of the time, but is a hell of a lot less fun to play than it used to be.

I am now in the middle of a long dialog with the tech support people. First they wanted a Direct X diaganostic sent to them. Now they want me to use a special uninstaller and reinstall the driver. They also want more info on my machine. We all need to be interacting with them.

I got the flickering to stop on my 7950 GX2 by running in multiple display mode which in essense diables the SLI feature but it also defeats the purpose of having a dual GPU and frame rate goes down accordingly.

I have gone through all of the install this and install that, change this and change that with plaync tech support to stop the freaking blinking, i cannot stand it. So i ran across this program
http://www.nhancer.com/?dat=downloads from lockernome for nvidia drivers. All blinking is gone! Till they fix it Im afraid. Hope this works for all of you too!


UPDATE: when in window mode .... blinking is back.... so i won't run in window mode!

I just had a look at this and as far as I can see it is just a fancy interface and profile creator for the Nvidia standard control panel. I really can't see how this would fix the problems.

Did you set up any of the advanced settings, or create a custom Guild Wars profile? - or did you just install it and then found the problems had one away?

I will give it a go later anyway.

Go to the web site and read about it, yes it is an easy interface but lets you change things right away and change some things that the nvidia cp will not let you change.

I created a GW profile, turned off veritcal sync... the blinking started again when i enabled it.

AA is set at supersampling 4x4, checked gamma correction and Super- Transparency AA

Anisotropic Filtering is set at 16x

Vertical sync is set to off

I have the Geforce 7950 GX2 and run in sli mode and multi cpu mode. So far this is the best i can run the game since April - blinking is so bad have not been able to play. Hope this helps you.

it's not a NVidia problem, because I have the same big flickering trouble with this system :

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
ATI Radeon 9800Pro (with last Omega drivers)
512 Mo RAM
ASUS Motherboard (A7V-600X)

Curiously, when you try to take a capture about that in game, when you look at the capture in the "Screens" directorie, you see no glitch.
So, if you want show the graphic problem, you need to capture the scene and past it directly with Photoshop or another photo editor.

Just thought I'd add my two cents. I started (and still am) having some of these graphics issues after the 4-5-07 update. I'm not getting the flickering, but I am getting the texture problems. Sometimes textures in the middle distances (usually trees or bushes) will suddenly appear like they are made of shredded wheat or lego. Then as I get closer they fade back into their normal appearance.

I tried messing with all the graphics options in the game but I haven't updated any drivers yet because I stubbornly hold on to the belief that since it worked (beautifully) before the update, then the update broke it and now they should have to fix it. I know this will only last for so long before I break down and update the drivers as well. Then let the tweaking begin. *grumble*

I also tried to take some screenshots of the problem, but the weird textures don't appear inn teh screenshots.

This is all very sad because one of the things I really love(d) about this game is the beautiful rendering of the scenery.

Dell Precision 380
p4 3.4
2G DDR2 ECC 667MHz
Nvidia Quadro FX 3450
2-500GB 7200 - mirrored
Soundblaster Audigy 2

I have the same problem Gareth G, and to take photo about that, you need to push print key, and paste the capture in a Photoshop document.

I'm not sure this is exactly the same problem, but it does involve graphic flickers. Specifically I see beams of coloured lights that orgininate from some point and shoot out to various characters, sometimes just flickering to them and sometimes staying for a few seconds, like a beam of light connecting the character to a point in the field. Other flickering occurs as well, but is harder to describe, it seems as if the game is trying to draw crude terrain in places where it should not be, and it flickers and sometimes goes away. When I turn the character to look in another direction, this will sometimes ease the problem until I turn around and there is the flickering again. At times it is just very annoying, other times making the game unplayable (especially when it happens in combat...).

Anyway, not sure this is the same problem? But occurs on my ATI mobility radeon x14 (fujitsu laptop). These graphic problems have only cropped up recently, the graphics were fine from at least January 07-April 07. Just wondered if this sounds familiar to anyone on this thread or if this is another issue entirely? Thanks

I have the same card, and I noticed this: If flickering starts, use Options:Graphics:Autodetect. Not a great fix, since it can start again when changing areas, but sort of works.

Just a quick update to say I'm still getting this, and that it appears to be a problem with the LoD system too.
I've had "Imposters" display as corrupt graphics, oversized graphics, screen filling graphics, flickering graphics, the works.
Imposters are the 2D representations of 3D models when seen from a distance.
I'll try and grab some screenies.
It has been going on for so long now that I've gotten used to it, which is just WRONG.
My once beautiful game is now a corrupted, fit inducing mess :|

EDIT: Just realised, trying to cap a screenie of the graphical corruption is pointless as the system turns off the LoD system when taking screenshots.
Bah.

Go to the Control Panel
Choose 3D Settings
Choose Manage 3D settings
Select Multiple GPU performance mode (assumes you have already chosen Single Display Mode)
Choose Force alternate frame rendering 1

I did this for both my global and Gw.exe program
The flickering is gone

I am not trying to talk down to anyone, I figure this is something a lot of people are experiencing, and explaining this advice in a simple lowest-common-denominator format would help pre-empt any "how do I do what you said, can I also do this with it" questions being posted later on. Anyways...
:::technical advice:::
If you use a video capture program like fraps (it's free) you can record short videos in-game and then play them later to review the graphics problems you run into. When you are playing the video and find a frame displaying the graphics problem you want to show, you can do print screen and then paste the screenshot into whatever photo editing program (or ms paint) that you want to use, and then save the screenshot that way. For anyone who is not familiar with fraps and wants to upload a video to youtube or whatever, many video sharing sites do not accept fraps videos directly because they do not recognize its video codec. The fraps videos are also a gigantic amount of MB and are usually way too big to upload. If you use something like windows movie maker (comes with windows xp) or pinnacle studio (must purchase) you can open the fraps video and then convert it to the format your video editing software uses, which will use a standard codec and reduce the video size in MB. Then you can upload the video and those sites will allow it.
:::end of technical advice:::

I have this flickering crap too, not as bad as you guys, but I have the objects that switch between 2D/3D in certain places and the terrain will have a crappy blurry quality and then fix itself, or the terrain will look crappy and as I move the camera around there are areas of non-crappy textures that move about with the camera view. Even at all the lowest graphics settings the terrain will manage to find a secret crappier texture to display when it wants to act up. I have a Radeon X1600 Pro, it also does this on my Radeon 9200, so I'm definitely agreeing that this game has AA/flickering problems that are not dependant on your graphics card or drivers or chipset. I have always had these AA/flicking problems and thankfully they have not gotten worse with the update that really messed up Nvidia cards. Nvidia users definitely have it worse lately, but there are AA/flickering problems that we all appear to have in common and it's probably the game client's fault.

Comparison with the the same picture.
On the first, with corrupted textures, I paste the screenshot with Photoshop.
On the second, it's just the same screen, taken in the Screens directory of the game.



When I play, graphics are like on the first screen...
Nobody knows this problem ?

Just to point out (as I don't want this going ignored), I still have this problem.
Mapping the screenshot key to another key then using Print Screen's inherent function has allowed me to take pictures of said corruption by the way.

We have been getting the same graphic texture flickering all over the game and in all campaigns for weeks if not months, exactly as Vel noted in Piken Square.


The problem only affects textures in the mid to long distance. The images flicker as blocks or sometimes look like simple pictures, then finally come into view as real 3D landscape as you walk closer.

It seems to be related to nvidia drivers, but can't tell since we have tried soooo many things to get rid of it and it keeps coming back.

1. At least me and three of my friends have the same problem (we LAN together 3-4 nights a week).

2. We have tried different video settings and various control panels (ntune, nhancer, in game settings, etc.).

3. Each time we change video settings the flickering goes away (and we think Qapla'), but it ALWAYS comes back some time later at the "new" settings.

4. Our setups range from SLI 7600GT, SLI 7800GT, Single 8800GTS to SLI 8800GTX. Core2Quad, Core2Duo, PentiumD Extreme, Athlon FX.

5. There is no single card/cpu/software configuration that is causing it for us...it just seems to be there for everyone at different times (but none of us has ATI cards).

6. We are getting the problem both on the same internet connection (sitting together in one room) or across the country (us in NM, other friends in PA).

7. We basically stopped playing GW about a month ago because it was so annoying. Just picked it up again this week and still getting the problem. (even with GW updates and fresh nvidia drivers).

8. We are hesitant to "roll back" drivers and don't even know at which point the flickers started (and can't go too far because the G80 stuff only came out in November).

Hope this helps.
Yincision
Raist of Tristram
Dragons of Autumn (DoA)

I still have this bug. I was wondering since the tread is a bit old if anyone else have this or did they find a fix.