Weird Pixel Problem

from Sins Forums
Well i figured i may as well report this problem since it seems to have no sign of disappearing. SINS currently has a very strange flickering pixel problem on Ships and asteroids. As an example i've uploaded a highly zoomed in Kol to show that it is individual pixels that are doing this.

I've been trying a variety of different Nvidia drivers released since summer (when i got my new PC) but all of them seem to have this problem





As you can see, there are certain pixels that seem to have adopted a single colour, and no longer blend with the ship. Depending on the camera angle and zoom it will be different pixels that gain this affect, and in game it looks like a white flashing effect on ships and asteroids.

Might as well bring this up as well; kill two birds with one stone as they say. Selecting hardware sound in the options seems to make in game sound effects cut short. So for example, a machine gun (auto cannon or whatever they are) fires, i will only hear about half the sound, before it sounds like the rest of the sound forgot to play. Different sound drivers or settings (other than turning hardware sound off) seem to make no difference either.

Though my specs would be useful as well;
Nvidia 8800GTX
Intel q6600
4gig DDR2 Ram
Creative X-FI XtremeGamer
Vista Ultiamte 64bit.
3,690 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Rossy,

I'm not sure about the pixel problem (maybe one of the other devs can comment) but it seems to be quite common in many sound cards that hardware sound buffers aren't very well supported. That's why the default is to use software, which is only marginally more expensive and doesn't sound any different.

Cheers
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I also get that pixel problem (with a Radeon 9800 256 Mb and newest drivers). It happens only at the edges of models when zoomed out, so that the models are quite small.

It's easy observable in asteroids where there are lots of tiny and large ones, because they have so much edges. Zooming out just before the vanish or change to icons and those white pixels are easy observable.

Perhaps it has something to do with anti aliasing?

Although different settings there doesn't change anything.
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=443&aid=164713


All your problems solved! (except sound)
Hopefully that fixes your problems. Thanks for searching!
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

All your problems solved! (except sound)


Nope. It's a different issue.

The problem in the thread you've linked were only asteroids. But the white pixels happens with all kinds of models and only at the edges of them.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Have you tried using different AA levels/patterns?
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the nice attempt at being clever Windexglow, but alas you failed. Moving on, after testing AA settings with different resolutions and Texture details i atleast appear to have got the game to remove the flashing pixels when there's no AA. At one point all my textures appeared to disappear when setting texture detail to medium (so i was just left with grey, or brown ship models) but with them the flikering pixels also went, and upon changing resolution the textures reappeared and atlast the flashing pixels have stopped with No AA.

So it would appear that AA needs a wee bit of fixing.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
We've been in touch with ATI about this. It's an issue they're trying to resolve with their drivers.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
We've been in touch with ATI about this. It's an issue they're trying to resolve with their drivers.
End of quote


I've been trying a variety of different Nvidia drivers released since summer (when i got my new PC) but all of them seem to have this problem
End of quote


Just wondering.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
This happens in The Witcher also, on the trees when AA is enabled. It's some problem associated with AA :( Sure hope Nvidia or the developers find a fix.

Oh god, I'm sorry, didn't look at the dates :(